Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Schools reach out to Spanish-speaking parents

These English classes are helping parents learn, so they can help their children. They can help with schoolwork, can especially be able to communicate with the teachers. DP

By Rhiannon Meyers, The Daily News

galvestondailynews.com:The citizenship classes Karina Vasquez Lopez attends on weeknights are as much for her infant son as they are for her.

The classes at Galveston’s L.A. Morgan Elementary School library are helping Lopez, who recently immigrated from Mexico, learn English and study for a citizenship test. Her real goal, however, is to help her son with his homework when he starts school.

On a recent weeknight, Lopez and eight other immigrants crowded into plastic chairs built for elementary students and pored over maps of the United States in a class offered through a partnership between Galveston’s public school district and College of the Mainland.

As the state’s Hispanic population grows, public schools are rethinking the ways they communicate with Spanish-speaking parents. They are offering English and citizenship courses, translating school documents, dubbing audio recordings of board meetings in Spanish and hiring interpreters in an attempt to reach parents who historically have not been deeply involved in their children’s education.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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