Migrant Children Sample College Life : Youths Learn of Education Options

Pedro Flores, a Mexican-born 14-year-old accustomed to sharing a tiny bedroom with his parents and four brothers and sisters, spent his first night at Cal State Fullerton tossing and turning.

“The room seemed so big, and at first I couldn’t sleep with just one other guy there,” Flores said. But after three weeks, “now I sleep well . . . and we usually stay up talking until midnight.”

Flores and 29 other ninth-graders, all children of current and former migrant workers, have been immersed not only in college dormitory life but also in learning English, math and computer skills.

The project, entitled Basic Education Skills for Tomorrow (BEST), is among the first in the nation to pair counselors, who were raised in migrant family households, with a younger generation of migrant youths in a college setting. It is perhaps the most ambitious program in the Southland aimed at the 45% of Latinos who drop out of high school before the 10th grade.

“We try to dangle the college experience in front of these kids so they know that finishing high school is an option,” said Margarett Lewis, assistant director of Migrant Education in Orange and San Diego counties. “We also have to convince migrant parents that they have to hold on a little longer before they send their kids to work.”

Under a $32,000 grant from the Department of Education, the project began in June with the selection of 30 youths from Orange County schools. Most were shy, poor academic performers and termed “at risk”--likely to drop out. Many spoke only Spanish and some had only recently crossed the border from Mexico.

“The migrant community in Orange County is all at risk,” said Dr. Isaac Cardenas, director of the Chicano studies department at Cal State Fullerton, who was chosen in mid-June to lead the program. “We wanted to take the kids before they drop out and give them role models.”

Cardenas, himself the son of migrant workers, decided to hire resident advisers who also had lived through poverty, language problems, and transience.

“When we started looking for staff, we wanted advisers who could communicate with the parents and become leaders for the kids,” Cardenas said. “We wanted them to go to the kids’ homes, see how they live, and make the parents feel confident about what we’re doing.”

In late June and early July, the counselors visited the families and found some reluctance about the program. Parents of the girls, who traditionally are more sheltered in Latino homes, were especially skeptical, Cardenas said.

Eventually, most of them agreed. On the first day, parents and their children arrived to see the campus.

“For a lot of them, coming into a nice new condo with a microwave oven and everything else was culture shock,” said chief adviser George Herrera, son of Mexican immigrants who is studying for a master’s degree in fine arts at Fullerton. “Some of them come from alcoholic homes, tough situations, and this really freaked out many of them.”

At first the new students were shy, said counselor Julia Amavisca, a 34-year-old Cal State Fresno graduate student.

“They were really afraid when we began here, but slowly they have started to get more comfortable. Now, when we all sit down with our junk food in the evening, they are starting to ask how much did it cost to go to college, what do you want to do and how can we do it,” she said.

“I think that means the program is working.”

The four teachers in the program all speak Spanish, and several also come from immigrant families. Students say that use of Spanish and the personal attention they receive make the classroom more comfortable.

“Usually in school, the teachers speak only a little Spanish and I speak only a little English,” said Pedro Flores, who came to the United States three years ago from Puebla, Mexico. “Here, everybody is Mexican and so we can talk together.”

Flores and Rosalina Rodriguez, another student who arrived only eight months ago from Mexico, have excelled on the computer, said teacher Clement Mendez. Both students have difficulty in school because of their limited command of English but say the program has spurred their interest in computers.

“I want to be a teacher of computers when I grow up,” Rodriguez said. “Here I’m learning to do things that I never thought that I could do.”

When the last class ends today, directors will begin planning for next year. However, the migrant education program, which includes tutoring during the school year, will include more students, but with no additional funding. Officials have started to consider streamlining other programs to prevent harming BEST.

While decisions are being made by administrators, students say they hope that the program will resume next summer.

“A lot of Latino kids have never seen the inside of a dormitory,” said Leticia Rodriguez, 14, who was born in El Salvador and now lives in Garden Grove. “Most programs are for American people, but this lets us know we can really do something.”