NEW YORK TEACHER

November 14, 2008

Teaching migrant children sows challenges, reaps rewards

By Darryl McGrath

Children of migrant workers learn patience as their first lesson.

They sometimes wait for hours with their older siblings at the edge of a field as their parents finish the day's work picking crops or caring for dairy herds. They know that once they get home, the night will grow late before they eat dinner, finish their homework and go to bed.

And just as these children learn to be patient, so do the NYSUT members who work with this special population of students in 11 Migrant Education Outreach Program sites around the state.

For the teachers and outreach workers trying to make a difference for the children, the work involves not only education, but also NYSUT's commitment to social justice. And a narrow time frame of sometimes only a few years makes their efforts that much more critical.

"We have a small window of time to try to help them," said Jacki Bates, a member of the Genesee Valley BOCES Teachers Association who works as a teaching assistant with migrant children during the school year and is a teacher in the summertime migrant education program. "It takes time to build that trust with the parents and the students, so you have to work that much more quickly."

In the Elba Central School District in Genesee County — the school district with one of the largest populations of migrant children in the state - five NYSUT members work with the students.

John Trupo became a teacher in his 40s after he was laid off from his job with Kodak, and then discovered a special way to use his new career.

Sisters Yadira "Rosie" Mateos and Michelle Diaz Mills attended this migrant education program as girls, and returned as bilingual outreach workers to give something back to a new generation.

Frank Faulds is a new migrant education teacher, while Bates has been in migrant education nearly 20 years, as both a teaching assistant and a teacher.

"I just enjoy working with migrant children," says Faulds, a member of the Buffalo Teachers Federation who also works part time at the migrant education program.

"I've always taught at-risk students, and this fits in with that. It's totally different from what I expected. To come here and see that these kids are so eager to learn, it's kind of a breath of fresh air for me."

The parents help with that effort, too, Trupo says.

"The parents are very, very eager to have their children educated, and they express that when we meet," he said. "They teach that education is valued."

As a result, he says, the children respond in kind, and teachers in this program quickly feel their work is appreciated.

"We've got kids who have been quiet for three or four weeks, and all of a sudden, they're talking up a storm," Trupo said.

Mateos, Mills and Bates work year-round in migrant education as teacher aides in classrooms or as outreach workers who tutor and act as liaisons to migrant families.

Others, such as Trupo and Faulds, are K-12 teachers during the school year and migrant education teachers in the summer.

They are eager to dispel the many stereotypes about their students:

Migrant education does not take place only in the summer; does not involve only foreign-born children of itinerant crop workers; and usually helps children for far longer than just the growing season.

Teachers usually work with their students for at least a year, and often several years, both during the summer sessions and the regular school year. Some, such as Bates, have seen children of former students enter the program.

In addition to the important work they do with their students, the NYSUT members teaching in migrant education programs are helping to dispel cultural stereotypes, said NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira.

"Any program that combines education with greater cultural awareness is an important component of NYSUT's social justice efforts, and truly valuable to the mission of the union," Neira said.

Teaching the children of migrant workers is just one of NYSUT's commitments. As part of its social justice mission, the union supports the rights of all workers and their families. That mission is also helping to shape the next generation of New Yorkers, said Lee Cutler, NYSUT's secretary-treasurer, who coordinates the union's social justice mission.

"All of us should be more aware of the very rewarding journey that migrant children and their teachers travel together," Cutler said.

Migrant education is administered by the State Education Department. Each of the 11 migrant education programs is overseen locally by either BOCES or a State University of New York college.

The Genesee Valley Migrant Education Outreach Program operates under the BOCES Geneseo Migrant Center. In any given year, the program serves about 500 migrant students in six western New York counties and Buffalo.

More than half of these students are known as "out-of-school youth," generally adolescents and young adults ages 15 to 21 who have come into New York for a migrant job — sometimes for as briefly as a few weeks — and are unlikely to enroll in the regular public school system.

The students often receive educational services at the migrant camps.

Elba Central School at any given time has several dozen migrant students, making it the school with one of the highest migrant student populations in the state, said Timothy "T. J." Sparling, who coordinates the Genesee Valley outreach program.

Most of the students come from families who work on local dairy farms. Many of the children come from Mexican or South American families, but a number of them are also native-born to the United States and come from non-Latino backgrounds, said Sparling, who himself grew up as a migrant education student from a native-born dairy family.

"It can be overlooked that non-Hispanic students can be migrant education-eligible, too," Sparling said.

All migrant students face certain special issues related to their families' work, the teachers say.

Agricultural workers are not covered by the same protections governing overtime and the length of the workday as other industries, and it is not uncommon for migrant workers to put in 14 or more hours a day at the height of the harvest, with limited breaks.

In the Genesee Valley, farm work usually includes dairy farming and the production of onions, cabbage and corn.

NYSUT and the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State support better conditions for farm workers, which include overtime pay, the right to collective bargaining and a guaranteed minimum wage for teenage workers, who sometimes earn as little as $3.25 an hour.

NYSUT and the coalition continue to seek passage of the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, which has been passed in previous years by the Assembly and which made it out of committee in the state Senate this year for the first time.

Handling homework

Life at home for working migrant families is often put on hold — dinner, homework and bedtime are often very late for the children.

"I totally get what the kids tell me," said Mills, who recounted her own childhood as the daughter of a migrant mother.

"I get why they're so tired. It's long days for them. Homework has to be done, but no one's there to help them."

Mills and Mateos, both members of the Genesee Valley School-Related Professionals, remember playing in the fields as little girls while their mother picked crops. As teenagers, they joined their Mexican-born mother in the fields. Throughout their childhood, their mother encouraged the sisters to get their education.

"I'm just giving back what I received," Mateos said. "Now I'm working with my former teachers."