Children with parents who work seasonal farm labor often face educational disruptions and other challenges during the school year as their families travel back and forth between different cities or even states to work. find stable.
The Migrant Education Program (MEP), which serves approximately 2,000 pre-K through high school students enrolled in public, charter and private schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), aims to to support these students and their families through its variety of in-person and online educational and enrichment programs, services and workshops.
The federally funded program, offered through the LAUSD Multilingual and Multicultural Education Department (MMED), is available to qualified children from families working in the agricultural industry, but is not limited to agricultural workers, explained Dr. Víctor González, MEP coordinator.
“The Migrant Education Program serves the families of migrant farm workers or agricultural workers, but it’s not just for families working in the fields,” González said, noting that some work in fishing, meat packing or forestry. A key qualifying factor is that a family must move or must move regularly, between Los Angeles County and the Central Valley or Arizona, for example, “due to the seasonal nature of their work in agriculture.”
The overall goal of an MEP, Gonzalez said, is to support a student’s educational journey and help reduce negative effects that may result from constant transfers in and out of different schools and districts. On average, he continued, students who participate in the program attend three different schools in one academic year and often perform below grade level.
“Our primary mission is to support the academic achievement of each of these students,” Gonzalez said, adding that MEP helps students meet or exceed state and district standards.
To help students catch up or stay current and fill gaps in their education, MEP offers Saturday school, after-school instruction, summer school, speech and debate competitions, and competitions. an academic pentathlon, with math, language arts, science, social studies and the arts. .
“Over the past two years, we have had 100% of our students [MEP] graduates,” González said. “Obviously, we can’t take all the credit for that… But we like to think we played a part in that success. We have a counselor who focuses specifically on our high school students, and she visits all students throughout the year to make sure they are on track to graduate. And if they’re not on track to graduate, [ella] Find out why and try to find solutions to these problems.”
In addition to providing academic support, the program also offers “enriching experiences for these families that they would not otherwise have… [movimientos frecuentes]” Gonzalez said. These enrichment opportunities include music instruction in the fall, dance lessons in the spring, and an art teacher during the summer school months. And in partnership with the Los Angeles Zoo, MEP students take many field trips to the zoo and have the opportunity to speak with zoologists.
MEP also provides support services for parents, González noted, including workshops in English and Spanish that address a variety of topics: from “Family Reading” and “Activities that supports early literacy” to “Understand Your Child” and “Prevent .”
“Sometimes these parents just need an opportunity to share their struggles with each other, with people who have the same experience… [preguntas] and challenges,” he said. “We try to build a sense of community with them. That’s part of our strategy to deal with the whole family.”
For more information about the Migrant Education Program, call (213) 241-0510 or visit: www.lausd.org/mep.
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2024-08-22 05:14:27
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