Former Migrant Students Show Way to Success

By Editor Ken Harvey

Participants at the National Migrant Education Conference were inspired by the stories of exemplary migrant students made good.

The best of the best was director and playwright Luis Valdez, who spoke at the closing banquet.

Luis is author of such plays as "Zoot Suit," which was the first Broadway play ever written by a Chicano and was eventually seen by nearly a half million people, winning the Off-Broadway Obie Award. It was later made into a motion picture and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Musical Picture.

He later wrote and directed "La Bamba" for Columbia Pictures. It was one of the biggest hits of 1987. And in 1993 he directed "The Cisco Kid" for Turner Network Television.

But Luis feels his first professional efforts were his most important, as he founded and directed the Teatro Campesino in 1965 in collaboration with Cesar Chavez. Celebrating its 40^th anniversary, the Teatro Campesino is now internationally renowned.

Such success garnered Luis many honors, including a Presidential Medal of the Arts, but he – as all migrant children – had every opportunity to give up and to fail in his dreams.

Luis’ family was living in a barn when, as a toddler in 1941, he was severely burned by an overturned pot of boiling water. He was dying, his family says, but the local "white hospital" released him the same day.

For six months he suffered. He could not sleep on his painfully burned back, so his mother had him sleep on her stomach – "heart to heart."

Luis credits his mother for not only saving his young life but for "charging up" his heart for a lifetime of artistic service.

His first-grade teacher, Ruth Tremaine, was perhaps the most influential educator in his life. She introduced him to such art as paper mache and then selected him to star in a class play.

Before the play was presented, however, his family was evicted from the large Army tent where they were living, and they had to move on. It left a "great hole" in his heart, Luis says.

"I’ve been trying to fill that hole in my heart for the last 57 years," he says. But Ruth Tremaine will always retain a sacred spot there.

"I was touched by a teacher I never saw again because she introduced me to art, she believed in me, and she changed my life," Luis says.

His third-grade teacher had a lifelong effect on Luis in a very different manner, he recounts.

One day Miss Newfield brought in a beautiful wooden toy truck, painted bright yellow with black wood wheels. She placed it on her desk and announced that at the end of the month she would give it to the best-behaved boy in class.

Luis knew Jimmy was the teacher’s pet, but he threw himself into winning that beautiful little truck. He did all of his homework, he listened intently in class, and he even asked if he could be class monitor sometimes instead of Jimmy.

The teacher told Luis, "You know, Jimmy is the son of a grower, and you are the son of a farmworker. When Jimmy grows up, he will have to know how to manage … and you will need to follow orders."

Still, Luis wanted that truck, and one day Jimmy was caught misbehaving. So Luis was sure he could win the truck now. But when the day came to award the truck, it was Jimmy who received it.

Luis went home heart-broken but then went to his uncle’s shop and got permission to use his uncle’s woodworking tools.

That day he built his own truck. It was pink because there weren’t many colors of paint to choose from in the shop, but Luis found some mayonnaise jar lids, painted them black and made it so the wheels actually turned around and around – unlike Jimmy’s truck.

Luis’ uncle and parents were very impressed and told all their friends and relatives. That encouraged Luis more, and he started making all kinds of toys, including cars and airplanes.

Luis says he learned an important lesson that day: "When in doubt, build your own damn truck."

Throughout his life since then, Luis has been determined never to let negative experiences give him a negative attitude.

"All of our negative experiences can be turned into positive experiences," he says.

After he graduated from college, Luis faced many more barriers to achieving success in the theater. He went to Cesar Chavez and proposed to tap into the energy he found in the newly organized farmworkers union to create the Teatro Campesino.

Cesar was skeptical. The farmworkers had little experience with theater, little money and little time. But Luis was convinced. "I went there because the spirit was there, and it was ready to explode," he says.

What Luis accomplished was unheard of anywhere in the world.

"Again, I just had to build my own damn truck!" he says.

And just watching Cesar Chavez gave Luis courage.

"If it hadn’t been for that short, dark Indian standing up to the growers, I could not have stood up to Hollywood," Luis says.

Luis says theater has been proven to be an effective way to teach children. It teaches children to be creative and to be disciplined in their creativity.

"We have discovered that the mind is not disconnected from the heart, and the heart is not disconnected from the body," he says. "Educators need to reach the whole being – head, heart and soul.

"And the future," Luis says, "belongs to those who can imagine it."

BANK VP, TEACHER OVERCOME MIGRANT BARRIERS

Dr. Encarnacion Garza Jr., assistant professor of education at the University of Texas San Antonio, does not believe migrant students succeed "in spite of" their lifestyle.

In his book, "Resiliency and Success: Migrant Children in the U.S.," he documents that migrant students succeed because of the values, positive habits, and attributes they achieve under difficult circumstances.

Dr. Garza was himself a migrant student. He presented a workshop at the national conference in conjunction with a migrant student he once taught. Brenda Magana is now vice president of First National Bank in Rio Grande City, Texas.

Dr. Garza and Ms. Magana had presented a workshop together once before at a national migrant conference – when Ms. Magana was just 15. The latest workshop was to present "the rest of the story" and discuss how to break the cycle.

For his book, Dr. Garza lived with the families of three of his most successful students to see and experience first hand what these students experienced that helped them succeed.

He spent two months working alongside and living with one family that had migrated to Washington, for example.

Ms. Magana says Dr. Garza changed her life mostly by believing in her. As far as she knew she was just like all the other migrant children in middle school, but Dr. Garza chose her to become part of the Gifted & Talented Program and later recruited her to join the Speech Team.

"No one had ever told me I was smart," she says.

Brenda won the district championship for impromptu speaking and was asked to be the student speaker at the junior high graduation.

Just before graduation, however, her family had to migrate to follow the crops.

"It broke my heart but life went on," Brenda says. And her self-confidence and her new vision for her own future also endured.

"But if I had not received encouragement from Mr. Garza, I would not have made it," she says.

But Dr. Garza says, "What Brenda gives me credit for doing for her, I had a third-grade teacher do for me."

His third-grade teacher told him, "You’re too smart to be in this ESL class, so we’re going to transfer you to the regular class."

He says he didn’t like her attitude, but it motivated him as a student.

"A few of us were able to beat the system," he says, even 40 years ago when he was in public schools.

The things that hold migrant students back, Dr. Garza says, include negative labels, low expectations, systemic barriers, educators’ lack of understanding of the migrant lifestyle, "deficit speaking" among Hispanics themselves, lack of parental involvement in education, and poverty.

From his study, Dr. Garza concludes that keys to success for migrant students include some traits that come naturally to migrants – a strong work ethic, a sense of cooperation, a feeling of hope, a sense of self-reliance, determination, commitment, persistence, resourcefulness, and a sense of responsibility.

"While their migrant lifestyle is often blamed for their failures, it must also be credited for their successes," Dr. Garza says.

Another key for successful migrant students is not so common in theirs or any culture, he says -- a strong sense of essential security, love and support from their family that allows them to resist the negative messages that surround them as they enter school.

Once in school, successful migrant students – like Dr. Garza and Ms. Magana – ultimately develop a new support system – people who believe in them.

"Teachers play a powerful role," Dr. Garza says. "They can be the special person who inspires them, or they can be the one that turns them off."

He says if teachers will dignify the migrant children’s value system, recognize the positive attributes that children can develop within the migrant lifestyle, empathize with them but not sympathize for them, and advocate on their behalf, migrant children can succeed.

"Every child has an ability to learn. Some take longer," Dr. Garza says. "The truth is, when I told Brenda she was ‘gifted and talented,’ I didn’t test her. I just decided – and I did it for hundreds of other kids that didn’t get that opportunity."

MIGRANT STUDENTS WIN AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS

Numerous students were honored during the conference for their extraordinary efforts to overcome barriers and excel.

"Ever since I could remember, we were a nomadic family," says Teresa Hernandez. Nevertheless, she was able to graduate in the top 10% of her Auburndale (Fla.) High School and continue her academic success at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.

Teresa was awarded the $20,000 Migrant Farmwork Baccalaureate Scholarship and fought back tears as she told the conference, "I cannot express how happy and grateful I am for this help to continue my efforts to become an immigration lawyer.

"I so appreciate your help to achieve my dreams, and I hope that some day I can likewise help others achieve theirs," she said.

Norma Flores of San Juan, Texas, won the first annual Albert Lee Wright Jr. Memorial Scholarship.

Her family migrates annually to Indiana, Iowa and Michigan, and Norma still works in the fields to help her family survive.

Nevertheless, Norma is an honors physics student at the University of Texas at Pan American and hopes to later study astrophysics and engineering at Purdue University to become part of the U.S. space program.

Circumstances cut the family’s work short this year, leaving them without income for three months. Her father was then hospitalize for diabetes and had to take out a loan to pay his medical bills.

Norma was visibly moved when NASDME President Richard Gomez Jr. announced they were doubling her $1,000 scholarship and awarding her $2,000 to continue her education.

Norma recalled how, when she was younger, she worked in corn fields under the hot summer sun to remove the tassels from the top of each stalk. She had to jump as high as she could to reach them, and she would be so tired at the end of the row. Then her father would direct her to start a new row – and then another and another and another.

She says her life is a lot like that.

"Just when I overcome one barrier, there is another. No one would blame me for quitting," Norma says, "but to me there is nothing more rewarding than to overcome what was thought to be impossible."

Norma praises migrant educators for their efforts.

"You are so important, and I’m living proof that your efforts do pay off," she says. "And now I can reach much higher than the corn tassels. Now I can reach for the stars."