31 Aug 2015

Puente helps write new chapter in Coastside adult education

Mayte Enriquez hates math, and she struggles with the complicated tangle of rules that govern the English language. But the Pescadero resident is determined to master both subjects so she can move on from being a dishwasher and a cashier.

“I’ve never been good at math. But I remember that when I was younger, one of my teachers told me that if there was a subject I didn’t like or I didn’t understand, if I worked hard to master the material, then I could achieve other things in life,” says Enriquez, whose name has been changed because she was not born in the U.S.

Two students in one of Puente's ESL classes.

Two students in one of Puente’s ESL classes.

For the last several years, Enriquez turned to Puente for free ESL classes that helped her build basic conversational skills. Eventually she progressed through all three ESL levels. Last semester, she was one of eight adults who enrolled in a beginner’s ESL class at Cañada College, a Redwood City-based community college with a satellite program in Half Moon Bay. There she learned “proper” English: grammar and punctuation, tenses and spelling.

For Enriquez, who is 28, it’s not just about wanting to be understood and to converse with the people around her – although it’s plenty embarrassing when she is working at her cash register and customers ask her a question she can’t answer. It’s not simply about getting by. It’s about moving forward in her adopted country – into higher education and a rewarding career that will lift her out of minimum wage.

And as if that weren’t challenging enough, Enriquez is also studying for her GED through Puente, which provides her with one-on-one tutoring and study materials to take the high school equivalency test. She has been working on it for a year, and will stay on course for as long as it takes.

Last semester, she spent two nights a week studying ESL and another two nights a week studying for her GED at Puente.

“My goal is definitely to continue college. I also plan on getting a new career as well. I don’t ever want to think to myself that I should have tried this or done that,” she says.

It’s a sign of strength that adult students like Enriquez are using Puente ESL and GED classes as a springboard to furthering their ambitions. Whether students are in high school or the workplace, Puente works to instill college dreams and then gives them the tools to get there.

Very often this involves helping students overcome barriers to their own education.

Puente Deputy Executive Director Rita Mancera ticks off the list of challenges. “Transportation. Distance. Time. Childcare. What are you going to do if your partner doesn’t support you, or if your partner also wants to take a class? … And this is on top of their full-time jobs.”

Take Enriquez and her classmates last semester, who motivated each other to sign up for the ESL course at Cañada College. Even though the class was in Half Moon Bay, at Cunha Intermediate School, it still meant taking four hours off, two nights a week. They had to meet the bus at 6:30 p.m. (Puente paid to transport them to Half Moon Bay with assistance from the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District, which got a federal School Improvement Grant to help parents of kids in the school district.)

For Enriquez, that meant sacrificing income and asking her boss for permission to leave work early. Other women in the group are juggling school and parenting very young children. And yet, two of the students are already enrolled in college part-time, working toward a certificate in early childhood education while they also work and take ESL classes at the same time. “They all passed the class together. It’s a huge commitment. They’re very motivated,” says Mancera.

Puente’s leadership in adult education dates back to 2009, when it stepped up to replace an ESL class Cañada College used to offer in Pescadero. One class turned into two, then three. Today there’s one morning ESL class and three levels of classes at night every Tuesday and Thursday.

In 2012, Puente piloted a new, comprehension-based ESL curriculum based on the work of Stanford Prof. Guadalupe Valdés (as distinct from a strict grammar approach).

 

Dr. Guadalupe Valdez with two students in one of Puente's ESL classes.

Stanford Prof. Guadalupe Valdés with two students in one of Puente’s ESL classes.

Puente’s ESL program is growing, and so is the rest of its adult education program. Last summer, Eufemia Castro and Liliana Villalobos were the first two Puente adult students to earn their GEDs. They did so while learning English, working full-time, and raising their children. It took them four years, and there are nine other students following in their footsteps today.

Puente recruits volunteers to mentor Spanish-speaking students who want to excel beyond the primary school education they received in Mexico through a program called Plaza Comunitaria, a primary and middle school curriculum sponsored by the Mexican Consulate.

Last year’s cohort of Puente adult learners, around 100 students, was the largest to date, and “I think this year it will be even more,” says Mancera. The adult education program is sponsored by a grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Puente also formed an early childhood education initiative in partnership with the La Honda-Pescadero School District and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Its programs are geared toward improving school readiness for South Coast children – and for their parents, who are learning to engage and to advocate for their kids within the local school district. Puente recently hired Arlae Alston as Family Engagement Project Manager, a new position that will help her oversee everything from Raising a Reader + Family Nights and Abriendo Puertas, to training local childcare home providers. Prior to this, Alston worked as a part time early literacy specialist with Puente.

She will be working closely with Noel Chavez, a former Cañada College recruiter and outreach coordinator who is Puente’s new Education Director. Chavez will be using his experience and connections in the community college system to create opportunities for local youth and adults to enter college and pursue their dreams. He succeeds Academic Director Suzanne Abel, who is retiring after a 4-year tenure. “Students need to feel they can accomplish their goals and that they have support after they leave Puente,” says Chavez.

For her part, Abel will use her ‘emerita’ position to mentor some college-bound youngsters and to formalize a scholarly advisory council for Puente that includes faculty and staff from major local institutions, like Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz. Abel counts Puente’s early childhood initiative and the university partnerships among her notable accomplishments. She has helped Puente benefit from the input of researchers and worked with Prof. Valdés to build interpretation services for LHPUSD schools. She helped Pescadero students access pre-college programs at Stanford, and worked with Puente board member Larry Trujillo to bring UC Santa Cruz students into Pescadero classrooms as tutor-mentors and bilingual teacher’s aides.

“The great thing about our partnerships with the La Honda-Pescadero school district is we’re not just looking at the whole person, but the whole family,” says Kerry Lobel, Executive Director of Puente.

ESL classes begin September 1, and staff members are excited about a new development. Starting this semester, the final class of the month will be a ‘conversation café’ with tables set up for students to converse with bilingual volunteers. Mancera expects that some students will opt to sit at tables where they can work to improve their language comprehension. Other students will want to be corrected so they can learn to speak properly.

“There are two big groups – those who want to master speaking English but they don’t care if it’s grammatically correct. They want to be able to get things done,” explains Mancera. “There’s a different group that cares about speaking properly and they want to learn a more academic English. They have aspirations for college.”

Students in one of Puente's ESL classes.

Students in one of Puente’s ESL classes.

Enriquez fits into the latter category. But before she can enroll in community college, she’ll need to pass her GED and improve her English. Students like Enriquez have learned all they can from Puente’s ESL program, but their English is not good enough to allow them to enroll in a college training program.

A partnership Puente is exploring with a group of local schools and nonprofits could fill that gap, and possibly establish an adult school in Half Moon Bay and Pescadero.

Puente is part of a new group called the Coastside Collaborative Action Team, a consortium of administrators, teachers, and staff from Cabrillo Unified School District, Cañada College, the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District, the Half Moon Bay Library and the Career Ladders Project. Together, the group is coming up with a plan to expand adult education on the coast.

“We have a large number of adults who need language and job skills support from the educational system, either because they don’t have the skills needed in the current market, or because they never finished high school or didn’t enter college in their home countries,” says Jenny Castello, a professor and coordinator in the ESL Department at Cañada College.

The adult education initiative is part of a much larger statewide push to better serve the educational needs of adults in California. Under AB 86, the state allotted $25 million in planning grants to community college and school districts.

An adult continuation school would be ideal for Enriquez as she works her way toward a new career. The whole point of learning English, for her, is to learn math – even though it remains her least favorite subject.  “A lot of jobs nowadays require a lot of math, so learning that would definitely help,” she says.

As Abel prepares to retire, she sees college horizons opening up not just for South Coast children for their parents, too.

“To see parents pursuing their own education in this country is so powerful. That they can aspire to their own education is an example to their kids – it’s a message to the younger set about what’s possible. There’s nothing more inspiring,” Abel says.

Volunteer for Puente’s Conversation Café! For details, contact Abby Mohaupt at amohaupt@mypuente.org or (650) 879-1691 x114.

10 Aug 2015

Puente youth travel bridge to adulthood in just one summer

What happens when you give a teenager a summer job? A 15-year-old girl learns to fit in with her co-workers. An 18-year-old boy makes new friends from around the world. A mother watches her 16-year-old daughter learn the value of hard work, and their relationship is transformed.

Puente’s Youth Leadership and Employment Program has always reached beyond giving young people the chance to earn an hourly wage. It’s also about exposing them to the world of adulthood, building a vision for college, giving them marketable job skills, and improving their academic performance at school.

Puente youth also go on several tailor-made summer field trips, which are both fun and educational. This summer, Puente took the group to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, to Genentech, to the capitol building in Sacramento, and to San Francisco’s Chinatown, Flood Buidling, Coit Tower, De Young Art Museum, and Fisherman’s Wharf. Some also toured Facebook.

The experience transforms the youth in unexpected ways. Back in June, Sofia Betteo, 15, was feeling like a fish out of water at Puente’s summer youth program orientation. She and her mom had just moved to the South Coast from Belmont, a city on the Bayside, and she was preparing to switch from a high school of 3,000 students to one of 95.

Sofia participates in yoga with some of the children at the Half Moon Bay Library.

Sofia participates in yoga with some of the children at the Half Moon Bay Library.

She didn’t really speak to anyone during an overnight camping trip to help the 38 Puente youth get to know each other. A few days later, all of the teens filed into the Pescadero Elementary multipurpose room and formed a circle with Puente staff members to take turns introducing themselves.

Puente Executive Director Kerry Lobel started the icebreaker by introducing herself and handing a green hula-hoop to the next person, who spoke, then handed it off to someone else. Many of the students barely spoke above a whisper. “Louder!” called Lobel. (Public speaking is one of the skills Puente youth learn over the summer.)

Later, after meeting many new people at Puente, Betteo then met a new group of co-workers at the Half Moon Bay Library, her placement through Puente, assisting with a children’s reading program.

It was her first summer job, and she enjoyed learning how to read to 6-year-olds. She made them snacks and supervised child yoga and playtime. She also helped the library staff reshelf books, and tutored an older child who struggles with his English.

By August, Sofia had gained a strong measure of confidence.

“I think getting to know everybody was a big deal – your co-workers, people at Puente. Now I see that everyone is part of a tight community,” she says. “It was really nice to see that and how I fit into that. It was a nice surprise.”

Since 2007, Puente has been the largest employer of youth on the South Coast and a strong bridge to adulthood, helping students develop their own resumes and cover letters and working with them on their personal statements for college, starting when they are as young as 14.

Every summer, Puente offers a credit recovery course to students who need to boost their grades in subjects like English and Algebra. This summer, Puente hired Shannon White to help students meet their academic requirements and keep them intellectually stimulated over the months off from school. White, then a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship Recipient and a high school teacher in Indiana, volunteered with Puente last summer. This year she helped students meet their summer reading assignments and write their book reports.

White often found herself reading to youth who struggle with reading to themselves. “I’m not sure how much students have had of that in their lives,” she says.

Shannon meets with a student to discuss the student's academic schedule and resources.

Shannon meets with a student to discuss the student’s academic schedule and resources.

“I’ve been astounded by the life experiences these students have,” adds White. “You can’t tell from looking at them, but some of these kids have had some pretty traumatic experiences or complicated living experiences and they struggle academically.”

Until this summer, Puente received federal funding to pay people like Shannon White as well as youth salaries. Now that source of funding is gone, and the Youth Leadership and Employment Program is imperiled.

Thanks to an intervention by San Mateo County Supervisor Don Horsley and generous community support in the form of individual donations, Puente has raised $108,500 so far this summer. That’s excellent news in the short term, but it does not address the question of sustaining the youth program without depleting Puente’s reserves, says Kerry Lobel, Executive Director of Puente.

“There’s some relief on some of the summer youth salaries, but it doesn’t address the amount of funding that was going to pay for our support staff,” she says.

Puente needs to meet the remaining funding gap for youth salaries of  $81,500 by the end of the summer. Please click here to donate. A donation of $493 supports one Puente youth for one week.

It would not be an understatement to say that Puente’s youth program has helped Cristian Antonio springboard into adulthood. The 18-year-old has worked with Puente every summer since he was 14. In past years he has helped run the LHPUSD Panther Camp, tutoring younger students in English and math. One summer he worked at Pie Ranch through a Puente partnership called Homeslice, a storytelling project that helped him hone his skills in public speaking.

christian

Cristian participates with campers at camp.

What he always wanted was to work at YMCA Camp Jones Gulch in La Honda as a counselor and this summer, he got his wish. “I like to be that big brother,” he says.

Antonio loved his summer supervising children as they hiked and played and swam and made art together. He liked the camp itself so much, in fact, that camp administrators got wind of it and offered him a year-round job – something he can do on weekends while he attends community college next year.

But the best part of all was the week of camp orientation, where he connected with fellow counselors from the UK, Australia, France and Poland. They became such good friends that he intends to visit some of them next year in Europe – a first for him.

“We talked all night long. I can’t explain it, there’s like a bond now,” he says.

Isabel Gonzalez also formed an unexpected bond this summer – with her mother, Evelia Ramirez. The single mom works long hours at a restaurant to support her children, including Gonzalez, who is 16. Until this summer, they fought quite a bit.

Evelia and Isabel together.

Evelia and Isabel together.

“Isabel used to tell me, ‘Why are you tired? You don’t do anything at your job,’” recalls Ramirez. “She would yell and scream. She would always want stuff and I wouldn’t want to give her money for it.”

Those tensions disappeared when Gonzalez started her first-ever summer job in June, working at the Half Moon Bay Library in the same reading program as Sofia Betteo. Suddenly she knew what it was like to be on her feet much of the day, to exert herself, and to meet an employer’s expectations.

As a result, she started to see her mother in a very different light.

“Her perspective toward me has changed,” says Ramirez. “I think that her job is making her think and understand what comes with working – the idea of it.”

Ramirez says that in the course of two months, her daughter has become patient and conscientious. She is now a pleasure to live with and is more responsible. She used her first few paychecks to replace a broken cell phone, and she has been taking better care of it.

“It think the job has been so beneficial for her – especially when she got her first check,” laughs Ramirez.

Sofia Betteo, Cristian Antonio, Isabel Gonzalez and other Puente youth need your help today. Please click here to donate to the Youth Leadership and Development Program. Thank you!

18 Jul 2015

Mentors needed!

It is difficult to teach about social inequality in a suburban Indianapolis school but on the South Coast a small investment of time can make a huge difference, according to Shannon White, Puente’s Summer Teacher.

Here’s the rest of the story, in her own words:

The mostly white, upper-middle class students at the suburban Indianapolis high school believe they deserve privileges because that’s all that they know. They cannot understand their own privilege because many of them have never seen or met someone who does not share their same opportunities or access to resources. So many of them believe as one of my students did, “Everyone in the United States gets an equal opportunity to be successful.”

I ask every student in the classroom to stand up and push in his or her chair.  I explain to my students that I am going to give them each an “equal opportunity” to reach high school graduation in this simulated experience.  I point to my classroom door and say, “That door represents high school graduation.  If you can touch the door by the end of the simulation, you have earned your high school diploma and graduated.”

I then present the students with their equal opportunity.  “Some of you may think that because everyone has access to public education, everyone has equal access to success. Each of you will get the same opportunity to reach high school graduation.  In this simulation, that equal opportunity is three steps.  When I say ‘Go,’ you will have the chance to take your three steps to get to the door, which is our representation of graduation.  Ready? Go.”  The ensuing moments are delightful to witness.

The students closest to the door casually take their three steps and reach the door, no problem.

The next range of students is able to take three very large steps or three leaping steps to reach the door.  They have to try a bit harder, but they are able to reach out and touch the door.

The students farthest from the door have two typical responses: some of them do nothing considering any effort they would make to reach the door completely futile; the others get extremely creative, trying to hurdle furniture and throw chairs in their path to avoid taking official “steps” but still allowing themselves to move closer to the door.  Either way for this final group, none of the students make it to the door; none make it to graduation.

I ask the students to return to their seats to unpack the simulation. For most, the experience is eye opening, and it opens a door for me to talk to my students about my experiences on the South Coast of California during the months of our summer break.

This is the second consecutive summer I have returned to the South Coast to serve Puente and the students that participate in its youth leadership and employment program.  My experiences and relationships with each of the students as their summer teacher have shown me that certainly not all students come to school with an equal chance to succeed, graduate, or achieve their dreams.

All of the students of Puente have big dreams.  Some are able to take huge steps and leap to reach their goals.  Others face significantly greater challenges.  But, it is entirely possible for them reach the graduation door with not only support from school, their parents, the community, and Puente, but also with a mentor at their side.

What the simulation with my suburban Indianapolis students leaves out are the mentors and community resources that are available to help support and sustain South Coast students all the way to graduation, opening doors of opportunity along the way so that they can achieve their dreams.

Might you be one of those mentors for a Puente youth?  Will you be the extra stepping stone that gets our future scientists, physical therapists, professional translators, California Highway Patrol, and Nobel Prize winners to graduation? The students need mentors of all varieties.  Some of our students need extra assistance in specific subjects that are challenging (i.e.: math, science, English, etc.).  Others need a mentor who can serve as an accountability partner, checking in on their academic life.  No matter the type of mentor you might be, the students need you.  If you are interested in connecting with a student as a mentor, please contact Abby Mohaupt, Volunteer Coordinator, at amohaupt@mypuente.org or (650) 262-4095.