National Conference Unearths 'Hidden Gold'

By Editor Ken Harvey

Gabriela never missed a day of school in ninth grade, nor until March of 10^th grade. Richard Gómez Jr., one of Gabriela’s teachers, began to worry after two days went by, then three, four and five. He tried calling, but her phone had been disconnected.

After a week, she finally returned to class. "My mother wouldn’t let me come to school. The river was too high," Gabriela told Dr. Gómez – now the Washington state migrant education director.

He felt almost a sense of awe as Gabriela explained that since her family moved back to Mexico, she had been walking about 8 miles a day and crossing the Rio Grande every morning at about 5 with her school clothes protected in a plastic bag she held over her head. She was determined to finish high school in the U.S.

And it gave Dr. Gómez such a sense of pride and joy a few years later when he ran into Gabriela and found out she was then about to graduate from college and become a teacher of ELL students (English language learners).

"That’s when I really understood the ‘hidden gold’ within these migrant children," Dr. Gómez told this year’s National Migrant Education Conference. And that was the theme of this year’s conference – "Migrant Children: Our Nation’s Hidden Gold."

Dr. Gomez was re-elected as president of the National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education (NASDME), which sponsors the national conference. He and numerous other Washington educators and students made presentations during this year’s conference in Burlingame, Calif., near San Francisco International Airport.

This year’s conference offered its 2,500 participants more breakout workshops than ever before, with 175. "And presenters came from across the country at their own expense," Dr. Gómez said.

The conference also featured more migrant parents and more foreign participants than ever before.

The successful conference flies in the face of some federal officials who want to do away with migrant education programs.

"I see the migrant education programs as being in danger of being eliminated," says Dr. Gómez, "and what a shame that would be. For we are the last advocates – the last hope for migrant kids.

"Some say the migrant education program is no longer needed," he adds. "I say, ‘No sir, you’re seriously mistaken. Some say migrant children are destined to fail. Tell that to [scholarship winner] Norma [Flores, who is studying astrophysics and dreams of being an astronaut] or to thousands of other migrant students who are overcoming great obstacles to succeed in school and society."

The national NASDME president called on all conference participants to become actively engaged in politics. He wants the organization to develop an extensive national database of supporters that NASDME can alert when important issues come to a head.

Dr. Gómez also wants to establish a parallel national organization of migrant parents, and he envisions expanding increased external funding to help promote migrant education.

"We are going to start activating our groundswell," he says.

Other national presenters from Washington included Carol Hansen-Devine, program facilitator with the Office of Secondary Education for Migrant Youth (SEMY) in Sunnyside; Guadalupe Ledesma, federal projects director for Brewster School District; Maria Perez, guidance counselor for Mount Vernon High School; Lionel Campos, director of the Migrant Student Data and Recruitment (MSDR) program in Sunnyside; Ramiro Segovia, a recruiter/trainer with MSDR; Patrick Welch, an MSDR programmer; Ray Alaniz, parent services coordinator for Migrant Education Regional Office (MERO) 171 in Wenatchee; Melito Ramirez, home and school liaison and records clerk with Walla Walla School District; and migrant students Lesley Diaz and Miriam Acosta of Brewster High School and Jessica Perez and Marina Marin of Walla Walla High School.

LEADER SHARES CREDIT RECOVERY PLAN

Ms. Hansen-Devine, with the help of Ms. Ledesma, Ms. Perez, Ms. Diaz and Ms. Acosta, discussed the problems migrant students encounter as they migrate with their families.

With the typical withdrawal system, migrant students frequently lose credit for work they have successfully completed, the migrant educators agreed, and that jeopardizes their graduating on time with their classmates.

If they leave a school district mid-term, their work is lost if their new school isn’t offering the same course to transfer into, said Ms. Hansen-Devine. Students’ work is lost if they miss too much class time during the move and end up flunking the class – no matter how well they did while in attendance. If they move at the end of one semester and don’t start school again until several weeks have passed, they may flunk classes in two different semesters. It’s further complicated by the fact that schools even within the same state often run on totally different cycles.

When Miriam Acosta moved with her family as a high school freshman, she left with a 3.9 grade point average (GPA). When she returned six months later, her GPA had dropped to 2.5.

"It really looks bad to have D’s and F’s on my transcript," she says.

Lesley Diaz had a similar situation. She left her U.S. school during one quarter, attended school in Mexico for several months, and then returned to her previous U.S. school in the middle of the next quarter. The courses weren’t the same, she lost credit, and her GPA also suffered.

Ms. Ledesma says she’s seen this kind of problem over and over again even in her small school district of 900 students.

One aid in completing courses and recovering credit has been the PASS semi-independent study courses available through SEMY. But that program is not a cure-all.

Another part of the solution Washington districts have found to avoid penalizing migrant students for their family lifestyle is to award credit upon withdrawal -- even for classes only partially completed, says Ms. Hansen-Devine.

Normally a high school course, for example, is worth .5 Carnegie credits per semester. If a student withdraws half way through the semester and is carrying an "A" grade, under the typical system the student would flunk the class if he does not transfer and complete the course at another school.

Under the new plan Ms. Hansen-Devine described at the national convention, the student, instead, would be issued a .25 Carnegie credit with an "A" grade for completing half the semester.

MIGRANT STUDENTS LEAD WORKSHOP

In another workshop the four migrant students from Washington described to educators how they participated in a year-long process to develop and carry out local student leadership conferences for their schools – and even helped a neighboring school with its conference.

The leadership conferences employ fun, participatory learning activities that help students to improve their communication skills, problem-solving, leadership skills, risk-taking strategies, goal-setting, and community service.

With the help of a curriculum developed over the past 20 years by the SEMY organization, students assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and determine how they can use their strengths to overcome obstacles to success in their personal lives, in their academic endeavors, and in their future careers.

The leadership conferences recruit successful former migrant students to act as mentors, presenters and facilitators so current migrant students have clear models who demonstrate that the obstacles associated with the migrant lifestyle can be overcome and that migrant students can achieve success.

"Students who take this curriculum often leave as changed individuals," Ms. Hansen-Devine says. "Of the students who attend these conferences, 80% of them graduate, in contrast to the 50% graduation rate of most migrant students."

The Brewster students, Miriam and Lesley, explained that kids in their conference were chosen by using the "priority of services" criteria and determining whether the students "were in danger of failing."

Their leadership conference had a big impact on these struggling students.

"There are a lot of students who feel the teachers have given up on them," says Miriam. "But through this program they knew people still believed in them."

She recalled two "little gangsters" who resisted at first and refused to participate, but by the end, says Miriam, "we had them baking cookies" for a service project to help senior citizens and fully involved in all activities.

Service learning is also a typical part of the leadership conferences. Participating in service projects helps students exercise their planning, organizational and goal-achievement skills. They also get a chance to experience how good it feels to serve others.

Through the long planning process, specific activities were chosen that organizers thought the at-risk students needed, Lesley explains.

Jessica and Marina from Walla Walla said they, too, had some pretty challenging students in their conference.

"We played games and even had them make up games, and we helped them open up," Marina says.

Brewster also involved migrant parents in planning and carrying out the conference, explains Mr. Alaniz of the Wenatchee MERO. "The parents were in charge of the program with the students."

The Brewster student and parent leaders also helped provide training to parents and students in nearby Quincy to help them develop their own leadership conference.

"They are fantastic students, and the parents are a fantastic group to work with," says Mr. Alaniz.

"It’s really great when you get the school, the superintendent, the federal programs director, the parents and the students all working together," he adds.

The leadership conferences have helped turn around lives of students in jeopardy, and they have helped other students develop their leadership and communication skills.

Some students actually help provide the training, along with former migrant students, migrant parents, college students, teachers and administrators.

"All of our kids are leaders," says Ms. Ledesma. "They just have to recognize they have that potential within them."

Other Washington school districts with migrant programs are invited to work with SEMY in developing local student leadership conferences. Information is available at http://www.semy.org.

MSDR SHARES KEYS TO RECRUITING

In another workshop, Mr. Campos and the MSDR staff shared with conference participants how Washington state has developed what many officials feel is the best Migrant Student Information System in the nation, along with correlated efforts to identify and recruit migrant students into the program.

MSDR is preparing to compete for a contract to develop and maintain a national Migrant Student Information System.