Prayer Prompts Group To Reach Out To Hispanics

PRISCILLA GREEAR, Staff Writer

Published: August 19, 2004

CLARKESVILLE—Back in 2001, Mexico native Monica Tarango fretted that her daughter, Addie, was failing kindergarten, but with her limited English she struggled to help her and couldn’t consult with her teachers.

So she attended a focus group at the Campesino restaurant sponsored by the English as a Second Language Support Team, a faith-based group of volunteers serving as a liaison between Hispanic parents and schools, that started from a prayer group at St. Mark’s Church, Clarkesville. It was one of six focus groups the team held for Habersham County parents, teachers and administrators to learn their needs and concerns regarding Hispanic students. While one meeting drew as many as 50 people, Tarango was the only parent who showed up at this one, and she had plenty of time to speak about her daughter’s poor grades.

One teacher advised her to buy books to teach her daughter her numbers, letters and colors at home, which most children start learning before entering school. Officials also arranged for tutoring.

“I didn’t speak. I could not help her in the school. It was the first time I know,” recalled Tarango, practicing her own English. “I learned a lot. I need to teach the children when the children is little. ‘I have yellow clothes.’ I need to ask, ‘Is this yellow or black?’”

One English teacher at a meeting said that one of the greatest challenges schools face with regard to Hispanic children is their coming to school completely unprepared. Many haven’t learned colors, numbers, the alphabet or even to read a book from left to right. Women of the ESOL team have responded by beginning in spring 2003 the School Readiness Project for Families of Pre-School Age Children, held at Cornelia Elementary School. It will be held yearly and involves volunteers teaching Hispanic parents how to start educating at home. Nurses and dentists also review basic hygiene, and gear-clad firemen discuss safety.

“It’s to help them prepare their kids for pre-school because many of the parents don’t understand that many of the kids come to school not knowing numbers and letters … The kids are behind from day one because most of the Anglo kids have some understanding of these things,” said volunteer BettyLee Martin.

The group also held an annual school enrollment meeting after the Spanish Mass on Aug. 8 at St. Mark’s, drawing some 50 families and attended by the superintendent of schools and high school curriculum director. A school counselor, nurse and ESOL teacher gave presentations on such topics as health and parental involvement, and bilingual teens helped families complete forms.

“We want them to see the ESOL teachers and school nurses and administrative people as somebody who considers them important and wants to talk to them and if their child has a problem they can go to these people for help and they won’t be rejected,” said Martin.

Added volunteer Pauline Dorman, a former kindergarten teacher, “It was helping the parents understand they are the primary educators.”

Members of the ESOL team established The Habersham Family Resource Cooperative in 2003 to apply for larger grants and to better serve Habersham County’s growing Hispanic population. Led by board president and St. Mark’s parishioner Martin, their focus is to help Hispanic youth to grow and realize their potential, to provide support and advocacy and to inspire parents to participate in their child’s education. They continue to learn from both students and parents, like Tarango, how to best serve them.

The cooperative is encouraged by the Tarango family’s progress. Tarango now utitlizes the past tense, having learned that verb form in her English classes held four times weekly which originated with the cooperative. Classes are held at Cornelia United Methodist Church and taught by a continuing education instructor from North Georgia Technical College.

She also participates in her three children’s education, through activities such as meeting with her 10-year-old’s teacher when she needs extra help; Addie is now making As and Bs. She reads to her 2-year-old and teaches him the colors of his clothing, songs and his ABCs at home. She takes her children to the library and her friend to the doctor who before had complained that “I go to the doctor, and I don’t understand nothing.”

The cooperative is one grassroots response to fight the nationwide problem of Hispanic academic under-achievement. A primary recommendation of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans in their 2003 report was to “set new and high expectations across America for Hispanic American children by helping parents navigate the educational system through outreach with parent-teacher organizations, community groups and faith-based organizations; creating partnerships among students, parents, educators, faith-based organizations and communities that can provide expanded options for children; and implementation of a nationwide public awareness and motivational campaign aimed at increasing educational attainment and achieving the goal of a college education.”

The report stated that contributing to “the present crisis in the education; of Hispanic children and youth” are such factors as weak early childhood cognitive development and limited early language development due to factors in a child’s home such as poverty, high mobility and limited parental time, resources and education; lack of quality early childhood education opportunities; and limited parental and community engagement choices. The commission, which was co-chaired by Catholic Atlantan Frank Hanna, explored ways to improve the academic achievement of Hispanics, who it found have a 35.9 percent high school drop-out rate, compared with 16.3 percent for blacks and 8.2 percent for non-Hispanic whites. The report stated that about 10 percent of Hispanic Americans graduate from four-year colleges and universities, a rate that has persisted for almost three decades.

After Martin and other members of the St. Mark’s prayer group decided they wanted to help Hispanics, they formed the ESOL Community Support Team and first received training to provide support to teachers in Habersham County ESOL classrooms and families of children they serve in the 1999-2000 school year. Among other free programs, they have held a young mothers’ support group at St. Mark’s, which last year provided the women with self-care services like facials, manicures and cooking classes. Tarango said she used to cry out of frustration with her children but one speaker showed her how “when I feel tired, when the children make me crazy, I can relax.”

There the women also expressed a need for English classes, from which they established that program, which has grown from serving 5 to about 18 people.

“We’re so proud of them all. Some have gotten proficient enough in English that they’re studying for their GED in the morning,” said Dorman, who serves as secretary/treasurer of the cooperative.

Targeting teenagers, the cooperative of volunteers held an after-school program for at-risk youth from January to July 2003, involving youth building a boat and riding down the Chattahoochee, and a girls summer program in 2001 and 2003 which drew 15-20 youth who were taken to meet with successful women in various professions where they learned about nursing, medicine, the arts and other career paths. It will be offered bi-yearly. This summer they’ve taken rising juniors, seniors and high school graduates to visit local two- and four-year schools like Piedmont College and North Georgia Technical College, and at North Georgia they’ve helped Hispanic students there sign up to receive career counseling and aptitude testing. They are also beginning a program to match youth with college student mentors to help with their junior project, preparing for college and the high school exit exam.

“It’s to encourage them to stay in school and hopefully we will work with them to get scholarships and show them ways to achieve that goal,” Martin continued. “We’re trying to familiarize them with college so it won’t be so scary and strange.”

She added that “some of the parents really want their kids to start working, so they can’t visualize four years of college.” But as some of the youth enroll in colleges “I see potential as some kids get four-year degrees and good jobs. I think more and more will be drawn that way.”

Cooperative volunteer Lorena Rojas, 25, hopes to serve as one of those role models. She debated herself in high school between continuing her education or working to support her family before earning a scholarship to attend Piedmont College. She studied nursing, thinking she had to be a nun or nurse to best serve God, before deciding that wasn’t her calling and switching to Spanish. She now feels blessed to be working at a bank, where she’s in management training. She has helped the cooperative with interpreting and leads a seasonal children’s choir at St. Mark’s, and hopes to get involved in tutoring.

“(Youth) may not receive that extra little attention they need with parents working hard and trying to make a living,” she said. “I think they need a role model to see there’s more than TV…(Adults) need to be out there watching them and be with them. When they see adults who are interested in them they get motivated and want to do more. If you plant the seed some day they’ll remember that and do that too.”

Rojas said that those the cooperative has touched are deeply appreciative.

“‘You might be one person in the world, but for one person you might be the world.’ In a way that’s how they’re working. The people they work with, they have no other connections. With this program they’re opening their eyes and showing them more options in life. That’s how I see them.”

To touch more lives, the cooperative has received grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Catholic Foundation of North Georgia. One grant has enabled them to arrange transportation for Cornelia children to go to Head Start programs, with a taxi picking them up in front of the predominantly Hispanic trailer park beside the church for a discounted fare. They are now excited to have just received a double wide trailer, donated by Catholic Frank Pintozzi, to use in the trailer park as a community education center in Clarksville, and are applying for a grant through North Georgia Tech for two part-time persons to coordinate new offerings in family literacy and after-school tutoring.

One Hispanic girl from Mexico, Nelly Gonzalez, first received support from the cooperative through the girls after-school program for ages 13-15. Gonzalez, now a senior, hopes to be assigned to a college mentor this year. The summer program encouraged her to study harder, while she knows “quite a few” girls who’ve dropped out of school. She was impressed with the women in the medical field, and is interested in a nursing career. The program showed me “that girls can do a lot more than they think if they take the effort to apply themselves, not to give up and to keep on trying … It made me want to study and not goof off.”

Martin said that the goal of all programs is to help Hispanics empower themselves and help each other. Participants in the English program now oversee it themselves.

“We’re trying to get them believing they can make things happen and help them make things happen. We don’t want to hold their hand forever. We want to hold their hand long enough so they can take the plunge and they can move onto something else.”

Martin said the program is “very ecumenical” and they seek widespread community support, always needing volunteers, especially for transportation. The group of volunteers consists largely of retirees. Martin, a former Sister of Humility of Mary, had worked in various social service jobs before moving with her husband to Clarkesville and is now having lots of fun.

“I’ve gotten to know some wonderful people. I do believe I’ve gotten to know our parish a lot more fully by being involved in the Hispanic community. I just feel I’m contributing.”

This work is especially meaningful for Dorman because she is an immigrant from Canada and the first from her family to go to college. She and her husband had prayed when they moved to Clarkesville in retirement about how to volunteer before deciding to serve Hispanics.

“It’s support and advocacy so that they feel there is somebody they can go to who will be there for them and help them in every way. They need education and … to feel that they have a chance at the American dream with some help along the way. That’s what we all need.”

She feels privileged to be able to help others achieve their dreams. “It can be all encompassing, but we’re just amazed at what’s been happening in the past three or four years. We’ve got several of them with scholarships for college. We have young moms; they’ve really come out of their shells. They were so isolated before without transportation. They’re learning English, getting better jobs—they’re blossoming. This is what the Lord has told us we need to do, to be brothers to our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s what we’re doing and it makes it all worthwhile.”

Tarango came from a family of nine children and couldn’t afford college, so she is deeply satisfied to see her children performing well academically.

“My dream is my children here in the U.S. have a good education, and one day be a doctor or something like that,” she said. “Now every day I like to say ‘show me your homework.’”

For information call Martin at (706) 754-6952. Donations payable to Habersham Family Resource Cooperative, Inc., may be sent to 292 Silver Maple Lane, Clarkesville, GA 30523.