Parents Join in Education Equation : Family Sessions Used to Enhance Grasp of Math

They speak no English, have little education and clean offices for a living by night.

But this evening, Adriana Martinez Anguiano and her husband, Hugo, are in a second-grade classroom, huddled over their youngest daughter, Grace, as they help her with a math puzzle that uses some rudimentary principles of calculus and trigonometry. They hope that it will be different for her.

“I want my daughter to finish school,” Hugo Anguiano said. “We want her to study all she can so that she won’t have the same fate as ours, that of cleaning and dusting.”

The Anguianos are part of a battle to reduce alarming drop-out rates among minorities and to encourage more minorities to enter math and science professions by involving parents in early education.

The evening workshops, which are being offered as a pilot program at almost all the elementary schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District, use fun, non-traditional mathematical games to help students and parents overcome their intimidation, both by a subject and by a school system they barely understand.

“These are parents who are just learning the ropes, just learning the skills of how to get their wishes known in their children’s schools, how to participate,” said David Pagni, director of the Family Math program and a mathematics professor at Cal State Fullerton. “They are learning that there are things they can do to get involved. There’s a lot of hope for that.”

The U.S. Secretary of Education, Lauro F. Cavazos, recently f. told a group of scientists in Washington that the “general level of sciences and math achievement among many students in this country is dismal. But the problem is even worse among minority youngsters.” The nation, he said, must “do something about that. We’ve got to do it early. By the fourth grade, black and Hispanic 9-year-olds are already far behind their Anglo peers. So far behind that most will never be able to catch up. . . . Those youngsters are likely dropouts.”

The Family Math program, brought to the Santa Ana school district by Cal State Fullerton, is similar to programs popping up all over the country trying to attack the problem in part by involving parents. The 1 1/2-hour sessions at Martin Elementary School transform the parents’ role and understanding of the school system, Pagni said.

“I see that my daughter is learning so much,” Adriana Anguiano said at the end of her fourth session at Martin Elementary. “And we are learning too.

Now, we will not have to fight with them when they come home from school. We will not have to shout, ‘Come here and do your homework.’ Now, we can say, ‘Come, let us add and subtract together.’ ”

Laura Rendon, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, said, “It’s not that parents of minority children don’t have high aspirations for their children like other parents. It’s that many times, these parents did not finish school themselves and they don’t feel comfortable in the school. Many times, they are only called into the school when there is trouble.”

Rendon is a member of a national project assigned by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council to study the nationwide problem of minorities and mathematics and to make recommendations by next spring. Last weekend at UC Irvine educators and other professionals from around the country held a conference on the project entitled “Making Mathematics Work for Minorities.”

“We have been asked to find a way to mobilize America so as to reverse a trend of underachievement, of underrepresentation in the mathematics and the sciences among minorities, especially blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans,” said Beverly Anderson, project director.

The Santa Ana program, known as Family Math, began 3 years ago with a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. It has been so successful, Pagni said, that he and his partner, Ana Garza, an associate professor at Cal State Fullerton, have been asked to start it in the Garden Grove Unified School District.

Teachers Trained

One aspect of the program trains elementary school teachers, who often are just as intimidated about more complex math, Pagni said. By November, the program is expected to have trained 100 teachers in Santa Ana, serving about 400 students.

Although Pagni has reapplied each year for funding, the object is to get the schools to adopt the programs and eventually provide their own funding.

At Martin Elementary, the Anguianos sat at small table with Grace and an older daughter, Ramona, who had brought her own two small daughters. Like most of the Anguianos’ eight children, Ramona did not finish school.

Grace had pleaded for her parents to attend the evening classes with her, they said.

“One doesn’t know how to do this at first, or how to begin,” Adriana Anguiano said. “But once we begin, we learn too.”

She and her husband took turns playing the math games with Grace. In one, the object was to move a checker across a grid before the other person makes it across from the opposite direction. Along the way, the checker must maneuver around obstacles, one square at a time, depending on the roll of the dice.

Teaching Logical Thinking

“This game is to teach kids how to think logically and how to move in more than one direction, how to use strategy--either up and down or right and left,” teacher Marian Levitt told them.

Grace began to play with her mother and soon was way ahead of her.

“I tell her if one has the determination to go on, it is not too late,” her mother said. “Too late is for someone like me. One doesn’t learn anymore.” Her older daughter gently told her that isn’t true.

At another table, Hector Chavez, 31, gestured excitedly each time he beat his daughter, first-grader Lizvette. But she often beat him.

Chavez and his wife, Socorro, 25, also are from Mexico and did not finish high school.

“Mostly we come here for her sake,” Socorro Chavez said. “Many times the children ask us for help, and we don’t know how to help them.

“I tell her she has to finish school so that she doesn’t end up working in factories like me,” Chavez said.

Pagni and Garza said their program has shown that the parents do care.

“A lot of times, educators get the feeling that because these parents don’t show up to parent conferences or PTA meetings, those parents don’t care,” Pagni said. “This program has really shot that down. These parents really care that their kids have educational opportunities.”

He said that recently they put a call out for students to register for a summer math camp, part of the Family Math program. They had space for 60 students, but got 300 responses, Pagni said.

“We were overwhelmed,” he said. “It just warmed my heart that many people wrote to us, and many letters were handwritten on airmail envelopes like the kind you send to Central America. It really touched me.”