Delaware school community fuels program to help immigrant families read with their kids

A simple question brought her to tears.

Lidia Pichardo gripped her bag packed with small books for her kids, and for herself. By now, dark sky pressed on Milton Elementary’s towering library windows, catching reflections of many parents readying to leave. It wasn’t her first late night at the school, and it wouldn’t be the last. She’s getting better.

“I’m learning a little bit of English,” said the mother of two, accepting the help of a teacher to translate her Spanish. “That's helped me to communicate with my kids.”

Coming to the United States as an adult, Pichardo is now raising young kids in an American school system. She hadn’t had the luxury of helping them through a homework problem. She couldn’t curl up and read English books with them, teach them the right colors or animals teachers might ask about.

Until one program started to bridge the gap.

Milton Elementary School offers a free course, one of a handful like it in Delaware, to help Spanish-speaking immigrant parents hone literacy skills. The Latino Family Literacy Project, brought to the school through limited grant funding and spearheaded by ESL teacher Jackie Wager, aims to sharpen and encourage parents’ reading with their kids, in both languages, as a key to student success.

The budding project was revived after COVID-19 shutdown, and it just kicked off for this fall in October.

Milton has the highest percentage of multilingual learners in its district, where the overall Hispanic/Latino population has grown some 90% from 2015 to 2021. Wagner watched English learners swell, as elementary homework policy still called for 30 minutes of reading at home each night.

“There was a very serious disconnect,” she said. “The kids weren't doing their homework because they couldn't.”

Overcoming barriers

Wager found this program through research, coordinating with her district to secure grant funding, purchase the books, compensate herself and a few other instructors. She kicked it off at her Sussex County school by 2018.

Sessions now run once a week for five to six weeks, teaching anywhere from five to a dozen guardians each night. Barriers keep class sizes fluctuating.

Funds for childcare or transportation, for example, were no longer available after the pandemic.

The program could really only return, Wager says, due to a group of high school students who recognized the same need she did. Cape LASO students — or members of Cape Henlopen High School’s Latin American Student Organization — volunteer weekly to offer free childcare to these families. These students fill the nearby gymnasium with games and crafts, so parents can focus.

Back in the library, Pichardo thought about reading with her kids, helping them in a small way with their education. The mom's voice broke as she discussed what it meant to her. She looked to her current translator, Mauricio Salinas, blinking at tears.

But Salinas was too emotional to speak right away, too. The program instructor and local advocate knows the danger of a misconception that immigrant parents don’t want to be involved in school.

“She says she has an experience with the child, and she gets emotional spending that productive time with her,” the teacher said, collecting himself to continue.

“And that it’s very, very valuable.”

Got a story? Kelly Powers covers race, culture and equity for Delaware Online and USA TODAY Network Northeast, with a focus on education. Contact her at kepowers@gannett.com or (231) 622-2191, and follow her on Twitter @kpowers01.

Helping the parents...

Parents sat snug around a table, several thin books spread before them.

The first one this evening, as they settled by 5:30, would be about learning colors. Yony Ortiz sat at one corner, surrounded by fellow parents with kids in kindergarten.

“Once I came here, I saw the value of learning maybe English and also learning how to help my kids,” he recalled with a smile, now in just his second session. Ortiz got a call from the school inviting him to take part.

Some family members coming through the program don't have strong literacy in either language. By program design, parents read books by Latino authors once in Spanish and again in English, while discussing with an instructor. Instructors go over words and meaning, as well as techniques for reading at home with kids.

Wager said this Latino Family Literacy Project has four goals.

The first and second are to improve literacy in both languages, for students and parents. The next is to establish reading routines in the home, something many parents were unfamiliar with at first. And the final goal is strengthening the parent-child relationship.

This year, Wager has three groups separated by reading level. While Ortiz' group flipped on, another group was learning the difference between fiction and non-fiction, as yet another gathered in a group discussion. The program is Spanish immersive, with English sprinkled throughout.

“It’s a rewarding moment,” Ortiz said, describing reads with his kindergartener.

These parents aren’t alone.

Milton’s share of Latino learners now rests around a quarter of the student body, though not all need the same supports. About 20% of the student body is multilingual. Many families are from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

These students face the brunt of another statistic. Cape Henlopen School District students may see dropout rates of 2.2% on average, near statewide figure of 2.5% — but Latino students face nearly 4%. It reminds Wager of the fifth goal she adds to her program.

“One of my personal goals that I work on very much with the families is to help them feel part of the school community,” she said, thinking of both students and parents. “Because many don't understand how to navigate the school system.”

When parents become more involved, she believes, more students succeed.

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...to help the students

It was a lonely experience.

Miguel Robledo Mendez remembers learning in these same Milton halls. He knew his parents came to the U.S. to afford him a better life, while cutting short their own education to work. He was a first-generation American trying to get a handle on English, trying to set an example for two little brothers, trying to succeed in school with little help at home.

“You want to help your child. But when you don't know how to help, you feel guilty — or at least that's how my parents were feeling,” the Cape LASO volunteer recalled.

“At least for me, I had to work extra hard to make sure I could keep up with everything, until I finally got at the same level as everyone else.”

The now-freshman never had a program like this, but it eventually helped his family.

“My two brothers are also students in this school, and them having this was a great help,” Robledo Mendez said. “My parents immediately fell in love with it. They felt like they were putting a hand in, you know, their education.”

Leaving the classroom, he and other volunteers started to prepare the gym to fill with young kids, readying a table with board games, positioning goals and soccer balls. Cape LASO tries to offer community across the district, in more ways than childcare — from tutoring opportunities to translating school materials, to philanthropy and bringing Latino students together.

“Having a program like this, where a parent can be a part of the child's learning, is a huge step compared to many of our childhoods,” said Miranda Vasquez-Vergel, president of Cape LASO. “And more than anything to find community in struggle is a huge part of it."

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The future of support in Cape

LouAnne Hudson wants this focus to build districtwide.

Cape Henlopen School District has expanded support for multilingual learners, she said, crediting opportunity funds from the state. From adding a fourth ML teacher at the high school and bilingual social workers, to Spanish immersion, similar literacy programing at Lewes Elementary and more, the district hopes to keep building a focus on sharpening both languages.

"We're really just scratching the surface on this," said the district's director of teaching and learning.

Back in Milton, senior Oscar Hageman sees volunteering with the reading program as giving back to his Columbian roots, helping provide something his abuelo never had when dropped in an American high school at 16.

But it’s hard not to feel like such programs could use more support.

“The fact that this was a need that was only met because high schoolers decided to help bring it off the ground..." Hageman said. "I definitely think there needs to be maybe more of a commitment from people, people in positions of more power than kids, to support the families throughout our communities as they grow.”

Got a story? Kelly Powers covers race, culture and equity for Delaware Online and USA TODAY Network Northeast, with a focus on education. Contact her at kepowers@gannett.com or (231) 622-2191, and follow her on Twitter @kpowers01.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Cape Henlopen program helps parents literacy in Spanish and English