Educators Take to the Fields With Study Plan

Not all teachers work in ordinary schoolhouses.

Margaret Kinsey, an aspiring maestra, lugged her assignment packets and made her way through cornstalks and groves of avocado trees to reach her classroom of the day: the home of a migrant worker.

“I’ve done all my homework,” chorused the Anguiano children--Patricia, 11; Sandra, 9, and Eva, 7--who greeted “Margarita” as she arrived at the San Marcos ranch for a home-study visit designed to keep migrant children interested in learning and to get their parents to trust the system.

Unable or Unwilling

Deep in the beautiful but isolated agricultural heartland of northern San Diego County, the Anguianos, like many other children of migrant laborers, are often unable or unwilling to attend traditional summer-school programs. Trips to libraries, museums or other educational centers occur rarely if at all.

Recognizing the critical need to invigorate young minds during the stagnant summer months, educators concluded that, if migrant children cannot attend classes, there is only one thing left to do:

Take school to them.

“It’s like church, I guess,” said Frank Ludovina, the San Diego/Orange County coordinator for the federally funded Migrant Education Program. “The kids who need summer school the most don’t or can’t go.”

For example, Ludovina said, many older migrant children work instead of attending summer classes to help support their families. Others tend to family chores, such as baby-sitting younger siblings.

Parents put in long hours in the fields during the summer, when harvesting reaches its peak, leaving them little time to support their children’s academic endeavors. Without such parental support, many migrant children, often already lagging in school, find summer school an unattractive option, Ludovina said.

Northern San Diego County educators took action after studies--such as one conducted by the New York state Board of Regents that included research on migrant children in California--indicated that a lack of intellectual stimuli during the summer contributes to forgetting material learned in the previous school year.

With the backing of the Migrant Education Program--which Congress established in 1966 to help migrant children succeed in the classroom and boost their dismal high-school graduation rate--educators in the Vista Unified School District developed a home-tutorial program to overcome such obstacles.

In essence, teachers review the academic performance of migrant children and prepare individual lesson packets. With lessons in hand, a bilingual tutor is sent to a migrant child’s home to achieve a twofold mission: prepare the child for the upcoming school year and involve parents in the educational process.

Children are eligible for the program if their parents have been employed in the agricultural or fishing industries within the last six years and have crossed school district boundaries in search of work.

Ludovina, the coordinator, said almost two-thirds of the 26 school districts in San Diego and Orange counties administer the summer home-tutorial program. This year, the MEP is spending $500,000 to help the estimated 5,200 migrant children in the region.

At the San Marcos Unified School District, where Kinsey makes her rounds, 131 students participate.

After each semiweekly visit, Kinsey, a 21-year-old senior majoring in Chicano studies at UC San Diego, assigns homework to a pupil. It is expected to be completed by the next visit, said Socorro Barron, a coordinator for the program in the San Marcos district.

Twice-Monthly Field Trips

Although the students’ eagerness to learn often provides ample motivation in completing the assignments, the program offers other incentives, Barron said.

A studious child earns his way to twice-monthly educational field trips. This summer, the children were treated to an unexpected bath when visiting Shamu at Sea World. But the field trips are not just recreation; each is followed by a lesson. In this case, the students learned more about different sea creatures.

On the other hand, failure to complete even a week’s worth of work sends Barron and assistants back to the child’s home.

“It’s critical that we earn their trust, that we become part of their family,” Barron said. “Basically, we tell the parents that we need their help.”

That precious link of trust has been built between Margaret Kinsey and Socorro Anguiano.

“The children get up real early when they know Margarita is coming,” Anguiano said. “They clean the table and sweep the floor. I want my children to be able to go to school and get a good education in the United States.”

A Universal Hope

The dream of getting a good education, and with it a chance for a better life, is the universal hope for migrant parents. But, because they have had little formal education, if any--Socorro Anguiano barely made it to the second grade; her husband, Rogelio, quit school even earlier--many parents lose faith in the dream.

Kinsey, and the other tutors, make believing a bit easier.

In classroom situations, where teachers must tend to many students, it is virtually impossible to cater to one pupil. A student’s failures and the reasons behind it can go unaddressed.

“That’s where I can help,” Kinsey said. “I know what the family situation is like. In many cases, there is more than one migrant family living together. In such cramped conditions, lots of children are yelling, and maybe that’s why the student’s not getting enough sleep. That could be affecting the child’s work.”

Kinsey, who took intensive Spanish lessons in Mexico for three months, described other academically stunting scenarios.

“Maybe (the child) has too many chores and can’t devote the necessary time to schoolwork. Whatever the situation may be, I can see what’s happening, talk to the parents and convince them to strengthen the ties between the home and school.”

Privilege of the Rich

Such a task can be difficult, Ludovina said, because many migrants assume that education is a privilege of the rich.

“In many cases, they just don’t understand how the American school system works,” he said. “The A-B-C-D-F grading system makes no sense to them; the concept of regular attendance is a foreign one. In Mexico, when parents are told to support the school, that means literally to help build and repair it. They don’t join school committees or give advice on curriculum.

“That’s why you just can’t tell migrant parents, ‘Come to the school and magic will happen,’ ” Ludovina said. “Through this program, parents are witnessing, firsthand, what schooling is all about. If we win their trust, that’s when they’ll start coming to school.”

Winning the trust of high-schoolers continues to be difficult.

“Many of them are already burned out by school and are often working to support the family,” Ludovina said.

A program survey indicates that its tutors are successfully reaching 80% to 90% of migrant children in kindergarten through eighth grade, but the figures drop to 40% to 60% with students of secondary-school age.

Educators concede with dismay that they have not found a highly successful way to sell parents of high-schoolers on the importance of education. They hope other programs, such as leadership conferences with role models, will help.

Early Intervention

The failure on the secondary-education front has made educators even more determined to intervene early in a child’s academic career.

Barron established a home-tutorial program for preschoolers based on the belief that the sooner the importance of education is planted in a child’s mind, the greater the chance the child will continue and excel academically.

Maria Lopez, 3, one of those being reached early, held her safety scissors firmly in her hands and cut along the dotted lines that formed the shape of an amiable cartoon dinosaur. In another exercise, she dropped circle pegs into circle openings, squares into squares and triangles into triangles, repeating her actions with a huge smile--pleased at her success with the educational toy.

“Such toys aren’t expensive, but when it comes to spending money to put milk on the table or buying the toy . . . the milk gets bought first,” Barron said.