Esther J. Cepeda: kids/teens

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November 29, 2010

Laptops for CPS students are fine but are no silver bullet

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2929120,esther-cepeda-laptops-for-students-112910.article

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Chicago Sun-Times Columnist

You may have heard that mayoral candidate Gery Chico’s education agenda includes a proposal that the Chicago Public Schools provide each student with a laptop to use in class and at home.

I wondered how long it would take one of the candidates to propose this. It sounds really good and might even be relatively affordable, depending on which computer maker steps up to the plate with a jaw-dropping volume discount. Chicago is, after all, the third-largest school district in the country.

Chico won’t be the only mayoral candidate to jump on the laptop bandwagon, and he’s certainly not the first local politician to suggest laptops are the definitive tool of empowerment for our schoolchildren.

In the spring of 2006, then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn floated a proposal to equip 13,000 public school seventh-graders and their teachers with laptop computers; he called them the “textbooks of the 21st century.”

I was still working as a teacher then, but I wrote a Sun-Times guest column pointing out what should still be obvious to all: The major factor in the success of students is a low student-to-teacher ratio. Knowing that, any money Illinois can scrape together to pay for efforts to improve student achievement should be spent on getting more well-trained teachers into classrooms so students don’t have to be packed together like sardines. It shouldn’t be spent on silver bullets.

And four years later, I’d still say laptops are no silver bullet.

Ofer Malamud, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, co-authored a study released last January that investigated educational outcomes after low-income families received vouchers to help them buy computers. He and Cristian Pop-Eleches of Columbia University found that while students gained improved computer skills — a benefit that should not be undervalued — there was no significant improvement in grades. The students with the computers, in fact, earned lower grades on average in three key math and language subjects.

Why? Because at home — regardless of Internet connectivity — the kids used the equipment to play games. Duh.

Likewise, a Duke University paper published last June looked at the arrival of broadband service in North Carolina between 2000 and 2005 and found that, in that time, middle school students’ math and reading test scores dropped. One explanation, the researchers said, was the kids’ new access to Web-based entertainment.

This is not to denigrate Chico’s education agenda, which includes considerably more than just a call for laptop computers, nor is it to say that computers necessarily have no place in a classroom. Dueling studies contradict each other.

I can point to school districts across the country that sing the praises of their send-a-laptop-home programs, but I can just as easily point to school districts in Liverpool, N.Y., Richmond, Va., Costa Mesa, Calif. and Broward County, Fla., that have reported laptop-related cheating, student hacking and exorbitant repair costs accompanied by little or no academic gains.

The important thing to remember is this: While a laptop computer can be a powerfully useful tool of education, it’s not the superman schools have been waiting for to swoop in and rescue struggling students. You can’t just slide a laptop across a student’s desk and assume that his or her intellectual curiosity will save the day.

With realistic expectations, good planning and loads of cash for training, a take-home laptop program could be a success. Before getting them into kids’ hands there would have to be a tremendous amount of training for teachers who, if not flat-out technophobic, are unfamiliar with how to teach classes that integrate laptops. You’d also need a robust outreach plan for parents to make sure they know how to drive positive academic results.

To properly prepare for life in the real world, students need as much access to computers as possible — for academic use. But nobody should assume the benefits of a laptop in every backpack automatically outweigh the costs.

Posted at 09:16 AM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, responsibility, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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November 28, 2010

The challenge of educating English language learners in public schools

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

CHICAGO — Education policy has rarely garnered our collective attention as it does now. With debates raging across the country about how to boost student learning and evaluate and pay teachers, and whether Superman will show up to save the most poorly performing schools, education is a hot topic.

One aspect that needs more attention, though, is the question of how best to educate students whose native language is not English. It's a politically charged topic that rarely focuses on research and instead pits those who don't want to spend resources on instructing children in any language other than English against those who believe bilingual education is a civil right.

Those arguments ignore the reality that the performance of students not fluent in English affects the overall performance of nearly every public school in the country.

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics says that between 1979 and 2008, the number of school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home increased from 3.8 million to 10.9 million, or from 9 percent to 21 percent of the population in this age range. This statistic does not begin to tell the story of what level of English familiarity students carry with them to school, what language they speak — the Illinois Board of Education recognizes more than 160 languages spoken at home, and New York City schools offer many materials translated into 13 languages — or what sort of services their schools offer to help them learn English.

Headlines tend to blare about school districts with majority-Latino student populations — California's and Arizona's districts just achieved that status — but it's important to remember that though this topic is generally discussed in terms of whether Spanish-speakers should be taught in English or Spanish, it is not just a Hispanic issue and shouldn't be treated as one.

Right now each state individually decides how to educate English-language learners based on the tenets of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, which sought to ensure a quality education for students with limited English skills. Programs range from those in which students are fully immersed in English-language classrooms with various "English as a second language" programs, to classrooms where a student is taught completely in his or her native language with additional English-language instruction for an eventual transition to English-only classrooms.

This is where things get even trickier. Usually, when there is a critical mass of children who share the same language, students are sheltered in native-language classrooms. Yet other students who speak a foreign tongue may get "immersed." For instance, if a native Polish speaker enrolls in a school that has enough students to teach dedicated classes in Spanish but not enough to provide instruction in Polish, he or she gets immersed in English. Some say this is pragmatic, others call it discriminatory.

Pro-bilingual education experts claim that studies showing native-language instruction's positive effect on English acquisition justifies transitional bilingual classes. But this research has been challenged time and again by studies showing the method doesn't always help, and sometimes harms, English-language acquisition. Through the years, states such as Arizona, California and Massachusetts have returned from bilingual methods to English-immersion models.

I recently attended a bilingual and dual-language education conference where Diane August of the Washington-based Center for Applied Linguistics shocked participants by citing several recent studies to verify anecdotal evidence that goes back generations: Preschoolers who are immersed in English without extensive native-language support learn English as well as those in bilingual or other native-language-supported classrooms.

I was delighted she busted the main myth about the "need" to educate certain students in native language classes, but while that's wonderful news for the youngest students, the same hasn't yet been proved for those in middle or high school. Though the research suggests that the large majority of today's school-age English language learners are U.S.-born, those who are immigrants enter schools at different grades and really do require different educational approaches to achieve the goal of fluency in English.

This is yet another piece of a puzzle that demands serious conversation across all our increasingly diverse states.

Regardless of which native language is spoken in a student's home, the challenges faced by English-language learners affect all public school children. Rather than the patchwork system we have now, we need national guidelines for helping these students, and therefore their schools, succeed.

estherjcepeda@washpost.com

Posted at 07:06 PM in education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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November 22, 2010

Latinos wait in line for preschool spots

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2914294,esther-CST-1122.article

November 22, 2010

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

I was on a panel on covering Latino education issues in mainstream media last week when an audience member criticized this newspaper’s recent story on Latino kids’ relatively low preschool attendance rates.

“Your coverage put the blame on parents when in reality our schools are overcrowded and we have no access to preschool programs,” an attendee said passionately.

She was referring to an article that appeared in the Sun-Times last Tuesday under the headline “Preschool attendance lags among Latino children.” The deck headline felt like a slap in the face to me, too: “Culture, language gap may be to blame, experts say.”

Those who did not flip the page with a dismissive, “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know” learned these facts from a report by University of California-Berkeley professors: Only about 35 percent of Illinois’ Latino 4-year-olds attended some type of preschool, compared with 66 percent of white children, 63 percent of Asian and 54 percent of African-American children. The U.S. average is 48 percent.

The news story focused on explanatory factors mentioned in the report, and by the lead researcher in an interview, such as that Latina moms are less likely to have attended college and less likely to have read to their children than their black or white peers. Also, that the custom of sending young children to preschool has not yet taken hold in Latino households — no surprise given that three generations typically reside together. Furthermore, the story said the report noted that Hispanic families might face barriers such as the inability to confidently communicate in English or fears about’ legal status.

Any or all of these help produce this result: In Illinois, Hispanic children start kindergarten, on average, five months behind white children and one or two months behind African-American children.

But the news story didn’t include another factor that keeps Latino children out of preschool: There are far fewer preschool centers in Latino neighborhoods than in white and African-American neighborhoods. This lack of supply contributes to gaps in early learning even before kids start kindergarten.

Lest you be left with the outrageous impression that Latino parents are too backward, too fearful of immigration agents and too unsavvy to maneuver the school system, which offers almost every bit of information in Spanish, here’s what Marta Moya-Leang, director of CPS’ Belmont-Cragin Early Childhood Center has to say about preschool access:

“I have 280 students in our center and there is simply not enough space,” Moya-Leang told me. “There’s no funding to expand because it’s not a mandated program, and we don’t actively promote the program in the community because since the day we opened we’ve had waiting lists to get kids into the school.” Two hundred children are waiting for the next opening.

“Our school runs three shifts from 8:30 in the morning to 6 p.m. at night, and let me tell you that the families who find a way to get their toddlers to a 3 p.m. start time, coming through dark and cold, are committed to those kids’ education,” she said.

There is no question that the Latino community faces serious roadblocks, but Hispanics are known to be unusually reverent of education as a path to economic empowerment. I have no doubt that as recent immigrants are acculturated to understanding that preschool is an important first step in the education process, this will change. If enough preschool classes are made available to meet the demand, that is.

In his closing remarks to the assemblage, study author Bruce Fuller, of the University of California-Berkeley, responded to the crowd’s concerns about how their culture was portrayed by sharing this great advice: “Culture is always in motion, there’s nothing fixed about it — values, beliefs and commitments change. We need to get beyond these labels.”

Posted at 05:28 AM in culture, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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November 11, 2010

San Francisco fast food toy ban: Nothing ‘Happy’ about obesity

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group (11/11/10)

CHICAGO -- Happy Meals in San Francisco are about to become a little less happy, and my smile has been super-sized.

Not because I don't love Happy Meals. On the contrary, I buy them for myself as a treat because as an over-30 adult who exercises a minimum of five times a week, my daily intake limits allow me the 525 calories of the cheeseburger, small fries, three packets of ketchup and kid-sized diet drink packed in the delightfully petite carton.

If I were a 6-year-old boy of average weight who is moderately active, that might be OK, too, unless mom or dad added low-fat milk or succumbed to pleas for chocolate milk, regular soda or a shake. Then you're looking at 100 to 400 more calories -- or well over half that child's 1,700-per-day calorie needs -- in that one happy little meal.

And even that wouldn't be so bad if trips to fast-food joints were a rare, once-in-a-while occurrence as many who were around when McDonald's first became nationally popular in the late 1950s might recall. But today high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar fast-food meals and their fun, highly collectible, much advertised movie-themed toys are a staple of adults' and children's food routines.

And this is where a child's desire for a fun treat, a parent's desire to cheaply feed and simultaneously entertain their kids, and a profound ignorance of the basic tenets of nutrition intersect to fuel the obesity epidemic in this country.

It is an epidemic that is estimated to put a $168 billion annual burden on health care costs, according to a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Obesity was recently classified as a national security threat by a group of retired generals in a report titled "Too Fat to Fight," which found that 27 percent of all young adults are too overweight to serve in the military. It's the leading medical reason for rejection from the armed forces.

Which brings us back to San Francisco's new rules. Supervisors there just voted to ban toy giveaways in any fast-food meals where the calories total more than 600, there are more than 640 milligrams of sodium and more than 35 percent of calories come from fat.

"Nanny state" you say? Sure, a lot of people are burning up newspaper website comment sections with notes such as "Parents should be in charge of kids' diets, not the government" and "It's parents' obligation to monitor the food their kids are eating."

But understand one thing clearly: Parents cannot make wise decisions about their own or their child's eating habits when they rarely possess even the most rudimentary grasp on what it means to eat all kinds of food as part of a balanced diet. We simply don't know how much food our bodies need and what the healthiest -- and the worst -- foods are.

A recent USA Today survey found that 63 percent of respondents didn't know how many calories they should consume in a day to maintain their current weight and another 25 percent couldn't even guess. Only 12 percent knew how many calories their bodies need to live healthfully. How are they going to know how many calories their children need daily?

The only reason I'm an amateur dietician is because as a Hispanic with several Type 2 diabetics in my family, I watch what I eat closely. But most people rely on their doctors to counsel them on nutrition-related topics, and some docs aren't talking. According to researchers at Duke University Medical Centers, nearly one-third of doctors in a recent study were observed never broaching the topics of healthy weight with their patients. Those who did spent an average of just 3 1/2 minutes on this life-sustaining topic, not terribly impactful.

San Francisco has not taken a stand against parental choice or even against fast food. The city is trying to educate parents so they understand the nutritional value of what kids are gobbling while they play with their toy. The rest of the country should follow its example, if for no other reason than to keep nutrition on the tip of everyone's tongue.

Esther J. Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.

Posted at 06:12 AM in culture, Current Affairs, education, Food and Drink, Health/Medicine/nutrition, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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November 08, 2010

The next Chicago Public Schools chief: a teacher or an executive?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2873720,CST-EDT-esther08.article

November 8, 2010 BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Chicago Sun-Times

Is it that bad? Is heading the Chicago Public Schools so grinding, so arduous, that Ron Huberman couldn't hang in there a few months longer until the incoming mayor put someone new in place?

It may well be. Still, it seems criminal that he couldn't wait it out just a little while longer so that the Chicago school system wouldn't be forced to stop concentrating on education and staffing matters and instead deal with the uncertainty that the impending musical chairs will bring. But Mayor Daley said it best: If someone doesn't want to be around anymore, it's pointless to try to force it.

Because the mad scramble to see who will be put in the critical position of CEO -- the one we'll have for a long time, as opposed to the one who has little chance to warm the seat for more than six months -- has begun ahead of schedule, the most important question is now in the spotlight: Should CPS' top leader be a business executive or an educator?

Daley has always seen the school system as a business puzzle that only a seasoned executive could sort out, and that's not a bad way to look at it. The day-to-day responsibilities of running CPS Inc. is a $5.5 billion enterprise -- almost 70 percent of which is exclusively dedicated to teacher and staff personnel costs which go up every single year.

Educators, of course, see the top leadership role as one that requires not only extensive higher education in pedagogical theory and educational leadership, but also a firm grip on curriculum and methods for instructing all students, regardless of background. Most think this can come only after having stood in front of classrooms filled with hungry, depressed, exceptionally bright or otherwise unique students.

The reality is that CPS needs a leader that is neither more nor less than an exceptional teacher or brilliant business mind -- it needs someone who is both.

Eons ago, the trajectory of the average school teacher was to graduate from high school into a college education program and then probably spend an entire career at the school where the initial student teaching semester was done. A few would maybe get an advanced degree and move into administrative leadership roles and certainly none of them would have any real-world business or management experience.

That tide turned about fifteen years ago. The demand for teacher training programs for disillusioned doctors, lawyers, marketers and other professionals who wanted to get into classrooms skyrocketed. Then highly competitive programs such as Teach for America and schools run by groups such as the Knowledge is Power Program started booming. They cultivated young wiz kids who knew they eventually wanted to be entrepreneurs, political giants or CEOs but chose to spend a few months training to teach low-income students for a few years.

The reality is that aside from the standard reasons -- politics, posturing and power plays -- neither the current nor the future mayor has to make a gut-wrenching choice between a CPS leader who can navigate the complex details of various federal education programs and their statutory requirements or one who can read between the lines of the profit and loss pages of a financial report.

Regardless of what teachers or bureaucrats prefer in a leader, the students and parents who rely on the Chicago Public Schools deserve nothing less than someone who knows exactly how to run both a successful business and a successful classroom.

Posted at 07:20 AM in Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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October 27, 2010

Needed: shared understanding on bullying

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Washington Post Writers Group

The increasingly frequent examples of bullying-induced suicide have at long last provoked dramatic action to recognize and prevent this type of harassment.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights sent out a 10-page letter this week issuing detailed guidance to educational institutions ranging from kindergarten to college clarifying their responsibilities in preventing violations of the federal anti-discrimination law. This includes "when peer harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, or disability is sufficiently serious that it creates a hostile environment and such harassment is encouraged, tolerated, not adequately addressed, or ignored by school employees."

The ex-teacher in me initially had a knee-jerk reaction that this mandate would put the burden of policing out-of-control children on teachers and administrators rather than on parents who should be responsible for a child's behavior education. But I looked at it in a different light after talking to Gerald Tirozzi, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, an educational leadership organization.

"This was a very direct, forceful memorandum and I applaud it," Tirozzi told me. "This sends a loud and clear message that the guidance from the Office of Civil Rights should be read by all educators and be understood by parents in the respective communities because, yes, a lot of this lies at the feet of parents."

That’s what got me -- why aren’t parents held as responsible for bullying as the school district employees are, according to these guidelines?

As Tirozzi and I talked, it dawned on me that this reminder is needed because teachers and administrators aren’t fluent in the intricacies of what bullying can look like, how it can be avoided and what to do when it rears its ugly head. And if the professionals who are trained to interact with children all day aren’t bully-prevention experts, how could average parents -- a third to half of whom, by some estimates, might have been helpless victims of bullying themselves at some point in their life -- be knowledgeable enough to intervene?

"Well, you’re right, the parents have to understand what it all means, but up until now it’s been acceptable for everyone to quietly dismiss certain behaviors and move on," Tirozzi said. "I would say that when many parents or teachers hear or see an act that might be considered bullying, they see it as just kids growing up and reacting to one another. But I think (Education) Secretary (Arne) Duncan hit this issue on the head in a strong, forceful, measured way so the schools can tackle this responsibility while educating parents and the community."

It'd be nice if we lived in a perfect world where all students attacked the school day with only the thirst for knowledge. Since this is not the case, at least there is a now a concerted effort under way to create a shared understanding both at school and in communities that it's no longer an option to dismiss bullying behavior as "just kids being kids."

Esther J. Cepeda 's e-mail address is estherjcepeda(at)washpost.com.

Posted at 03:45 PM in crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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October 13, 2010

Mayoral candidate's takes on Chicago's Whittier Elementary school parent sit-in

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2797136,CST-EDT-esther13.article

Whittier is one place city needs fresh start

October 13, 2010

ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

The 29-day sit in at Whittier Elementary School continues on with parents and supporters still camped out in a makeshift library in a former field house, with the hopes that the Chicago Public Schools system will renovate the structure and make it a permanent library. They say independent experts have found the building to be structurally salvageable.

But CPS insists the building is structurally unsound and must be demolished, creating space for a new play area.

The parents experienced a triumph of sorts last week when the City Council ordered CPS to turn the gas in the field house back on. All the same, the families occupying the field house are drinking bottled water, sleeping on inflatable mattresses and living in conditions that CPS CEO Ron Huberman has called ''unsafe'' and ''an accident waiting to happen.''

''Keep in mind my background was head of emergency management. I know an unsafe situation when I see one,'' Huberman told WBEZ-FM (91.5). ''That is a small building. That building has no carbon-monoxide detector. That building has no fire-suppression system. It's now full of books and it's full of kids. That makes us very, very nervous.''

But jittery nerves have not been enough to bring an end to what any reasonable person would call a disaster waiting to happen.

How things got to this point is beyond me. But with a lame-duck mayor, a possibly lame-duck schools CEO, and a city captivated by February's mayoral election, maybe it's not surprising the standoff has yet to be resolved.

Just for kicks, I talked to most of the declared or contemplating mayoral candidates to see what they would do. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart declined to comment because he's not officially in the race. U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez declined to comment and, to my puzzlement, Rahm Emanuel's ''Tell it like it is'' campaign also refused to weigh in. The rest of the field, of course, said they never would have let such an outrage get so out of hand, which admittedly is easy to say.

Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) cut straight to the chase: ''An elected school board offers way more checks and balances than an appointed one.''

State Sen. Rickey Hendon said the same and added: ''They should build them the library even if they have to build one from the ground up -- that would satisfy the people and that's the most important thing a mayor can do. The money? There's always money.''

Both U.S. Rep. Danny Davis and businesswoman Carol Moseley Braun said they never would have let the situation get to this point. ''I would have called my superintendent in immediately and ensured that the parents would be sat down with and listened to so I wouldn't have to step in,'' Davis said.

And Moseley Braun said she would have raised private funds for the new library, if necessary -- anything to ''not discourage parental involvement.''

Jay Stone, a clinical hypnotherapist, and state Rep. Annazette Collins said they'd listen, listen, listen to parents. But Collins said she wouldn't necessarily give in. ''Though I would try to negotiate, you have to understand that everybody in the school district wants a new school lunchroom, playground, library,'' Collins said. ''You can't give in just because parents sit in. What if everybody did this?''

Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle both shook their heads that such a situation could still play out in Chicago, where Latino parents have had to stage hunger strikes to get schools built. Both practically guaranteed their own school leaders would not get themselves into this sort of mess, but del Valle said he'd "encourage CPS to work it out themselves.''

And Chico thinks the parents are aiming too low. ''They should ask for the park and the library," he said. "It can be done. It kills me that parents have to agonize over such a small issue -- this should have been solved by now.''

All easy to say from the sidelines, but it does feels like February might bring a much needed breath of fresh air.

Posted at 08:37 AM in Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, politics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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September 06, 2010

A college education is still worth the sacrifice and investment

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2677966,CST-EDT-esther06.article

"College still worth the investment"

September 6, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

As unemployment continues to cast its shadow across the country's present and future, young people poised to become the first in their family to go to college are asking themselves whether an expensive degree really is the smart choice.

Here we are, 15 years after a movement to promote college to qualified low-income and minority students got under way, and many of the very people who were supposed to be empowered by that degree are out of work. Of all young adults with degrees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 percent are unemployed or not seeking work.

"People are starting to lose their faith in the promise of college as being the way out of poverty and the way to create a better life," said Phil Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, a Chicago nonprofit that has been on the front lines of college access efforts since its inception in 1996.

"The families I come into contact with look around them, see the degreed professionals in their communities who sacrificed so much to go to college and are now sitting at home unemployed," he told me. "They're no longer believing the hype about college being the path to a better life. They say, 'You can be just as unemployed without a degree.' "

I called Jackson on a hunch that headlines were scaring away the very people who could best influence a young student to take a shot at college: parents.

He shocked me with this first-hand account: "For months we have been promoting Saturday morning college preparation sessions that give families the opportunity to talk one-on-one with colleges and university academic and financial aid representatives from across the country. I had one school tell me, 'Bring us your qualified students, we are willing to sign them up on the spot.' We promised them a good turnout, screamed about the opportunity from the rafters, and do you know how many families came out? Not one person showed up."

Jackson's observations seem to back up data showing that faith in a college degree as a sure ticket to a prosperous future is eroding. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that in a survey of 3,000 people "63.5 percent said a college education is still a good financial investment for young adults given rising costs, compared to 79.1 percent last year and 80.9 percent in 2008."

There are more opportunities for those who attain a college degree or professional certification compared with those who immediately join the work force in low-paying unskilled jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009, the unemployment rate was 9.7 percent for high school graduates but just 5.2 percent for those with bachelor's degrees. Median weekly earnings for college grads were $1,025, compared with $626 for high school grads. Even after you figure in the cost of repaying student loans, it works out in subsequent earning years.

Unfortunately, those figures don't speak much to a low-income family that has to decide whether to encourage their student to embrace the completely unknown quantity of college. The tradeoff between finding a job after high school and earning a small income today in exchange for taking out frighteningly large student loans on the promise of more money and opportunities later -- if the kid graduates -- is a difficult decision for a family with no college experiences.

For years, scholars have known that family influence is the most important factor in determining whether a student will go to college. As parents lose faith in the higher education system, at least a solution to the problem is clear. In the quest to get academically capable, low-income students into and through college, it's more important than ever to reach into the home to explain the long-term, lifetime monetary and non-monetary value of a degree to families with no college experience.

Regardless of higher education's many broken promises, there can be no doubt that when students and families question whether a college degree is a good investment, the answer is yes, in the long-term, a solid education will pay untold dividends.

Posted at 06:48 AM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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August 30, 2010

Evaluate teacher performance as just one aspect of students' educational experience

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2651138,CST-EDT-esther30.article

Not all is within teachers' control

August 30, 2010

ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Chicago Sun-Times columnist

Divorce, chronic illness, domestic violence, substance abuse, job loss.

I saw it all in my first-grade classroom -- plastered on the faces of my students. My high school students were much the same, except for the added woes of unwanted pregnancies, bullying, gang violence and the associated depression.

To assist my students, I would visit their homes and offer research advice on health insurance, social programs and college savings plans. I spent my own money on classroom supplies and extra hours planning cutting-edge lessons to engage all the different students in my class. Yet in the end, I felt I had accomplished far too little.

My efforts weren't special or rare, this is how a great many -- though certainly not all -- teachers in schools across America ply their trade during the academic year and, yes, even during summer vacation.

But you won't see much of this effort reflected in the numbers that tell whether a school has made "adequate yearly progress," or in year-over-year reading and math scores, or in frameworks for evaluating teacher performance that rely heavily on standardized test data.

Last Wednesday -- as Congress continued stalling the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, aka "No Child Left Behind" -- Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged public schools to publish more data on student achievement so teachers' performance can be evaluated based on students' academic performance.

That sounds like a good idea, but in the real world it's unfair to measure just one outcome that is, in fact, the result of multiple factors -- only one of which is an individual teacher's performance. It is just plain irresponsible to ignore the burden the other factors put on a student's performance.

In March 2009, David C. Berliner, a researcher at Arizona State University, published "Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success," which noted that U.S. students spend about 1,150 waking hours a year in school vs. about 4,700 more waking hours with their families and in neighborhoods. Berliner identified the top six nonacademic roadblocks to student success: low birth-weight and nongenetic prenatal influences; inadequate medical, dental and vision care; food insecurity; environmental pollutants; family relations/stress, and neighborhood characteristics.

His data spotlight the obstacles poor students have always brought into the classroom.

In June, the Foundation for Child Development released its annual Child Well-Being Index for 2010, illustrating some of the effects the Great Recession is having on the quality of life for America's children. Their study of 28 key indicators found that this quality of life began to decline in 2009, and by the end of 2010, the recession will have wiped out virtually all progress made in the last 35 years for children in economic factors such as secure parental employment and health insurance coverage.

This doesn't mean school districts across the country can't or shouldn't hold educators accountable for delivering the best teaching practices. Now more than ever the U.S. educational system -- held hostage to tenure structures that limit the ability of a school to pull a poorly performing teacher out of the classroom -- requires nothing less.

"Out-of-school factors matter a lot -- any of the identified factors or just stressful situations like someone in the family dying; all those kinds of things can and do affect students from middle, working, or any class," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, recently told me. "Educators aren't here to make excuses, but it's ridiculous to think that teachers individually can overcome every single issue in a child's life."

There's no question teacher accountability for student performance is crucial. But the focus must be on evaluating teachers' performance in the classroom, not strictly on student achievement, which is so compromised by the weight of their outside-the-classroom life.

Posted at 05:01 AM in crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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August 16, 2010

Good mentoring: the most important lesson for keeping new teachers in classrooms

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2601652,CST-EDT-esther16.article

Good teachers learn by example

August 16, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

It's that time again: Teachers all over the country are tingling with excitement about getting back to school to meet and inspire a fresh new crop of students.

This fall, almost 300,000 new teachers will bring their diverse life experiences, plucky creativity and genuine idealism into the nation's schools.

Chillingly, 150,000 or so of them will quit teaching before their fifth year.

Had I not thrown in the towel after just two heartbreaking years, by this time I'd have already pulled out lesson plans to begin tweaking my instruction. Instead, I'm among the wistful who chose not to go on.

The difficulties that grind new teachers out of the noble profession are tragically complex: the socioeconomic challenges of students, lack of teaching supplies or up-to-date books, large class sizes, parental apathy, long hours, low pay and the solitary nature of the work.

These perennial teacher frustrations could easily be blamed on society's inability to provide students with the best circumstances possible or the sometimes stifling culture created by school administrators. But blame never helped a student or a teacher succeed.

Though there's no magic wand to cure the ills, we still have a responsibility to students to slow the revolving teacher door. A good start would be to insist on training programs that properly expose prospective teachers to the harsh realities of today's classrooms.

Most, if not all, teacher preparation curriculums require observations in multiple types of classrooms. What prospective teachers don't get is meaningful interaction with students, parents, peer teachers and administrators.

"The kind of training a student teacher gets in pre-service is almost always a simulated experience in which the expert teacher makes it all look seamless because that teacher has already done all the thinking and practicing," said Ellen Moir, chief executive officer of the New Teacher Center, a California-based organization focused on teacher and administrator initiation.

"There needs to be real, hands-on understanding of the demands of the job," she said.

Though there may be no way to adequately prepare a teacher for some of the heart-rending life experiences students from all backgrounds bring into the classroom (developmental delays, chronic illness, violence and drug addiction were just a few issues that wore me down), it's reasonable to expect schools to provide strong support for teachers new to these realities.

I vividly recall one of my principal's favorite sayings: "I love new teachers because what they lack in experience, they make up for with passion and energy."

Too often that passion and energy is taken for granted; the light that burns twice as bright really does burn half as long.

Those who entered teaching so they could "make a difference" for kids and society often put in 60-hour weeks in the classroom, make home visits and spend their own cash on lessons and supplies.

When this effort is exhausted with little immediate return, disillusionment and depression set in.

With no trained mentor in place to help, you can bet the light will soon burn out.

"The best, most effective way to keep eager new teachers in our schools is to provide comprehensive induction programs so that the minute they get hired they'll receive high-quality . . . on-going mentoring." Moir said. "And not just the old 'buddy system.' "

Chicago, by the way, had been using the New Teacher Center model.

Nearly 1,100 new teachers in 380 schools received intensive mentoring last year. But the program was axed in June, a victim of budget cuts.

All 54 teacher coaches were fired, though the center plans to use private money to hire seven coaches back and is negotiating with the school system to run a smaller program this fall.

High-quality mentoring is being practiced in many schools but the concept needs to gain firmer traction nationwide -- even in tough budget times.

More support is needed if we want to keep idealistic new teachers in our children's classrooms and off the dropout list.

Posted at 06:39 AM in Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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August 09, 2010

This dad helps parents grieve for their departed babies

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2577928,CST-EDT-esther09.article

Grieving dad helps others bear loss

August 9, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

In the decade since my daughter, Wren, died at birth, not much has changed for parents who have to endure such sorrow. There are still no iron-clad preventative measures mothers can take to guarantee their baby will make it through what is commonly an effortless pregnancy.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, every year more than 25,000 babies between 20 and 42 weeks of gestation are stillborn in the U.S. -- a shocking 10 times the number of deaths occurring from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This clocks out to about one stillbirth every 20 minutes.

Though advances in prenatal care have had a deep impact on infant mortality rates over the last 30 years, obstetricians are at a loss to explain why stillbirth rates remain as they do, or why the complex mystery continues to cut across geographic, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

One thing, however, has changed dramatically since I simultaneously said hello and goodbye to my stillborn baby girl: Economic times have gotten a lot tougher.

Today the Great Recession is increasingly squeezing stunned parents who thought they'd be struggling to pay for diapers and formula but instead are both grief-stricken and financially unprepared to deal with the expenses of burying their infant.

Enter the Dempsey Burdick Memorial Foundation, which provides headstones for struggling families who can't afford to buy proper grave markers for their lost babies.

It began in 2003, when grieving dad Kevin Burdick noticed the many rotted and broken plastic markers on the baby graves surrounding his own daughter Dempsey's memorial in an Arizona cemetery. He believed helping other parents complete the grieving process would be the best way to honor his daughter. "We've had a lot more requests this year. . . . We helped as many families in 2009 as we did in the previous three years," Burdick told me. "Families who have had this devastating loss, they're out of work, they don't have health insurance, they lose a baby and when you add the medical bills, funeral expenses, then consider a tiny marble stone that typically starts at $600 but can top the thousands -- forget it!"

The still-nascent foundation takes heart-rending written and e-mailed requests from all over the country, primarily through its website, and has so far helped 21 families in 13 states. The tiny staff, under Kevin's leadership, verifies need and vital records with agencies in each parent's home county, then negotiates with the cemetery and local monument companies to create and install a customized headstone.

Kevin began the foundation with his own money, but this year's increasing demand requires fund-raising efforts. The waiting list, which includes a Chicago mom hoping for a marker to place on her daughter's grave in Mount Hope Cemetery, is swelling.

As it turns out, those efforts also provide healing experiences for families who've had to face the agony of losing a baby. For instance, Malory Jimenez, a 26-year-old mother of two from Boston who lost her baby, Janessa, in May 2009, told me she encourages her family, friends and Internet support group peers to donate to the foundation so other grieving families can begin the healing process by memorializing their baby's brief life.

"When Janessa passed away we were devastated," Malory told me. "Though my husband and I had scrounged up $300 after the funeral, we just couldn't afford the marker. To think we couldn't give her the one and only thing she'd ever need, the one thing the grief counselors said we needed to cope with this loss . . . to think that there would be nothing to mark her grave . . . it killed us."

Of Dempsey's foundation and the headstone it provided, Malory says: "They were the light in the darkness that allowed me, my husband and son to go on."

Amazingly, some things -- the human capacity for both pain and benevolence -- also haven't changed in the decade since my Wren fluttered away. Though not long enough, she briefly lived in a world where even amid a symphony of unimaginable grief, there still ring notes of generosity and grace.

Posted at 06:30 AM in Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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July 26, 2010

Focusing on Latino kids' health helps entire family

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2532790,CST-EDT-esther26.article

Focusing on kids' health helps kin

July 26, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

You've heard of "manteca?" It's the rendered pork fat -- a k a lard -- used in traditional Latin American cooking to fry anything and everything from plantain chips to chicken to bananas that have been stuffed with cheese and dipped in batter. Yummy!

Manteca makes food delicious. And Latinos love it. A lot. Too much, in fact. So much it's killing us.

OK, so it's not all the fault of our beloved manteca, but talk to most Latino moms or grandmas about healthier cooking and you'll see them instinctively slit their eyes with an expression that screams "Oh no, don't even think you're going to take my lard from me."

And how do you argue with your abuelita?!

This is what the Latino community is up against as leaders attempt to keep the twin evils of obesity and Type 2 diabetes from decimating the current and next generation.

It's a challenge the Miracle Center, a Northwest Side organization that offers arts programs for neighborhood kids, is tackling head-on through its Healthy Lifestyles Campaign. Funded in part by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the University of Illinois at Chicago's National Center for Excellence in the Elimination of Disparities, the campaign employs skits, cooking demonstrations and dance classes to teach kids what it means to live a healthy lifestyle -- knowledge they can take home to the entire family.

"The families are harder to reach than the kids," Youth Development Director Vanessa Torres told me on a steamy Thursday afternoon, when the day's exercise activities were taking place out in the shade under streams of alternating rain and cooling sprinklers.

"When we reached out to families through focus groups and through community presentations, we got a lot of pushback. They immediately think, 'This is trying to change our traditional Puerto Rican or Mexican food which is made with a lot of love, manteca, and oil.' They say, 'You can't change it, these are our roots,' " Torres said.

But in the face of such resistance, knowledge is a powerful tool, Executive Director Mary Santana says.

"Many parents just didn't know how this eating was affecting their kids' bodies," she said. "They didn't know what healthy food was until their kids helped them understand a few things about basic nutrition, and even about how marketers target Latino consumers with 'biggie' sizes and lower-cost unhealthy snacks."

All the same, it's a tough sell. Just ask Ryan Negron, 16, who has worked on creative projects for the program, helping to design posters, campaign slogans and a pitch on YouTube.

"I just didn't know anything about Type 2 diabetes or what the Body Mass Index was -- I had no clue," said Negron, a sophomore at Lincoln Park High School. "But it hit close to home; I'm tall so I thought I was OK, but I was overweight. I never expected it, but it got me to start getting in shape.

"My parents were pretty supportive. They were glad someone was teaching me about this stuff, especially because there are a lot of people in my family who are overweight," Ryan continued. "But my friends took some time. When I told them why I was getting healthy, some of them said, 'That's not cool -- they're pretty much calling you fat.' But I'd tell them, well, when you think about it, I am. When they want to get healthy, I tell them how and what to do."

It is absolutely beautiful to talk to a young person who is not frightened or overwhelmed by his body, but instead is active, informed and advocating for others to take better care of themselves.

The heartbreaking statistics -- one out of two Hispanic kids is overweight -- demand more full-community initiatives like this one to improve our health.

"It's a challenge, sure," Santana said. "We'll never put the manteca away for good, but maybe some days we can compromise with olive oil."

Posted at 05:37 AM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, education, Food and Drink, Health/Medicine/nutrition, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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July 05, 2010

What will be impact of Spanish-only preschool classes on young Latinos?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2465168,CST-EDT-esther05.article

What will be impact of Spanish-only preschool classes on young Latinos?

July 5, 2010

BY ESTHER J CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

Hold your breath for Latino members of the Illinois high school class of 2026. Who knows what recent changes in how they are to be taught will do for them.

Or to them.

New rules requiring pre-school English Language Learners (ELLs) to be educated according to the same standards as for kindergarten through 12th grade ELLs were adopted last month by the Illinois State Board of Education. The rules, which are expected to sail through the final legislative process in time for the 2010-2011 school year, will make Illinois the most prescriptive state in the union for identifying and educating English Language Learners.

This will affect hundreds of thousands of ELL students -- the fastest-growing segment of the study body in Illinois.

The overwhelming majority of these students come from Spanish-speaking households, and if they have 20 or more peers in the same grade level, they're entitled to a classroom with a Spanish-speaking teacher. Children whose native languages are not Spanish also must have 20 or more grade-level peers to qualify for language-specific instruction and, therefore, are rarely isolated in non-English-speaking classrooms the way Spanish-speaking kids are.

The thought of 3-, 4- and 5-year-old Hispanic kids getting stuck in Spanish-language classrooms so they can be taught beginning literacy skills in their parents' native language before being taught the basic tenets of English makes me want to poke my eyeballs out. Despite widely accepted research that says teaching literacy skills to a child in his or her native language leads to better English-acquisition, I -- like Arizona, California and Massachusetts, who've turned away from this educational philosophy -- am skeptical.

Why? Mostly because I know that what works modestly in the lab does not always transfer to the classroom -- especially when there already are too few qualified teachers for the many non-English-speaking students.

Plus, in my short time as a bilingual teacher, I witnessed horrors such as underqualified teachers who never felt the need to address their students in English. And teenage U.S.-born students still confined to Spanish-only classrooms because the "transitional bilingual" program had never made them truly bilingual or transitioned them to mainstream English-speaking classrooms.

Because I've had such experiences, I turned to two less-emotional experts to soothe my fears that Illinois' educational system is about to disintegrate for children who happen not to speak English by the age of 3.

"This goes back to the bilingual education laws put on the books back in the '70's, before 'preschool for all' was popularized," said Reyna Hernandez, a policy analyst at the Latino Policy Forum. "This isn't really a new idea. The state was looking at where there needed to be cleanup in the legal language that had artificially limited rules to K through 12."

She also stressed that "starting in 2014, these rules will mean students will be taught by teachers that are certified in language acquisition" and she said this is "one of the greatest points."

Nancy Wagner, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at Arlington Heights' multinationally diverse School District 59, says there are always risk and costs -- in this case to teachers who must get additional education and to school districts that must pay for that upgraded expertise -- but this definitely is a step up.

"The laws regarding preschool used to not have anything regarding English instruction; teachers weren't specially trained and could basically screen all the kids, identify them as ELLs and teach them in whatever language they wanted," she said. "There are many factors to take into consideration when you're talking about such young children, but no program wants its bilingual students to be the lowest tracked program. The goal of the program HAS to be English language proficiency."

Gosh, I hope so. Better-trained preschool teachers who can effectively address the special needs of English language learners sure can't hurt.

Still, the proof will be in the pudding, so keep your fingers crossed for Latino members of the Illinois high school class of 2026.

Posted at 07:26 AM in Chicago, culture, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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June 21, 2010

A Modest Proposal for a morbid society

editor's note: this definition of satire comes from en.wiktionary.org/wiki/satire "A literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. Humour is often used to aid this; A satirical work."

And, NO, the subject of ridicule is not obese people, but rather, society's passive acceptance of a debilitating and deadly disease.

Now, back to our program...

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2413320,CST-EDT-esther21.article

Time to turn up the heat on folks who are obese

June 21, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

Obesity is hot these days -- it's all over the news. Take the unprecedented media coverage of Michelle "Let's Move" Obama's continuing war on childhood obesity: She's (thankfully) getting a ton of play in her quest to end the malnutrition devastating the lives of millions of American kids.

And did you see the April report from the nonprofit group Mission: Readiness, which laments that 9 million young people ages 17 to 24 -- 27 percent of all young adults -- are too fat to fight in the military? They say obesity is now a national security issue because being overweight is the leading medical reason for rejection from the military.

Add to that last week's report out of Britain that says more people are not only too fat to fight but also too fat to . . . um, make love. The study concluded that women with a body mass index greater than 30 reported having fewer sexual partners and less sex in general. And they were so generally embarrassed about their bodies that they were less likely to talk to their doctors about reproductive health, a big reason they were more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases and have unwanted pregnancies than less-heavy women.

I'm not going to copycat my tall and thin Sun-Times colleague Laura Washington, who used her space in this paper to become the "Fat Nag" -- a proud African-American woman brave enough to take her dear sisters to task for allowing killer obesity to be culturally accepted in the black community.

But just for today allow me to be the "Skinny Grumbler." Join me in rallying against a society that pretends morbid obesity is socially acceptable. Some of us would like to enjoy summer.

What am I getting at here? I'm cold! C-O-L-D!!

Cold on a sunny morning when I have to wrap myself like a mummy in my three morning newspapers to stave off hypothermia from the overblown air conditioning that Metra needs to keep its well-padded clientele from melting in its packed cars.

Cold on a pleasantly warm day when I must wear my parka into the supermarket, which blasts the A/C to keep the store at 50 degrees so that all the over-stimulated and over-served customers can buy food without breaking a sweat.

Cold on a hot summer night when my restaurant's water glasses have icicles forming on them because all the already-health-challenged chow hounds are working up a sweat while overdoing it.

Hey, it's not just me. I've seen thick, sturdy women and men -- innocently wearing tank tops or shorts on a hot day -- walk into these same places and immediately shrug their shoulders and cradle their elbows in the universal body language for "Whoa -- why is it so darned cold in here?!"

I've witnessed complaints to managers over icy coffee shops, clothing stores, and locker rooms -- and I'm begging all of you out there to do the same.

Enabling people who are challenged with the burdens and risks of obesity by making them more comfortable in public situations where, under normal circumstances, they'd be uncomfortable only reinforces the idea that their ill health is bearable. Why do we accept our public spaces masking unhealthy people's natural body signals that something is very wrong?

You should be outraged that your hard work in supporting a loved one's quest to make healthier choices is undermined by a society willing to make them feel more comfortable. And shouldn't others get to be comfortable sometimes, too?

Stand with me, non-obese people, and revolt against the freezing-public-space status quo.

Skinny Grumblers unite!

Posted at 06:32 AM in culture, Current Affairs, Health/Medicine/nutrition, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBack (0)

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May 31, 2010

Got a big heart? Bilingual? Be a foster parent

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2335714,CST-EDT-esther31.article

Got a big heart? Bilingual? Be a foster parent

May 31, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

And in this week's edition of "How Can I Make This World A Better Place?" I'm going to tell you a story about love.

But first, a word from our sponsor . . . Today's heartwarming testament to the indomitability of the human spirit comes from none other than Luis Barrios, executive director of the Latino Consortium, eight Chicago nonprofit organizations under contract with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to provide child welfare services to Hispanic children and their families.

Barrios would like you to know that of the roughly 17,000 children in the Illinois foster care system, about 6 percent are Latino. And while they are only the sixth group most in need of foster parents (behind brother-sister pairs and ahead of babies born with HIV), those numbers are sure to grow as the Hispanic population continues its explosive growth.

Unsurprisingly, one of the big challenges to finding foster care parents for these kids is the language barrier.

"We need bilingual foster care parents -- those fluent in any language other than English, of course, but especially those who can speak Spanish," Barrios told me one sunny afternoon last week as he struggled with my remarkable ignorance about what foster care is and how it differs from adoption.

"Foster care is a temporary placement outside a child's home, usually due to abuse, neglect or other family problems -- it's an alternative to group homes or institutional care -- but it's not intended as a permanent living arrangement," he told me. "The point is to protect the child, with the ultimate goal of returning the child back home to the rehabilitated family."

It's exactly because of that end goal of reuniting children with their families that bilingual foster care parents are critical: It's not because the kids don't speak English, but because the foster family must be able to communicate with the child's family in their language.

And now, this week's edition of "How Can I Make This World A Better Place?"

Let me tell you about Georgina Salmeron. One fine day 16 years ago, her husband, Francisco, who at the time worked for Seguin Services, a nonprofit, community-based agency offering social and rehabilitative services to adults and children with special needs, came home and asked her if she'd mind "fostering" a sick child he'd met at Seguin. At the time, they had four young ones of her own, but they had the guts to open their home and hearts to a child with a severe developmental disability.

"I can't say for sure, but by now it's probably been 10 kids we've had. Even though my own kids are grown and left the house, we still take foster kids in," Georgina told me. "We just like it so much we keep doing it -- and there's such a need!"

Georgina and Francisco are extremely unusual; not only are they Spanish bilingual, but they don't bat an eye at severe physical or developmental disabilities.

"Right now I have an African-American baby who just has so many problems because he was born with drug-related complications," she says matter of factly. "Our hands are always full."

How do they do it?

"It's not about the size of your house or your paycheck," she said. "It's about opening your heart. And what you get back. It's really a beautiful thing to open your life to a child who needs love -- and someone to love -- and patience, stability."

The answer to the question: "How Can I Make This World A Better Place?" is simple. Consider being a bilingual foster parent.

Call (800) 624-KIDS and a local DCFS or private child welfare agency representative will contact you, and after you've heard the tremendous impact you can have on the life of a child, you can decide if offering foster care is a good plan for you and your family.

"There are so, so many kids who need a temporary home," Georgina said, "and it's so beautiful to send them back to their family well-fed and happy."

Posted at 07:59 AM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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May 24, 2010

May brings high risk of suicide among high school and college students

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2307606,CST-EDT-esther24.article

May brings high risk of suicide among our youth

May 24, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

It's that time of the year. The time of the year when the pressures of grades, final papers, home stresses and uncertainty about the future combine with youthful angst to create life-threatening hazardous conditions.

The time of year when my teacher and professor friends are happy the school year is almost over but lamenting the number of students in their classes who are missing finals because they've been hospitalized with stress-related ailments or full-blown depression.

It's not something that people like to talk about -- teen and young adult suicide -- because as a society we mostly like to think about happy, carefree, post-graduation summer days with the whole world on a platter and all of life ahead of us. But May is one of the deadliest times of the year for high school and college students alike.

Incredibly, suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students -- 1,100 undergraduate and graduate students a year -- and the third leading cause of death among all youth 15 to 24 years old in the United States. Only accidents and homicides claim more young lives.

I wouldn't have known that if Kate Maloney, a chapter coordinator with Active Minds, a national nonprofit organization operating on college campuses to educate people about the warning signs of suicide in students, hadn't reminded me about my own classroom experiences with depressed teens.

The seven Active Minds chapters on Illinois college campuses, like the other 200 campus chapters, are singularly focused on making honest talk about mental health issues a socially acceptable thing.

"More than half of all college students have had suicidal thoughts, and one in 10 seriously consider suicide," Kate told me, "but only half of those who seriously consider suicide ever get counseling."

At a north suburban high school district, my closest teacher friend saw no fewer than three of his own students hospitalized for depression in the week before finals -- and, arguably, those students were the lucky ones, the ones who got help.

Who can blame these young people for feeling so desperate? The pressure is on: To hear adults tell it, college will either be the key to their success or the architect of their financial ruin.

They're watching their own parents struggle with the devastating effects of the worst recession any of them have lived through: unemployment, home foreclosure, stress-induced divorce.

These students are either terrified of not being able to pay for college or of graduating into a completely decimated job market. And even among those students who are not graduating yet, those same pressures make them less likely to finish.

Am I painting a grim enough picture for you?

Good, because awareness is half the battle.

"The most troubling thing about suicide is that it's so preventable," Kate told me. "It's just a matter of looking for the signs and reaching out."

Top suicidal warning signs include talking about suicide or death in general, talking about "going away" or feeling hopeless, and an observable change in normal behavior like losing the desire to do favorite things or be with close friends or family.

And if you're worried?

"Most schools have help available in the school or on campus," Kate said, "but the best thing to do is call the National Suicide Prevention hotline at 1 (800) 273-TALK, where they'll connect you to a local crisis center in your area."

It's May, the sun is finally staying out past dinnertime, and the flowers are in bloom, but there is still much darkness -- and it's all our jobs to look for it.

Posted at 05:16 AM in Current Affairs, education, Health/Medicine/nutrition, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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May 17, 2010

It's wrong to use schoolchildren to play immigration politics

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2280690,CST-EDT-esther17.article

It's wrong to use schoolchildren to play politics

May 17, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

The latest casualty in the war against illegal immigration is not the Highland Park girls basketball team, it's -- drumroll please -- reason. You know: the sense that God gave a goose.

How else to explain the flat-out immigration madness sweeping this great nation?

Take the Highland Park High School decision to pull out of the Holiday Invitational girls tournament in Scottsdale, Ariz., in December, which they happily committed to back in March before Gov. Jan Brewer decided to sign the infamous SB 1070 bill. That's the law that critics say legalizes racial profiling against Latinos based on vague gut reactions as to who might or might not be an illegal immigrant.

School District 113 decided to pull out for so-called safety reasons, but Assistant Supt. Suzan Hebson threw in that the trip "would not be aligned with our beliefs and values" because of the recent Arizona legislation.

OK, how tacky was it to let the Arizona organizers of this school-sponsored event, who had nothing to do with this state law, find out about the rebuke via the Thursday morning news? Very.

But not nearly as tacky -- scratch that, make it senseless and borderline cruel -- as using the hopes and aspirations of a team of plucky young basketball-playing, cookie-selling schoolgirls who actually won their first conference title in 26 years to make a national political statement.

A national political statement that, by the way, lit a fire under Caribou Killer Barbie Sarah Palin and gave the rest of the hysterical Mexican haters who pose as strict defenders of immigration laws a unique opportunity to actually be 100 percent right about something.

This e-mail message from one such constant complainer -- who proudly begs for "CINCO-DE-PORTATION!" -- hit my inbox first thing Thursday morning: "You probably heard by now . . . Well i [sic] myself thinks [sic] this is totally wrong, and has broken these girls [sic] hearts. They played their hearts out to win and qualify for the tourney. They worked so very hard, with bake sales, car washs [sic] etc. to earn the money to finance the trip also. Only to have the politicly [sic] correct liberal idiot administrators say they can't go. If you would, please email the school's administrator and tell them they are WRONG."

When you're right, you're right, buddy -- and congrats on the coup.

Just as Arizona has blurred the line between what's under the purview of federal law and state law, so has Highland Park High School blurred the line between politics and educational experiences. Sadly, they won't be the last.

The backlash against Arizona has become a national movement. Local governments across the country are suspending travel to the state and banning future contracts with businesses headquartered there, and masses of people are in some way or another boycotting the state in hope of getting the law repealed.

Now that Brewer has signed yet another bad bill into law -- this one aimed at ensuring that no Arizona schoolchildren receive instruction in classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group or that advocate ethnic solidarity -- Arizona will surely continue morphing into a national joke.

I don't know if this new law banning ethnic studies classes will uphold its stated desire to teach Arizona's schoolchildren "... to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." More likely it will legislate that no non-Caucasian child can learn about his or her family's heritage.

What I do know is that all this immigration-related craziness should, as much as humanly possible, be kept out of school classrooms and playgrounds. We can't let our country get so hysterical over a single issue that we lose sight of how wrong it is to play politics with kids.

Posted at 05:05 AM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, Chicago, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens, politics | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

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April 19, 2010

Kids need more financial lessons

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2172682,CST-EDT-esther19.article

Kids need more financial lessons

April 19, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

It's Money Smart Week in Chicago, that annual event sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and -- if nothing else -- the city is accented with portraits of a robust Benjamin Franklin winking knowingly from the center of a $100 bill.

Catchy marketing materials aside, I wish Money Smart Week were not just an annual springtime community outreach effort to increase awareness about the importance of financial education, but rather a matter of national law. One of those pseudo-oppressive nanny state jobbies that turn people into stark-raving lunatics about being "force fed" something that's good for them.

I can see it now. Wouldn't it be cool if those replica Ben Franklins roaming the streets of Chicago in support of Money Smart Week were carrying functional revolutionary-era firearms and were allowed to shoot anyone who couldn't differentiate simple from compound interest?

I'm kidding, I'm kidding!!! But only because most people would fail that one and the Chicago Police Department would be working overtime to pick up bodies. What with all the money troubles the city has, that just wouldn't be a financially sound way to incentivize people to learn about the power of the cash they work so hard for every day.

So anyway, financial literacy. It's not a sexy topic to most people, though in some circles it is considered the next civil right. The fact that my very favorite founding father greeted me at the train station the other morning didn't hurt, but what really inspired me to write this column was not a hand-wringing "oh, the children of this country will never learn to manage their money" moment. Quite the opposite.

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite young pals asked me if I would take him to the bank.

"What for?" I asked, wondering if there was a local bank giving away some sort of kid-friendly tchotchke.

"I want to open an interest-bearing checking account with the $220 I've saved up," said the 11-year-old boy, whose first name is Stimpson.

Yes, this kid, who attends school in a financially struggling suburban school district where about 60 percent of students live at or below the poverty line and 20 percent of kids are considered limited in English proficiency, had learned all about the power of interest-bearing bank accounts at school. Having taught high school math in this very district, I know that as recently as four years ago the average high school student didn't have a clue what an interest-bearing checking account was.

Unlike the average kindergarten through 12th-grade child in this country, Stimpson -- a strapping young fifth-grader -- is getting familiar with money topics that have made it clear why putting your money in a bank is preferable to cashing your check at the currency exchange and will ultimately help him decide whether and how to take out car loans or student loans.

Yep, Stimpson is one of the lucky ones because some visionary at his school district decided to partner with Junior Achievement, a nonprofit that goes into schools to "teach the key concepts of work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy to young people all over the world."

Their work is sorely needed. According to a recent article in the New York Times, only 13 states require students to take a personal finance course or include the subject in an economics course before they graduate from high school, up from seven states in 2007, according to the Council for Economic Education. Only 34 states (including those 13) have personal finance education in their curriculum guidelines, up from 28 states in 2007.

It's too bad more elementary school kids aren't itching to get their very own financial adviser. And too bad there aren't enough Benjamin Franklin costumes in the basement of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank to personally reach all of the kiddies in the state to teach them how to manage the money they'll earn and spend throughout their lifetimes.

But Money Smart Week is a good start.

Posted at 05:53 AM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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March 22, 2010

Teach kids to love learning, not just to learn how to earn

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2115069,CST-EDT-esther22.article

Teach kids to love learning, not just to learn how to earn

March 22, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA, Sun-Times Columnist

Whether straining to Leave No Child Behind or Race to the Top, there's no question that this country's leadership is zeroing in on education from kindergarten through college. Most specifically, they're working on the academic gap between the haves and have-nots domestically and on the gap between the United States and other affluent countries.

The Obama administration's new blueprint for overhauling the way our nation educates children is blessedly less focused on just reading and math and more inclusive of art, science and social studies.

There's no question that the overriding concern of the new policy -- getting every state to adopt "college- and career-ready academic standards" -- reflects the White House's belief that higher education is a fundamental driver of future economic stability for this country.

That couldn't be more true, and this renewed commitment is nothing short of wonderful. But still, the former teacher in me laments, why in all this talk of training good teachers and closing student achievement gaps do I rarely hear discussion about learning for learning's sake?

What's constantly missing in this conversation is how to capitalize on the joy of learning, the celebration of a child's (and a teacher's) innate intellectual curiosity, of personal edification.

Actual learning has been replaced by an emphasis on "achievement."

If you had visited a teacher training program in the late '90s, you would have heard conversations about educational philosophies based completely on the goal of harnessing all of the above to create lifelong learners.

But by the time I stood at the front of my own classroom and was finishing up my master's in education in the early 2000s, it seemed the overriding educational goal of policymakers, administrators and not a few teachers was to create lifelong achievers. And not necessarily high achievers mind you, but kids who could sit quietly and do well enough on standardized tests to achieve adequate yearly progress.

With that hurdle jumped, the second burning goal was to get kids through high school and in and out of college for the sole purpose of moving them on to gainful employment.

Nothing wrong with that -- we all gotta eat, and I happen to love work way more than the next guy. But this does not nurture educated masses who value learning so much that they do it for a lifetime and pass it on to their own children; it creates a nation of lifelong earners, not learners.

That's weird to me. I don't think of higher education as just job training.

Let's look at the mission statements of my alma maters.

Roosevelt University, which trained me as a teacher, says it is "dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit." Its aim is to prepare "diverse graduates for responsible citizenship in a global society."

Southern Illinois University, where I was an undergraduate, says that it "supports intellectual exploration at advanced levels in traditional disciplines and in numerous specialized research undertakings" to "help solve social, economic, educational, scientific, and technological problems, and thereby to improve the well-being of" basically, the world.

Those are the kinds of aspirations that will create new jobs in the future. They'll be created by innovative thinkers and entrepreneurs who can conceive new businesses, products and services the whole world will be dying to get from the United States This innovative class will do it not only because they want to get rich, but because creating something new using what you've learned -- and learning something new in the process -- is ridiculous fun.

Applause to the White House for putting education at center stage. Now if they truly want U.S. schools from kindergarten through grad school to make it in that race to the top, they need to keep their eyes on the prize:

A love of learning, not just earning.

Posted at 07:52 AM in culture, education, kids/teens, politics, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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March 01, 2010

Parents cringe as more Latino students go away to college

Parents cringe as more Latino students go away to college

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2075669,CST-EDT-esther01.article

March 1, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

'Go away!" I tell them. Let me explain. On occasion, well-meaning teachers call me in to high schools to talk to kids who are poised to be the first in their family to attend college. I get to impress these future leaders of America and their parents with the endless benefits of higher education.

Dutifully, I cover all of the important stuff that comes from completing a degree or certification: the increased opportunity for a lifetime of stable careers, the pure joy of intellectual enlightenment. Then I get to the part that makes parents cringe: the unparalleled fun of breaking away from all you know and becoming an independent adult for the first time ever.

Often this goes over poorly with the parents in the room. When it's a predominantly Hispanic crowd, the brows furrow in a synchronized wave of distaste at the mere mention of "going away" to college. That's because in Latino households where a college education is a cherished hope, it's also generally expected that the student in question will stay home to be supported by the family in the endeavor.

Culturally speaking, Latinos are literally all about the family. Generations live together under the same roof, caring for each other from infancy to old age. You fear Dad more than you fear God, and Mom is the center of the universe. So no matter how much of a fancy schmancy smarty pants you think you are, you just don't break Mami's heart by going away to college!

From the perspective of so many parents who didn't get the opportunity to do so themselves, you just don't let your tender young child go off hundreds of miles away to study and do who-knows-what with who-knows-who. In my case, my parents knew better than to try to stop me, and lo all these years later, I can finally say there are a whole lot of others following in my footsteps.

A recent study by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute found that since 1975, the share of Latino freshmen at four-year colleges who choose schools more than 50 miles from home has risen from about 46 percent to nearly 59 percent. At the same time, those attending four-year colleges within 10 miles of home dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, while the proportion of white freshmen who went away to school stayed unchanged, about 66 percent.

This obviously points to the explosive growth of an acculturated Hispanic middle class comfortable with the idea that college is a ticket to the "American Dream" and that high school kids graduate and leave home for school, rather than get a job to help support the rest of the family.

Sure, the whole issue of where Latinos study is trivial when you stop to consider that despite all efforts, only 27 percent of Latinos ages 18 to 24 were enrolled in college in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That's an increase from the 1980s, but still low compared with whites, at 43 percent, and blacks, at 33 percent.

But going away -- if the opportunity is within reach -- is really important. Even Latinos who stay home know they're missing out on a special part of life. "At first, I really didn't want to go away," Ana Perez, a senior at DePaul University who lives at home in Humboldt Park and commutes to school, told me recently. "I'm really close with my family, and I didn't want to lose out on being with them."

Ana admitted that although her parents never came out and said she shouldn't go away, her college years were never discussed in the context of being out of the nest. Now in her final months as a college student, she says she's happy with her choice, but "I wish I could have done it. I didn't get to experience a lot of things -- being on my own, learning how to rely on just myself. When I have my own kids, I definitely will encourage it."

That's just how it goes: the Esthers and the Anas of the world will continue to go out and broadcast how rip-roaring wonderful college life can be, and in a few generations, a whole culture will be changed for the better.

Posted at 05:30 PM in crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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February 08, 2010

Palin uses 'retard' issue not to support, but to tear down

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2034937,CST-EDT-esther08.article

February 8, 2010

BY ESTHER J CEPEDA

Over the years, I've known many people whom I considered less advanced in mental, physical or social development than is usual for their age. Faced with such a person frustrating me, I never came out and called them "retarded," though that's the very definition of the term. I'm persnickety about words and, frankly, I've chosen more colorful language.

Oh, that Rahm Emanuel had done the same and relied on his panoply of "f-word" conjugations.

In case you haven't heard, President Obama's notoriously foul-mouthed chief of staff bowed to pressure and apologized to Tim Shriver, the CEO of the Special Olympics, after it came out in the Wall Street Journal that Emanuel had used the term "retard" to describe fellow Democrats who weren't playing ball on supporting a particular version of the health-care reform bill.

Next thing you know, Sarah Palin is waving around her Down syndrome baby Trig to shame one of the highest-profile actors in the Obama administration in the name of common decency toward those with developmental disabilities.

The entire indignation rests on the popular notion that other people are responsible for one's own self-esteem and is fueled by the human ability to seek insult -- and find it -- at every turn.

Don't get me wrong. If it were up to me, everyone would be perfect, and we'd all love each other and co-exist in a state of loving, utopian harmony; but that isn't the case, is it?

But let's specifically get back to developmental disabilities.

Developmental disabilities exist and are even more prevalent today than ever before because of better awareness and more diagnosis. As I earned a master's degree in special education, I got to study, teach and hang out with students living happily and unhappily with behavioral and emotional disorders, autism, cognitive and physical disabilities of every stripe in kindergarden to high school classrooms.

I can tell you from firsthand experience that among the "kids who ride the short bus," the word "retard" is used in the exact same connotation as Emanuel used it -- without regard to a specific disability, not as a slur against those with medically documentable limitations, but as a razz.

Let me be 100 percent clear: I am not saying it's OK to use the word "retard" as an insult -- it's not nice. And if special education advocates want to use this incident as a platform upon which to spread awareness of how one word damages a particular segment of the disabled population, that's great. The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, formerly the American Association of Mental Retardation, is already doing work in this area.

What I am saying is that a person -- or group of people -- can spend a lifetime looking for insult and finding it. This " 'retard' as a slur" thing is a minor kerfuffle that will now take on a life of its own not because a concerned mother feels the need to advocate for a group of people but because she wants to tear someone else down.

I guess you could say I was lucky that most of my teaching years were spent in primarily Spanish-language classrooms. It cut down on the number of times I had to hear someone use the word "retard" or its descriptive form, "retarded." But there were other slurs, there always are. In any language, in groups of any ethnic makeup or age, people say insulting things; it's human nature.

But even the kids who ride the short bus know to shrug stuff like that off. Or respond viciously with the kind of foul language that would make Emanuel's face burn. That's human nature, too.

Posted at 05:18 AM in Current Affairs, education, Health/Medicine/nutrition, kids/teens, politics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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January 25, 2010

How will kids be healthy if their parents eat junk?

How will kids be healthy if their parents eat junk?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/2009208,CST-EDT-esther25.article

January 25, 2010

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

In the early-morning hours before Michelle Obama addressed the Conference of Mayors in Washington to make her pitch about the importance of curbing childhood obesity last week, I was sitting in a crowded elementary school gymnasium with kids and their parents, fearing for the heart attack victims of tomorrow.

The occasion was a salute to the school's honor roll students, which certainly called for an extra dose of celebratory sugar, sure. But it wasn't the kids' liberal dose of syrup for the French toast sticks that concerned me; it was parents' obvious lack of any nutritional cognizance that sounded the alarms.

Children mimic their parents' behaviors and habits, and if a child sees his mom or dad bypass the freshly cut fruit and whole-grain bagels in order to load up a plate with greasy muffins, iced sweet rolls and French toast sticks drenched in syrup destined to be downed with a handful of juice boxes, what, exactly, will they understand about healthy eating habits?

Though, who can blame anyone for looking for some sweetness in life these days? I'm sad to say there were tons of parents at this breakfast because so many are out of work. I heard their stories myself: One dad was telling an acquaintance he had been laid off months ago and his wife was working two jobs. Another lady was worried about making it to an upcoming Parent Teacher Organization meeting because her scant hours at work are all over the map and she's never really sure where she's going to be. Who could begrudge these people a couple of extra free cheese danishes?

During her speech, Obama rattled off facts: Nearly one-third of children in America are overweight or obese, and one-third of all children today will eventually suffer from diabetes -- in African-American and Latino communities it goes up to almost half. She cited recently published studies stating that obesity could now be an even greater threat to Americans' health than smoking, that medical experts are predicting the next generation is on track to have a shorter life-span than their parents, that budget cuts are decimating school gym time, and that crime makes it impossible for most parents to tell their kids to go out and play until dark.

I'd add that we are also burdened by school systems that pump our children full of sugar and fat-laden breakfast and lunches -- the poorest among them for a low cost or for free -- and then wonder why they get labeled by frustrated teachers as behavior-issue problem kids. Also add that parents don't understand the consequences of what their kids eat because they never learned what healthy eating means.

The first lady closed her speech by praising creative ideas some cities are trying in order to manage the problem, but she also soberly stated the obvious: Efforts to curb childhood obesity won't be cheap, easy or quick. I agree with her and add that it's doable. At the very least, it's the worthiest goal I can think of.

We may have tragically lost a generation to killer eating habits, but if the statistics horrify enough leaders and role models into action, helping others understand good nutrition, then in about 40 years we'll have a whole crop of young parents -- and enlightened grandparents -- who'll know that "fruit punch" is not fruit juice, and certainly not preferable to fresh, frozen or dried fruit.

They'll get it that a "special treat" is not something that occurs hourly or even daily. They'll know that if you have time to surf the Web, you can also make time to box your best friend on the Wii. And they'll understand that -- repeat after me -- chocolate-chip bagels, banana split-flavored yogurt and blueberry jam granola bars are not "health food."

2050 here we come!

Posted at 07:30 AM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Food and Drink, Health/Medicine/nutrition, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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January 07, 2010

Three cheers for shop class

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Auto shop, wood shop, metal shop – all horrors of a certain segment of the high school population. Let’s face it, shop class never got much respect.

So, when I read Rosalind Rossi’s story "Shop Class shake-up" in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times I was near giddy. In it, Rossi details a new Chicago Public Schools push to elevate shop classes from the second-tier electives most people recall to high-tech, certified vocational education programs that will put kids into decent-paying 21st century careers the day they walk out of high school.

It’s about time.

We live in a world where the corridors of the educational industrial complex are clogged with academics and starry-eyed teachers who truly believe that every single student in the United States must be prepared and routed straight to a four-year college. They believe that to expect anything less is to doom a child to a life of destitution.

I’m not making this stuff up. You need only spend about 15 minutes with the average teacher or teaching professor at any educational facility in this country; if you were to opine that hey, maybe not every Susie and Tommie should be encouraged to strive for Harvard or Princeton, you’d get looked at like you were a monster. A bad one. The kind of monster that did not, in fact, believe that every single human in the world must study Jane Austen – sans zombies – or Greek philosophy to experience a happy, productive or healthy life.

(I dare you to try this next time you come across a professional educator, sucker! Dare you not to roll your eyes when the words "I believe the children are our future…" come rolling out.)

Don’t get me wrong: we are indeed operating in a 21st century knowledge economy and every single student who wants to go to college should get every bit of assistance humanly possible to do so, but college prep shouldn’t be the sole focus of schools as it currently stands. When my washing machine spewed soapy water all over my basement a few weeks back I did not consult a mechanical engineer. I also didn’t call one of my many brilliant PhD friends. Nope, I called up my local appliance repairman, thanked him with a nearly unnatural ferocity after he showed up at my house on a Sunday morning. Then, with a great big smile, I happily paid him a lot of money when my machine was working again.

It takes all kinds to make this world go ‘round: doctors and car mechanics, lawyers and magnificent sous chefs, accountants and creative, talented construction workers. Starting next year, CPS’ new "College and Career Academy" programs will be a living testament to that by training kids to walk out of senior year with the expertise to begin work in so-called "middle-skill" careers such as electricians, medical technicians, welders, and computer support services. And don’t worry, this is not some fairy-tale CPS lark, many many school districts across the country and in Illinois already have similar, and successful programs (Lake County, IL’s High School Technology Campus is one notable example).

So three cheers to the CPS shop rats of tomorrow from someone who knows she’ll soon be shelling out major dollars to the furnace repair woman – they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank as I make my thousand-dollar student loan payment every month.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Posted at 08:11 PM in Chicago, education, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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December 07, 2009

How to deal with violent DVDs, games for kids

Say no to violent DVDs, games for kids

http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1924559,CST-EDT-esther07.article

December 7, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

Just in time for the biggest gift-buying, extended-family-all-shoved-into-one-house holiday extravaganza of the year, the Federal Trade Commission has again wagged its finger at Hollywood for peddling violent and inappropriate fare to kiddies.

For the seventh time since 2000, their report, titled "Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children," points out that even though the pushing of violent images by the film, music and gaming industries has become more restricted, they're basically still explicitly and pervasively targeting young children. No surprises there.

The FTC bemoans the entertainment conglomerates that put out unrated DVDs with more materials more explicit than what originally was released in theaters and calls out retailers that, more often than not when they get the chance, sell the stuff to children who don't meet the minimum age requirements. The FTC says Hollywood advertises PG-13 and R-rated movies during TV shows and on Internet sites where they'll be seen by too-young kids. The FTC also criticizes the music industry for not appropriately displaying their Tipper Gore-ian warning labels prominently enough in ads, but it gives an approving nod to the gaming industry for imposing strong self-regulatory codes.

What the FTC really ought to do -- though it's clearly out of its purview -- is create a rating system for parents. It could run the gamut from a gold star for the enlightened soul who engages in a thoughtful dialogue with his young 'un when something uncomfortably violent and sexual penetrates the cocoon of familial safety, down to a big fat dummy sticker on the forehead for the idiot who shows up to an 8 p.m. Saturday night screening of "Zombieland" with his 5-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy. The kids cried quietly the whole time.

What I'm illustrating here is that, yes, the FTC should absolutely continue to monitor the entertainment industry so that advertisements for "Grand Theft Auto" aren't stamped onto our 6-year-old's fruit roll-ups. But those really to blame for the pervasive exposure of kids to violent and sexually inappropriate entertainment are the families that either encourage it or do nothing to deal with it.

Take, for instance, a 2002 study by the Albert Einstein Children's Hospital in New York.

Researchers, who were testing the wisdom of the American Academy of Pediatrics' television viewing recommendations, observed 199 child patients and their parents when the kids were alert and awake. They found a "consistent exposure to inappropriate programming" -- with the number of instances going up when an adult was in the room.

Which brings me back to the gift-giving and movie-going season. If you're buying presents for pre-teen-wannabes, tweens or young teens, there are a couple of reasonable approaches you can take.

One: Have some spine and say "no." Don't go being the "cool" mom, dad, aunt or uncle by slipping your favorite 10-year-old that video game or DVD that makes you squirm. Accepting the role of hated villain now is good practice. If your kids are young, you'll be putting your foot down on 7 million other things, so get over it now.

Two: Bond over it. If you're going to buy that killing video game, go to that bloody movie or just out and get a dose of environmental sexually-charged violent make- believe, acknowledge it. Talk about it.

It sounds stupid, I know, but if you keep it real with the kids in your life -- "You know in real life you'd go to jail if you cut your neighbor in half with a sword, don't you?" or "Do you know how much money computer animation artists make!?" -- you can turn a negative into a not-as-negative that you can live with.

Posted at 08:00 AM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, Film, Games, Health/Medicine/nutrition, kids/teens, Music, responsibility, Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

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November 30, 2009

The city's hungry need help after Thanksgiving, too

Thanksgiving alone doesn't fill bellies of the city's hungry

Chicago Sun Times November 30, 2009 http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1910709,CST-EDT-esther30.article

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

'Tis the season to be jolly! You're stuffed from the turkey and trimmings, all the relatives have been placated for the time being, and the Christmas carols haven't gotten on your nerves yet.

But things are moving quickly. There are greeting cards to mail, people to visit, electronic gadgets to hunt down and parties to get to. You're busy. Verrrrry busy. And stressed out, and even a little overwhelmed . . . ummmm, maybe this is not the time to ask for a favor?

Well, here I go anyway, but I'll make it as simple as possible: Please feed me.

And when I say "me," well, OK, so not me, per se . . . but all the other "me's" I live and work with: young neighbors, old friends, co-workers and kids. Yours, too. They're all still hungry after the Thanksgiving holiday.

"I can't tell you how many times I've wished there was as much attention paid to the hunger problem in this city after Thanksgiving as before," Kate Maehr, executive director of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Cook County's main food bank, told me last week.

"It really is incredible how generous people are leading up to Thanksgiving, but hunger in Chicago is a 365-day-a-year challenge," she said.

Maehr had gotten my attention by appealing to my insatiable devouring of delicious statistics via this delectable e-mail:

"Between now and the end of December the Food Depository will distribute:

• 241,920 pounds of turkey

• 67,500 pounds of yams

• 43,200 pounds of ham

• 36,960 pounds of cranberry sauce

• 33,516 pounds of corn

• 19,440 pounds of stuffing

• 18,000 pounds of chicken

• 4,375 pounds of gravy . . ."

I called her to really sink my teeth into the logistics of slinging all those goodies to almost half a million Chicagoans every year when I was distracted by the phrase, ". . . but the need continues."

"What do you mean the need continues?" I asked her incredulously. "Aren't there like 7 gazillion food drives at the holidays. Isn't this your easiest time of the year to raise food and funds? Holiday spirit? Good will toward men?"

Kate was kind enough to not bite my head off.

"We have almost 600 member agencies struggling to keep food on shelves; there is such a dramatic increase in people turning to these agencies that we're shattering records," she said. "For instance, September tends to be a really slow month for us, but this September, we were already 26 percent ahead of last year's pace in pantry visits, and 70 percent ahead of the pace of two years ago."

"But what about the spirit of the season, Zuzu's petals and all that -- don't you rake it in at this time of year?" I asked.

"Well, that's certainly the case leading up to Thanksgiving, but December is a whole different story. We all get preoccupied with our lists -- gifts to buy, things to pack for vacation, resolutions to start -- and along the way, people start to think that one can of food or a small donation doesn't do much," she said. "That couldn't be farther from the truth -- that one can of food, the $5 donation, it means everything to us. And we need you every day."

So there it is.

And here I am, asking on behalf of me, and Maehr, and the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and on behalf of the half-million Chicagoans -- a third of them children -- who are hungry, even when we're tight on cash and time: Feed young neighbors, old friends, co-workers and kids.

Take a moment this December to feed Chicago.

Posted at 07:31 AM in Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Food and Drink, Health/Medicine/nutrition, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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November 11, 2009

Economic tier scheme for CPS selective enrollment schools: go back to the drawing board

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Looking back on it, I just don’t know how I made it in.

Growing up at Addison and Lincoln there was no question where I wanted to go to high school: the gorgeous, ivy-covered walls of Albert G. Lane Technical High School up the street at Addison and Western.

The place where, every time I mentioned it, older folks would say "that place, yeah, my brother went there…before they let girls in."

I remember the first time I ever graced Lane’s halls as a knock-kneed 8th grader back around February of 1988. There, on that stunning campus, I took something called an "entrance exam." When the bell rung, out flooded big girls and boys of every color, style, and age imaginable and I remember I just could not wait to join them and be totally cool with a new-wave hair-do and black and white tights in thick black clod-hopping combat boots.

Also I remember being told to not hold my breath. "I hope you noticed all the other boys and girls in that auditorium taking the same test you did, Esther," Mr. Nutley, the St. Andrew’s school principal warned me and the three other kids who had braved the elements to take the test. "They’re all really bright, too, I hope your family applied to other schools just in case."

Fast forward to November 2009.

I absolutely cannot begin to imagine what sort of Dickensian horror city parents today go through to get their kids into decent schools. Even the schools in the "good" neighborhoods have spotty teaching quality and the rest – well, their achievement and standardized test scores speak for themselves. That leaves selective-enrollment schools like Lane Tech and Payton College Preps, and magnets like Whitney Young and Chicago Metropolitan High schools.

Now, in the wake of the "clout scandal" and the recent tossing of the 1980 desegregation consent decree that had given schools leeway in admissions based on race, the Chief Mathemagician at CPS, Ron Huberman, has come up with a plan to select enrollment to these schools based on family income.

As ace education reporter Rosalind Rossi outlined in Wednesday’s Sun-Times story "College Preps to admit by income" there will be four economic tiers ranging from $22,959 to $61,862, which is estimated to cover about 600,000 students – the neediest in the city. But it leaves the "middle class" kids whose family’s household income is above that top number. The kids of Frank the fireman and Darla the nurse who are doing alright, but probably not alright enough to send their kids to private schools if they can’t get them into the "good" CPS schools.

I have consistently clanged the bell of educational equality based on socio-economic status over race for years, and I’m really glad Huberman has taken his statistical analysis skills out of the same tired old race box, but I worry that there will still be kids unfairly left behind.

Depending on whether the plan gets voted in by the CPS School Board December 16th and then on a "principal pick" situation, the admission status of a sibling, scores on entrance tests, and/or proximity to schools, there’s still ample opportunity for families to be left out in the cold.

What, exactly, is so wrong with putting ALL eligible kids – ignoring race and income –

in a locally televised lottery for all to see?

Why are we contriving to ensure the proper mix of students by segregating them whether it is by race or income? In either case you exclude city residents because they aren’t the right color or because they’ve been fortunate enough to make a decent living for themselves. It just doesn’t feel fair.

My parents, thank goodness, were professionals who came to this country with some serious skills. They lived out an American Dream that included a private elementary school that enabled me to make the cut and live my life-long desire to attend Lane Technical High School.

If I were trying to get in today – under this new plan, if it is passed – I would have lost a leg-up on the ethnicity aspect (which would have been perfectly fine by me), might have still shined based on my academic prowess, but might have gotten passed over because my parents made too much money. I don’t like those odds.

All parents want to believe that if they work hard, they can get a decent education for their kids. City parents know it’s a gamble between a bad or so-so school; short of leaving town, all Chicago parents just want an equal chance at some of the better schools regardless of their income or race.

The CPS School Board – which was appointed to represent all parents, not just the financially neediest ones – must ensure they get their fair shot.

Posted at 08:31 PM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

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November 02, 2009

Day of the Dead goes mainstream

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Chicago Sun-Times November 2, 2009

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1859076,CST-EDT-esther02.article

Death is all around us. Well, that much is always true, but it has been especially so around my house, where, since Sunday, my living room has been graced by the yearly addition of a candled, flowered, candied altar to my dead.

Yep, it's that time of the year: Saturday was Halloween, followed immediately on Sunday by the first day of the Mexican, Central and South American celebration Dia de los Muertos, a festival-like tradition honoring departed loved ones.

Today, Nov. 2, is when the whiskey, tequila, heavy food and cigarettes are usually brought out because that's the day deceased adults are honored. But I go to town with candy, toys, flowers and light-hearted trinkets on Nov. 1, which is the day infants and children are remembered -- and the day my own departed young one is celebrated in my home.

The coolest thing about this year's Day of the Dead celebrations is that this -- I proclaim -- is the year it went mainstream. It's no surprise every year when the Mexican supermarkets and bakeries put out the annual sugar skulls, pan de muerto -- "bread of the dead" -- and skeleton pinatas. But this year I've seen Mexican muerto skull sugar cookies in very mainstream bakeries, and I've seen feature stories all over the Internet, in mainstream newspapers, magazines and on TV about how to make the vibrant and fun accoutrements of this Latin American holiday.

I love that for two reasons. First, non-Latinos are learning about Hispanic culture and naturally integrating bits and parts into their own Halloween affairs -- melting pot, I think they call it.

Second, it's a great education for that segment of the Hispanic population who didn't grow up with this tradition. Culture is funny that way, some touchstones ignored by one generation only to be taken up by the next.

Take me, for instance. You might be imagining a young me flanked by black lace-garbed Mama Cepeda and Abuelita Cepeda in a great big sun-drenched kitchen decorated with colorful clay cooking pots, learning with tiny hands how to roll out the masa -- dough -- for the pan de muerto. Perhaps you imagine us decorating the graves of our loved ones. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

A family trip from the bosom of the North Side all the way to Pilsen's National Museum of Mexican Art to see dressed up little skeletons? Not once.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Culture can be so very strong that it need not be drilled in via field trip or workshop. Think chocolate bunnies at Easter.

No, I grew up in this city living whatever the "typical American life" means. Since Mayor Daley never dyed the Chicago river black on Dia de los Muertos, my family never made a fuss about it, reserving their loving attention to ensuring year after year of picture-perfect Halloweens for me.

Like I said, culture is a funny thing. It can skip generations, yet it is so strong that it can leave a homeland, travel thousands of miles and settle into new interpretations. This is only my sixth year of setting up a Day of the Dead altar.

When I started, I felt the need to connect to something symbolic in my heritage, but I didn't want to share my new personal tradition with anyone. I didn't want to deal with explaining that it's not some Satanic hoodoo voodoo thing.

But how scary can Latin American traditions really be to anyone -- even those who fear the melting pot has become an unwieldy and distasteful chunky stew -- when grocery chains sell Day of the Dead greeting cards and delightful pictures, and recipes for traditional sugar skulls, sweet bread, and hot chocolate seem newly omnipresent?

To my great happy surprise, I've "come out" of the Dia del Muerto coffin only to find a pre-Colombian, all-American tradition rising in the U. S. of A.

Posted at 06:40 PM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, Chicago, culture, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, Religion | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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October 27, 2009

What can you do to stop teen violence?

What can you do to stop violence?

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Chicago Sun Times http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1845558,CST-EDT-esther26.article

October 26, 2009

Let's talk. Let's really talk about this problem of youth violence that is tearing us -- not just certain families and classrooms, but all of us -- apart.

Last Thursday, yet another unthinkable heartbreak occurred. A 17-year-old Chicago boy was killed in the middle of a drizzly afternoon, walking home from school. Police said some guy just walked up to him and shot him.

A few weeks ago, the White House had to send in the U.S. secretary of education and the U.S. attorney general because, seemingly, Chicago is ground zero in an escalating catastrophe involving poor kids in tough neighborhoods that's beyond local help.

But it's not. The helplessness you and I feel when we hear about the latest tragedy -- whether a shooting or an unspeakably brutal beating -- is an illusion that serves only to keep us from even contemplating the thought that insistently wakes me up some mornings: "What can I, personally, do to keep Chicago kids from getting killed on our streets?"

No one would fault you for coming to the conclusion that volunteering to serve as a cafeteria monitor at Fenger High School's lunchroom is out of the question.

But it's so much simpler than that: Just ask the question -- "What can I do?" -- out loud.

And I don't mean by posting a frustrated message on a news story comment board or kvetching to your seatmate on the bus that poor teens might simply be a lost cause.

I mean ask a teen.

"If you want to help, talk to young people," said Hilda Franco, a youth organizer at the Chicago Freedom School, a center for youth-led social change that works to get adults and teens to build understanding of current social problems and create coalitions. She teaches a monthly class there on how to think respectfully about, and act respectfully toward, young people.

"There isn't enough space for young people or adults to think and talk about violence in their own life, of how it exists and whether they choose that part of themselves, and no one is asking," Franco said.

If gearing up for a deeply philosophical inquiry with a teen is too much to tackle at first, Franco told me, it's critical to start by simply seeking and listening.

"We've had to do a lot of work to teach teens how to create their own media and document their own stories because the media does not talk to young people," she said. "It's always adults writing the news articles and telling the stories."

Faults of the media aside, what's important is to turn our respectful attention to the experiences of young people -- whether they're "at-risk" or not.

It's the only way to create a space where understanding can begin.

I find people really undervalue just talking openly and honestly about fears and concerns, and that's doubly true when it comes to talking to teenagers -- about anything, really. Popular culture, TV sitcoms and slapstick movies have reduced adults' ideas of the teenage temperament to a small handful of stereotypes.

How could anyone over 21 hope to meaningfully contribute to solving the puzzle of how to secure the passage of the city's future to the actual future through that sort of lens?

"People just don't want to talk about it or think about it, and that's going to continue the cycle," Franco said. "If we keep ignoring teens and this issue, we're ignoring a really, really big thing. We need this city's adults to step up and become allies to the young."

Give it some thought.

Open your mouth.

And if you can't find a young person who trusts you enough to talk honestly about how teen violence makes him (or her) feel and what he would do about it, start by searching for the answer within yourself.

Posted at 07:16 AM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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October 21, 2009

College from Pennsylvania to Chicago’s Southside to the Future, with Fish.

"Way more than 600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Let’s celebrate! And let’s celebrate fish! And fishing!

Yes, you heard me right.

Between the shootings that happen steps from school boundaries and the domestic violence that splatters on the very kids who are supposed to grow up and lead us to a brighter, better tomorrow, it seems like there’s just not a whole lot of good news to celebrate on the teen front.

I have some. Good news – not fish, that is. But more about fish later.

This weekend while you and I relax Friday after work, then sleep late, overindulge Saturday night, and finally veg in front of the Bears game Sunday afternoon, there’ll be about 160 Chicago high school students gathering at Daley College Arturo Velasquez Institute and Little Village Lawndale High School to think deep, intellectual thoughts about the heady topic of food.

The occasion is the "New Frontiers of Knowledge" program a new collaboration between Bucknell University and nine Chicago public and charter schools. The program, starting Friday morning, is bringing together twenty-six Bucknell University students and faculty members to spend three full days helping our kids think critically, scientifically, economically, and artistically about food.

That’s right: our group of college-kid-wannabes aren’t going to train for some sort of academic competition or prepare themselves to do well on standardized tests, they’ll be talking, questioning, analyzing, defining problems, drawing conclusions, and reflecting.

In short the all-volunteer Bucknell crew – fresh in from a ten-hour road trip from their Lewisburg, PA campus – will be teaching our kids what it really takes to succeed after high school graduation.

"For twenty years we’ve worked with populations of students from average to the best and the first thing we discovered is that the number one determinant of success in college is not academic ability, rather it’s the ability to be self directed and to be able to do critical processing," said Rolando Arroyo-Sucre, the chief officer for diversity and equity at Bucknell University, who is spearheading this extremely ambitious project.

Triggered in part by the 2008 report by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College, and Bucknell University’s strategic plan to increase diversity on its campus, the collaboration wants to help prepare talented underrepresented inner city Chicago high school students for admission and academic achievement at private, selective, liberal arts colleges.

Translation: this weekend, while small groups are busily looking at food-wonderful-food through the lenses of the key components of liberal arts education, our high-schoolers will be gleaning from the Bucknellians what the demands are at highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities, what the transition from high school to college means, and, frankly, how to deal with being a kid from the other side of the tracks attending a predominantly white institution of higher education.

During the training of the Bucknell volunteers, Arroyo-Sucre said he emphasized that despite the fact that the high school participants will be underprivileged, the bigger lessons to impart should revolve around familiarity with the higher education culture. "Hispanics, blacks, poor whites, the challenge for them is not a color one, it’s actually socio-economical and the lack of familiarity with the system," Arroyo-Sucre said.

"These kids will have fun working in teams, making presentations, having side conversations about college life, and gain valuable peer-to-peer relationships, but the really exciting thing is this idea of the 160 of the best and brightest realizing they are not alone," Arroyo-Sucre gushed. "I’ve seen it before, I’ve seen the students realize it is OK to be what they are – to be smart. They see it’s OK because there is a critical mass of people who feel the way they do, people who enjoy learning."

When I caught up with Abraham Ramirez, 15, and Martina Camacho, 16, both from Hubbard High School on the city’s far-southwest side, believe me, they were ready to squeeze every drop of opportunity from the experience.

"I’m looking at it like a way to figure out how I’m going to get there," Abraham, a sophomore, told me, referring to "college" as a not a place but almost as another world. "I want a good career when I grow up, and spending the weekend with my friends and college people sounds interesting."

Martina, a junior who has had a life-long dream of becoming a pediatrician, is especially looking forward to finding out what this whole "thinking out of the box" business is and how she can use it to get to where she’s going. "I want this [experience] to be something I can use outside of school, like, to really improve my life."

She won’t be disappointed: this weekend is just the beginning of a years-long collaborative process between students and the Bucknell crew. They’ll be keeping in touch through web-based communication tools, working on a long-distance group project that will last a full year, and prepare for a conference next fall, all while maintaining the very relationships that will de-mystify college not only for themselves, but for their friends and families as well.

Arroyo-Sucre has the highest of hopes, not only for this "class" but for the ripple effect it could have. "As we get the student portion of this program set, in the future we’d like to include teachers and counselors to teach them how the college professors approach the work. Then there are the parents – the idea is to find professional mentors for parents and creating small groups where the parents can ask questions, have brag time, and get to feel comfortable with learning and enabling their students to learn," Arroyo-Sucre said. "Teaching parents how to help develop skills and instill motivation in their students is key."

Of course this out-of-town, fresh-faced, idealistic team has their work cut out for them but they’re dreaming big for Chicago students – thank goodness – even as we residents wallow in self-pity for how enormous their challenges are.

Arroyo-Sucre sees it as a simple thing, really, "We’re talking about these high-level theories for college admission and success, but we’re not giving away fish, we’ll be teaching these students how to catch their own."

Posted at 10:21 PM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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October 07, 2009

Marilyn Stewart's idea: CPS schools for disruptive students might work

CPS Schools for disruptive students might work

Chicago Sun-Times October 5, 2009 http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1806304,CST-EDT-esther05.article

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Outspoken Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart gave me pause last Thursday.

In a speech to the City Club of Chicago, she suggested that chronically disruptive students be cast off to special schools so they could get an appropriate education there and leave the non-disruptive kids in peace to learn as best they can.

I am not a Stewart fan, but even through that filter I had to stop and consider. On a normal day, I might have automatically dismissed such a -- on the face of it, at least -- potentially life-ruining placement for any student who doesn't fall neatly into the special-education category or who hasn't already started down a path of criminal behavior.

Wouldn't putting all these kids together make for one big powder keg -- or create a failure factory?

But last Thursday wasn't a normal day.

That morning, I had cracked open the Lake County News-Sun only to look into the eyes of one of my former high school algebra students, now making his first media appearance for alleged acts of burglary, theft and forgery, and finally being nabbed for it.

I'd had now-21-year-old Rafael Mendoza in not one, but two, algebra classes during the 2005-2006 school year because he hadn't been able to pass either level in order to graduate, so the school had put him in two separate levels at once to get him done and out.

Rafael wasn't a violent young man. He wasn't one of the ones peddling drugs and making a scene around my classroom doorway. And because he thought I was one of the few teachers who did not treat him like a criminal -- he had not, by all accounts, gotten caught up in anything yet -- he spent much of his time in the refuge of my classroom.

After the first few weeks of power struggles, the respect I paid him paid me back. In my room, Rafael was mostly a quiet, well-behaved pupil who clearly was really, really smart.

He could have passed those classes easily had he not been working outside of school to help support his family.

But that was my experience with Rafael. To other teachers, he was nothing short of a terror. He intimidated some teachers with sharp questions and attacked the boring ones with childish antics. Some of the faculty were actually physically afraid of him -- and fearful for my physical safety because he spent so much time in my classroom.

Rafael made administrators' blood boil, to say the least, but through it all, he wasn't the kind of kid who had really done anything to warrant being bounced out of a mainstream school setting -- a place rife with pregnancy, classroom and hallway violence, alcohol and drug problems and the fallout of absent parents.

I don't know if Rafael ever got his high school diploma, but I do know the destructive impact he had on classmates outside of my algebra lessons: mounds of lost instruction time; undermining of other students' respect for their teachers; some diluted bullying, annoying those who actually wanted to learn. In short, distractions galore.

Would a system of identifying students like Rafael and putting them in classrooms with top, specially trained teachers who could really "reach" them disintegrate into a holding cage for students who simply were not stamped out by someone else's version of a proper cookie-cutter?

That's a reasonable fear. But it's a fear that should be set aside to investigate the possibility that such a program could recoup thousands of hours of instruction time in mainstream classrooms.

And maybe Stewart's idea of a separate school for kids who aren't violent or don't qualify for special-education services -- but clearly need something other than what a regular school can offer -- would help keep those kids on the margins out of real trouble.

If only Rafael Mendoza could have had that opportunity.

Posted at 08:04 PM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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September 07, 2009

T'was the night before the First Day of School

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1756747,CST-EDT-esther07.article

Parents: Stay on top of your kids as school begins

ESTHER J. CEPEDA

September 7, 2009

Mama Cepeda likes to tell the story of my first day of school. There she was: a tearful heap of insecurity, worried about the consequences of unleashing me onto an unsuspecting world. And me? As the legend goes, I tore away from her so eager to burst into my classroom that I barely turned to half-heartedly wave goodbye.

Yep, the first day of school is really tough . . . on parents.

And tomorrow -- the first day of classes in the Chicago Public Schools -- is the big one for moms, dads, aunties and grandmas all over the city. It's the culmination of about a month's worth of whining about earlier bedtimes, battles about what clothes to buy and mad scrambles to get every item on a seemingly endless list of school supplies.

And that's the easy stuff.

For too many parents, it's tough enough to actually pay for all those school supplies and tangle with red tape to ensure their school's free lunch program has the paperwork necessary to get little Tanesa or little Eduardo fed every day. Then there are legitimate fears about whether their child will get grazed by gun violence at school or whether the H1N1 flu virus will strike, sending tenuous family schedules into the tizzy of finding adequate medical and child care.

When I was a teacher, it was never lost on me how that first week of school -- with its inevitable missed school bus connections, forgotten snacks and surprise missing textbook fees from the previous year -- caused more sleep-depriving angst for families than for kids.

Take heart, parents. It isn't always easy to be the beacon of positivity on the night before the dreaded first day of school, but it's a task well worth the effort. Here are some words of wisdom from folks in the trenches, so you can start the new year off right.

"Keep positive so they won't be that nervous," advised Esthela Jacquez, a second-grade teacher at Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez Elementary School in Little Village. "Talk to your kids and let them know everything's going to be OK."

Jacquez said the key is to maintain close contact with the teacher, no matter how busy or how many jobs you're juggling.

"Meeting your child's teacher is critical," she said. "Come out to open houses, and if you can't, call us and we'll do whatever it takes to meet you when you can talk. We have phones, e-mail, and we'll send notes back and forth."

The early grades are a bit different than high school -- the little ones are usually so eager to return. The upper grades are trickier -- what with the hormones, cliques, temperaments and hectic family lives that aren't conducive to sitting together at the kitchen table until all homework is done.

"Don't let them slip down a slippery slope -- it's easier to keep up than to catch up," said John Stowers, a business teacher at Mundelein High School.

Stowers, who teaches college preparedness classes, warned parents to be ultra vigilant.

"Do not let kids fall into a missed homework hole," he said. "Be on top of them from the very first day, don't let them take it easy those first weeks or they'll have to work twice as hard at digging out right off the bat."

Finally, for a benediction for all parents struggling with this back-to-school season, I called upon the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina on the South Side to put it all into perspective.

"Show all the students in your life how important this new school year is to you," Pfleger said. "Just as you mark physical growth in a doorway, a new academic year is an important mark of another step in the road on the journey of life."

Posted at 02:59 PM in crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, kids/teens, politics, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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August 24, 2009

ACT prep a step towards college

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/1730856,CST-EDT-esther24.article

ACT prep a step towards college

August 24, 2009

ESTHER J. CEPEDA

Let me give you the silver lining first: In 2009, an unprecedented 134,000 Hispanic high school students across the United States took the ACT college admissions and placement exam -- a 16 percent increase over last year and a whopping 60 percent increase since 2005.

The ACT's College Readiness Report, released last week, calculates that this year's average composite score for Hispanics was 18.7 -- matching a high first reached in 2007 -- out of a perfect 36. And while scores in English and reading held steady, math and science were a tenth of a point higher than last year.

But now the cloud:

Despite that record growth in the number of Hispanics taking the test, their actually college readiness skills (meaning they scored high enough on the ACT to indicate they are sufficiently equipped to earn grades of C or better as college freshmen) have been flat -- and unspectacular -- for the last three years.

If you compare that 18.7 average by Hispanic students to the average of 21.1 by all students who took the ACT, the Hispanic students' scores are not that heart-stoppingly bad. But while 23 percent of all students who took the ACT met the test's college-readiness benchmarks in English, math, reading and science (not that such a paltry number shouldn't give you nightmares), only a scant 10 percent of Hispanics did so.

Yes, for the third year in a row, only one in 10 Latino students who took the ACT have a good shot at success in college.

But let's stop right there for a minute -- because just the fact that they're taking the test at all is darned good news.

It's little-known that every single 11th-grader in Illinois takes the ACT each spring as part of the Prairie State Achievement Examination. For free. During class time.

And though some players in this country's education-industrial complex decry standardized testing as patently wrong, culturally biased, unfair, irrelevant, etc., just administering the ACT to every student in Illinois is a gain.

According to the ACT, Illinois' universal testing requirement has made it -- along with Colorado, Michigan, Kentucky and Wyoming -- a major driver in getting Hispanic high school students on the map of college success. Taking this standardized, curriculum-based test, which compares students' scores to each other, ensures that Latino students are considered.

But even more important, our state's every-spring ritual instills in Latino students the idea of "college preparedness" as a staple of Hispanic life for generations to come.

It is well-documented that students who meet or surpass the test's benchmarks in English, math, reading and science are more likely to go to college, stay in school and -- most importantly -- graduate with a degree.

If more Hispanic families understood how critical it is for their children to not only know what the ACT is, but to prepare to take it in their junior year of high school (and that it is vitally important to fill out the form completely, including college preference selections, so colleges will receive the results and can offer scholarships), we might start shoring up this gap.

Awareness alone isn't going to overcome the hurdles of poverty, low-quality schools, language barriers and close-to-zero familiarity with basic tenets of college preparedness that many Hispanic families struggle against.

But just getting that spring ACT test on every family's radar -- families that often are predisposed to understand the high-stakes 11th- and 12th-grade testing because that's the norm in many Latin American countries -- might help get more Latino high school students into free, but elective, school-provided prep classes and prep test sessions.

At a bare minimum, a little ACT knowledge, combined with some extra sleep the night before the test and a healthy morning snack, could put our Hispanic -- and black, white, native-born or immigrant kids -- on track to push Illinois' 2010 ACT test scores onward and upward.

Esther J. Cepeda blogs at 600words.com.

Posted at 07:58 PM in crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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August 17, 2009

Hispanics quickly gain digital skills

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cepeda/1719142,CST-EDT-esther17.article

August 17, 2009

Hispanics quickly gain digital skills

by ESTHER J. CEPEDA

A few weeks ago, the City of Chicago released a report titled "Digital Excellence in Chicago: A City-Wide View." It enumerated -- among other sky-is-falling statistics -- that African Americans in Chicago were 6 percent less likely to use the Internet than whites, called out Spanish-speaking residents as being the rarest users, and topped the entire thing off with: "Latinos as a whole stand out as the least-connected residents."

My immediate thought -- after hitting the roof -- was this: That report may well be true, as far as it goes, but it leaves a dangerous impression that Hispanics in Chicago -- and by implication all across the country -- are digitally clueless. But, in fact, also true is that though they lag behind whites, a big percentage of Hispanics are online -- and more wade into the Web every day, at a faster rate than any other group.

Plus, when Hispanics go online, surf's up.

In a recent report called "The Power of the Hispanic Consumer On-line," Scarborough Research says that a majority -- 54 percent -- of Hispanic adults were online way back in 2007 and that number was growing by about 13 percent a year -- so you know the percentage is considerably higher by now.

Then I remembered that in late March, Chicago-based research firm Mintel released results from a survey showing that Hispanics who are online are more likely to have profiles on social networking sites than non-Hispanics -- 48 percent of them have one compared with 43 percent of black Americans and 31 percent of whites. Other findings from that survey suggested that Latinos online adopt new media technology more quickly than non-Latinos, spend far more time than non-Latinos listening to Internet radio and downloading music and devote more time weekly to surfing, playing multiplayer games and blogging or commenting online.

Just last April, comScore Inc. released numbers that showed that during the past year, the growth of the U.S Hispanic Internet audience outpaced that of the total U.S. online population in terms of number of visitors, time spent and pages consumed. Those Hispanic online visitors -- 20.3 million just in the month of February -- made up 11 percent of the total U.S. online population.

But a few statistics don't tell the whole story. So I blew in some calls to people in the trenches with the young, old, black, white, brown, underemployed and out of work to get their take on things.

Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, an organization that promotes better education in minority Chicago communities, was surprised by the Chicago study, too.

"From my perspective, there is absolutely a divide but mostly among middle-aged and older people," he said. "The younger people realize you have to be connected digitally to even exist anymore and they understand many businesses only accept resumes and applications over the Internet."

Alvaro Obregon, new communities program director for the Resurrection Project, said: "Yes, there are issues with access, but if you look out there you'll see young children doing the texting, they've got their mySpace, and this is forcing parents to say: 'I want to know what my kids know' and they're getting out there and learning it."

Catherine Zurybida, a coordinator at the Odyssey Project, which offers free humanities college classes to low-income students, immediately articulated my gut reaction:

"If that assumption was made by employers, they might conclude that a white candidate has better ordinary, everyday computer skills than a minority," she said. "I would say that's certainly not true, and it's a very destructive stereotype."

Exactly! The easy-headline-grabbing reports are not necessarily inaccurate, but they don't tell the whole story and have a way of getting stuck in people's minds to form limiting stereotypes. But now you know better.

So, clip and save my stats, too. And never let anyone's numbers keep you from knowing that if we really want to talk to each other, technological barriers can be overcome.

Esther J. Cepeda blogs at 600words.com.

Posted at 08:20 AM in African American, Chicago, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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July 15, 2009

Are some children more valuable than others? Colorblindness necessary to fix education in U.S.

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Let us, for just a moment, remember back to oh, let’s say, the year 1980.

The U.S. boycotted the summer Olympics, Jimmy Carter bailed out the Chrysler corporation, Mt. St. Helens erupted in Washington state, and Bruce Springsteen’s latest hit "Hungry Heart" was playing on seemingly every radio across the country.

Some might remember these as "the good old days" when things were as easy as, well, black and white.

Yes, back then the number of people who identified themselves as Hispanic to the U.S. Census was 14.5 million, about 6.5% of the population as compared to African-Americans who in that same year numbered 26.5 million and were 11.7% of the U.S. population.

That would have been a more appropriate time for the National Center for Education Statistics' new report, "Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress."

By 1988, however, Hispanics had multiplied by more than one-third since the 1980 census, growing nearly five times faster than the rest of the population, clocking in at about 19.4 million Americans of Hispanic background, representing 8.1% of the population.

The most recent numbers show the U.S. African American population at 14% and Hispanic at 15%.

My point?

It is the year 2009, folks, there is absolutely no reason why the National Center for Education Statistics should be releasing a report about a Black/White achievement gap for U.S. school children to the exclusion of Hispanic students, not to mention Asian and many other ethnicities.

And no reason why newspapers and television and radio stations across the country should be reporting on this admittedly sad state of affairs (see Illinois numbers here) while excluding the context of every other struggling kid in the U.S. – be they poor and white, from a foreign country, or Latino.

I could point out that it has been widely reported for about two years now that by 2050 Hispanics will be 30% of the U.S. population and African Americans 15% and argue for a special report highlighting Hispanics.

But that would be silly – you can already easily find such reports (Google it). But just try getting the mainstream media to put those in the headlines and I’ll personally bake you a dozen chocolate chip cookies.

There is no need to harp on the fact that, despite the very real challenges and biases African American students face in our abominable school system every day, there are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation's public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools, making up about one-in-five public school students in the United States.

Rather, it is high time to put the race and ethnicity issue – as it relates to student success in this country – in a coffin and bury it forever.

Any intelligent argument about success factors for U.S. children must center around familial wealth (lack thereof, actually) and kids’ access to decent schools, learning materials, and teachers – regardless of skin color.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a statement Tuesday in which he said: "This report makes clear that … when schools serving children of color are primarily staffed by less experienced, less effective teachers, the effects are tragic."

He is wrong because the part about less effective teachers is a true statement for every child, even poor white or Asian ones.

And that’s how we need to look at this problem if we have any hope of fixing it. Enough of trying to overhaul our education system while looking at the issue through the prism of a black/brown/white/blue-eyed/brown-eyed divide.

We are almost a full decade into the new millennium. No one child is more valuable than any other and, certainly, none of them deserve to be more or less valued in the academic research we’ll need for building a first-class educational system for the next thousand years of this nation’s history.

Posted at 10:56 PM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

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June 24, 2009

Ten who are making a big difference for us all – Chicago Latino List 2009

“Way more than 600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

Long story short: nearly every time there’s any sort of Who’s Who/Mover-Shaker/One-to-Watch list in “mainstream” publications there are few, if any, Hispanics on it despite there being a ton of awesome Latinos doing truly amazing things here in Chicago.

So, in order to help blunt this perceived shortage of Latino superstars I decided to start one.

I asked for nominations, got about 120, threw out the “usual suspects” – like elected officials and already well-publicized business and community leaders – narrowed the field to get a diverse group of immigrants, U.S.-born, younger, older, community, and business types, then did one-on-one interviews.

At the conclusion, I found five men and five women all dedicating their personal and professional excellence to making Chicago, Illinois, the U.S. – and sometimes the world – a better place.

Let me say it again: these people are not merely engaged in the noble task of empowering the Hispanic community, they have their sights set on making life better for blacks, whites, multi-ethnics, rurals, suburbans, urbans, immigrants, U.S.-born, and everyone in between.

And, yeah, these rock stars just happen to be Hispanic.

Please join me in getting your inspiration on as you read the stories of the ten incredible people who comprise the first annual “Chicago Latino List.”

Click on the title to read the full profile:

Concepcion Rodriguez, 45 – Scare-you-straight Caretaker of the Dead

A bilingual Funeral Director and embalmer, reformed gang member and volunteer gang intervention specialist, Rodriguez shows children and teens the grisly ravages of drugs, alcohol and the gang culture. She also talks to communities, affluent and needy alike, about how to reach out to kids they might not even think are at risk. Through her work, she has single-handedly saved the lives of hundreds of Chicago children.

Cynthia La Boy, 37 – Conqueror of All Obstacles

A single mother and professional living with a traumatic brain injury after a brutally violent crime, La Boy was told by her doctors she’d never be able to care for herself – much less go to college or have a career. Today she works at the Lake County Housing Authority as a bilingual assistant property manager connecting families to clean, safe living conditions and teaching them how to be responsible homeowners. A living miracle, she’s an award winning advocate and authentic voice for people living with disabilities.

Antonio Martinez Jr., 36 – Charmer of Benefactors

Martinez walked away from a successful dream career in sports marketing to become one of a very few Latinos in the field of professional fundraising. As Assistant Director of Development with the Chicago Community Trust, Martinez raises money to serve the basic human needs of the entire Chicago metropolitan region by supporting vitally-necessary community-based non-profit organizations.

John Viramontes, 57 – Voice to the Voiceless

An accountant by trade and lifelong community activist by heart, Viramontes dedicates his time to major issues including predatory lending, housing parity, rights for visual artists, and immigration. On an eternal quest for social justice, he’s devoted to improving the quality of life in Chicago neighborhoods and empowering struggling artists nationally by being a community presence and passionate spokesperson.

Dr. Ana Gil-Garcia, 54 – Leveler of Educational Inequalities

A tenured University Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, author, esteemed community leader, and forerunning advocate for Latino educational leaders, Gil-Garcia is a three time Fulbright scholar and an internationally acclaimed professional. Gil-Garcia, a published author, works tirelessly for a variety of community organizations and devotes most of her passion to ensuring the Chicago Public School system is a nationally-recognized leader in employing school administration leaders who accurately represent the diversity of their student communities.

Jose Oliva, 36 – Restaurant Worker Sentinel

A Policy Coordinator with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Oliva is a driving force behind the legislative push to earn restaurant workers such common benefits as paid time off and job opportunity training. As the voice of both affluent teens working summer food service jobs and adults who support families with their back-of-house restaurant jobs, Oliva labors to fight poverty, racism and sexism while mobilizing local worker organizations. He not only teaches these groups how to become active and engaged in the federal political process, but he represents them in Washington, DC, as well.

Veronica Arreola, 34 – Professional Feminist

As Assistant Director for the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender and the Director of Women in Science and Engineering Program, Arreola is a dedicated advocate for women’s rights, helping them maneuver professions that even today are still dominated by men. As a mother, accomplished blogger, and activist for women’s reproductive rights, she has won numerous awards for her work and is dedicated to helping women and girls advocate for themselves in Chicago and around the country.

Roberto Cornelio, 51 – Large Business Incubator

The Chief Operating Officer of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Cornelio – a former top executive at Fortune 500 companies – works to raise the funds, nurture the relationships and promote the programs that drive Hispanic business growth and foster the next generation of Hispanic business and business leaders. His work makes it possible for the Latino community’s instinct for entrepreneurship to thrive and, in turn, deliver jobs and opportunities to contribute to the overall economic development and job creation in Chicago and across Illinois communities.

Nelly Aguilar, 33 – Esquire to the Special

Attorney and dedicated special education advocate, Aguilar – mother to a son with Autism – works to protect the educational rights of children with disabilities. One of only approximately 15 lawyers specializing in the rights of students with special education needs, she campaigns for State and Federal law reform to help families’ secure medical, educational and recreational opportunities for their special needs children. Better still, she trains the next generation of attorneys who will serve the hundreds of thousands of Illinois children with disabilities.

Matthew Montez, 22 – De-myth-ifier of the Path to College

A former Pilsen/Little Village caseworker, recent college graduate and eternal optimist, Montez has just committed the next two years of his life to the Illinois Student Assistance Corps. After a seven-week training camp, he’s moving to Rockford to teach high school students how to prepare for, apply to and pay for college. Inspired most by those who avoid controversy and succeed despite adversity, his mission is to connect with high school students who will be the first in their family to go beyond a HS diploma, and teach them how to build enough social capital to get themselves into and through the rigors of college.

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

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Chicago Latino List 2009 – Concepcion Rodriguez, Scare You Straight Caretaker of the Dead

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

She’s big, she’s loud, and she scares children to death.

Well, almost…better said is that 45-year-old Concepcion

“Concha” Rodriguez scares kids who don’t really understand the dangers of gang culture with real-life stories about real dead gangbangers.

“I talk to kids and tell them about the reality of the gang life, about families seeing their children cold, wrapped in plastic, cut up from an autopsy, and about their screams which will haunt me ‘til the day I die,” Rodriguez told me.

A bilingual funeral director and embalmer, the third-generation Mexican-American Rodriguez has worked for Zefran Funeral Home on the South side of Chicago since August 1995. Born in Texas but raised in the inner city of Chicago, by age 16, she was a member of the Lady Aces gang in Pilsen.

“I got out of the gang when my 15 year-old girlfriend was shot and killed as she walked with her boyfriend,” Rodriguez recalls. “They buried her in her quinceanera dress.”

“I made the choice to leave that lifestyle and become somebody, rather than a statistic.”

These days when the 5’10” self-described loudmouth walks into a room of unruly kids who firmly believe they will live forever no matter what, she makes an indelible impression.

“Usually the casket I bring gets their attention,” she told me. She takes that casket to schools and community organizations for her presentation “Don’t be Grounded by Age 18 (Tough talk straight from the Funeral Home),” and has a mirror in it, giving one pause when opened.

If that doesn’t get them she tells her own story. And if that isn’t enough she’ll get into the gross anatomy aspect. “I show the “Y” incision starting in the clavicle and how you cut from neck to navel, then from ear to ear to open your scalp and saw your skull to pull out your brain,” Rodriguez said.

And if that doesn’t get them (she talks to some seriously tough crowds!) she aims for the heart.

“Then I go into description when a mother and father has to go identify their loved one at the morgue – with your face cut up, THAT’s how your mother and father are going to see you,” Rodriguez warns. “If that’s ok for you, fine, but I tell them that when you’re in a gang so is your whole family. What if it’s your mother, little sister, or little brother who dies because of your gangbanging? Then their whole demeanor changes.”

But she doesn’t always stop there – she can’t. Rodriguez gets a shot at the worst kids: the ones who are on the precipice of real harm, real crime, the ones who could still be saved.

“I tell ‘em, ‘you WILL get violated, you WILL get beaten, girls DO get raped. I talk to them about maybe it’s too late for you but keep this away from your brother or sister,”

Her message isn’t just for those who live on the rough streets of the inner-city, though, she travels to some verrrrry nice middle-class and affluent communities, brought in by community organizations who know that today’s gangsta, thug culture holds allure for kids who have it all, too.

“Some bad seeds will be transplanted to the suburbs, or some bad kid’s going to corrupt your kids who’ve got everything and are bored,” she warns parents and grandparents. “I tell parents how they can get involved make a difference these people who live comfortably, ‘go give one hour of your time at the library,’ don’t just call them ‘bad kids’ lets all get together to make a difference. Besides, showing love and giving respect doesn’t cost money.”

But Rodriguez is tame with the adults in the suburban libraries. The really tough kids get an unwelcome trip to her funeral home where the lesson is a little more tangible.

“I tell them that if the walls of my funeral home could talk they’d hear the cries of parents, brothers, sisters,” Rodriguez said. “But when they walk out the door they have the chance to get out.”

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

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Chicago Latino List 2009 - Matthew Montez, De-myth-ifier of the Path to College

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

Did you see the Chicago Sun-Times article Sunday about how the economic downturn – coupled with the new-found, unprecedented popularity of “community organizing” – has made it difficult for idealistic young college grads to get into volunteer service corps?

Well, count Matthew Montez among the lucky ones!

Montez graduated from UIC last month with a B.A. in sociology, and has committed the next two years of his life to the Illinois Student Assistance Corps, a federally-funded program which will be run by the Outreach and Access arm of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the state agency that makes college accessible and affordable for Illinois students and families.

After an intense seven-week training camp, he’s moving to Rockford, Illinois to teach high school students how to prepare for, apply to and pay for college.

“Well in addition to being one of the best jobs I could find out there, I’m excited to go to someplace that’s similar to where I grew up and get kids to see the value in gaining knowledge,” Montez told me last week.

The burly Mexican-American has two things going for him that will go over well with the exact sort of kids he wants to connect with – those who will be the first in their families to attend school post-high school. 1) He has a super easy-going personality, “I love making people laugh,” and 2) He knows.

He knows about poverty, even though he didn’t experience it in his own family history. While an undergraduate student, the 22-year-old East Moline native, spent two years as Pilsen/Little Village Community Mental Health caseworker teaching poor and cognitively challenged or emotionally disturbed how to live independently, and positively.

“Something that I'm proud of is that I have always maintained a positive attitude in whatever I have done while at the same time having a strong grasp on reality,” Montez says. “I’ve seen people facing incredible challenges but showed them how to keep going. Whether it has been in the classroom, within my extra-curricular activities, or among my peers, I have always seen the positive side of things and have used this mentality to help quench my thirst for knowledge.”

He also knows how to get through college. Though not the very first in his family to attend a university (his older sister blazed the trail) he certainly knows a little something about getting in, and more importantly, getting out of college successfully. Plus he’ll learn about a PhD’s worth during his ISAC Corp boot camp.

Lastly, he knows how critical it is to teach young people about how powerful knowledge – of all kinds – really is.

“The high school years are probably the most crucial time for a student to understand how to take advantage of the college opportunity,” Montez said. “It’s the opportunity to go get into a classroom setting while being on your own for the first time, the opportunity to become a more mature adult.”

“My message to these kids is to look beyond your doorstep and see the real problems that face this world. Learn what is going on in the society and learn how to fix what really needs to be fixed. Understand how the world works and be able to differentiate between the good and the bad. And, appreciate the people around you and those who simply want to live a good life.”

Montez is ultimately focused on having a positive impact on the world, not just Illinois’ communities, or Rockford’s or the Hispanic community.

“My main thing is that the most important thing anybody could have is an education,” Montez said. “Whether its knowledge found on your own, or it’s constructed through organized learning, education in any form is most important.”

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

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Chicago Latino List 2009 – Nelly Aguilar, Esquire to the Special

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

When Nelly Aguilar’s son Jason was diagnosed with Autism and their school district basically prepared her for her son to spend his life in a basement with non-verbal children, she knew she had found her calling: to advocate for her son.

“I was stunned by the amount of trouble people have to go through to get basic education services, basic rights for their special needs children,” Aguilar, a 33-year-old Mexican immigrant whose lived in the U.S. since she was six, told me.

So the 33-year-old single mom set aside her well-tended marketing career and decided to get a law degree so she could do just that. “I knew I had to make a change, I knew that he would need a lot of support and I thought that if I went to law school I could help him and other children.”

Aguilar was a single mom to a child who screamed “15 hours a day” and none of the schools she applied to in her then-home state of Texas had any monetary support for her. DePaul University, however, gave her a scholarship worth leaving her parents behind and starting over in a city she didn’t know with a high-need child.

“After he got diagnosed, Jason needed all kinds of therapies and all kinds of help,” Aguilar said, “I would take him to school, then I would go to school, then I’d get out, go get him, take him to his therapies, go home, cook, play, get him down to bed, then stay up until midnight doing homework and studying, then I’d get up the next morning and do it all over again.”

All this and it took her only three years and one semester to get through law school! “Then I graduated and studied for the bar, and passed it,” Aguilar said nonchalantly.

Today she’s one of approximately 15 attorneys in Illinois who work solely on Special Education law as their focus.

“I represent families of children with disabilities in actions against school districts that deny students an appropriate public education. I protect their rights and advocate on their behalf under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),” Aguilar explained. IDEA guarantees students with disabilities an adequate education with the fewest restrictions in the least restrictive classroom environment possible.

“In addition, I make recommendations on pending legislation in healthcare and education, I serve on several boards (Access Living, Autism Speaks, and Stone Soup Community Center), and I participate on statewide and national advocacy activities.”

Because all of that, AND a son with Autism whose now 9, and “doing really well,” isn’t enough, Aguilar is slated to teach a section of Special Education Law at DePaul University College of Law this fall. “I am the founder of the first clinical legal program in the Midwest that protects the educational rights of children with disabilities. I secured federal funding for DePaul University's Special Education Advocacy Clinic.”

Delving into the intricacies, horrors and inequalities of Illinois’ educational industrial complex is a fool’s errand, but Aguilar helped me put the needs into perspective.

· Very few attorneys practice special education law and even fewer attorneys are bilingual and can understand the complex struggles English Language Learners face. Live Downstate? Tough luck, Aguilar couldn’t name a single one south of Kankakee.

· The average State of Illinois institutional stay for those with severe disabilities is about $140,000 per year but the state usually won’t provide preventative therapies which generally cost much less in the long run.

· In the Chicago Public School District alone there are at least 55,000 special education students with Individual Education Plans. 85% live below the poverty level.

· In the State of Illinois there are approximately 60 due process hearings a year. In Washington DC there are about 300 per month, and that’s not because Illinois families are happier than those in DC, but there is already a law school infrastructure for pumping out special ed. lawyers who – when they win a case, get to send the school district for attorney fees. Here in Chicago, however, in-house legal departments have lawyers at the ready to defend a school district’s interests.

Aguilar will certainly start adding to the pool of independent Chicago special education lawyers as a DePaul professor. And she’ll keep fighting for families’ rights.

“I do it more for others than for Jason because he’s pretty situated,” Aguilar said. “It brings me so much hope to be able to take a child who has nothing and a family who has been stepped on or passed over, and over, and over – callously, without any regard to the child’s future,” Aguilar said.

“When I get a child the right support, then I see them a year later and the kids that couldn’t read now can…it’s like the greatest feeling in the world.”

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

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Chicago Latino List 2009 - Dr. Ana Gil Garcia, Leveler of Educational Inequalities

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

It would take well over six hundred words just to list the many, many accomplishments of Dr. Ana Gil-Garcia.

She’s a

tenured University Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, a published author, a three time Fulbright scholar, and an internationally acclaimed professional.

When she’s not hosting professional visitors from Belarus, Italy, Armenia, Russia, Georgia, and Ecuador as a member of the International Visitor Center of Chicago, or advocating for Latinos in the academic field of science, she’s a member of the Advisory Council on Latino Affairs of the City of Chicago and a director of the Rotary One Club of Chicago for 2009-2010.

But what realllllly drives this woman is her quest to ensure the Chicago Public School system is a nationally-recognized leader in employing school administration leaders who accurately represent the diversity of their student communities.

“Latino school leaders are the minority. There are 70,000 Hispanic students in CPS but only 13.6% of school administrators are Latino, in Chicago! How can that be in such a multi-cultural city?” Gil-Garcia told me “There are 114 languages spoken in Chicago!”

The Venezuela-born, 54-year-old Gil-Garcia has a bit of a different view – a more global one – when it comes to why it’s important for there to be an equally representative cadre of Latino teachers in CPS.

“Chicago is not only for one racial or ethnic group. We have, in every school in Chicago, Hispanics mixing with the other groups,” she said, in response to my questioning how her crusade affects non-Latinos. “By having someone who is coming from a different background than the mainstream, that person will be more sensitive not only to Latinos but to anyone who is coming from a different cultural background, or who speaks a different language.”

I’ve not been on the bandwagon, instead advocating for high qualifications as the most important aspect of any school administrator, but Gil-Garcia makes a compelling case.

“Being a Latino or Hispanic doesn’t mean the administrator will be only serving one portion of the population, but that person would be serving a very large population of the entirety of CPS,” Gil-Garcia pressed.

“Last September Latinos used to be the second-largest population as it had been for 7 years, since this past year we are now number one – the largest population – followed by African-American students, then Caucasian kids, then Asian and Pacific Islander,” Gil-Garcia said. “When you take a look at the demographics of the teachers, white teachers are the majority, then second African-American then third are Latinos. It’s so much more dramatic in the numbers of school administrators and the number has been like that for 11 years – we haven’t grown.”

I, of course, immediately went to bat for the many, many kids who speak languages other than Spanish – like Polish – and are far from well-represented in CPS or in any other districts across Illinois, and Gil-Garcia retorted:

“When we get qualified Latino school administrators, the schools benefit not because she or he is Hispanic or Latino – it’s that the person, being from a different language and culture, has a deeper understanding of what the student and his or her family might be going through to get the learning to occur.”

Certainly I couldn’t argue that point, and more importantly, the work that she’s doing at Northeastern Illinois University – teaching graduate courses in the field of educational leadership to teach teachers who are in the process of becoming school leaders for K-12 schools – will absolutely ensure that there are highly-qualified administrators of all races and ethnicities to lead our diverse school populations.

It’s no easy task, but Gil-Garcia is inspired. “My inspiration is my mother, she taught me not to give up, not to despair,” Gil-Garcia said. “We talk every Sunday for at least two hours and she always asks me the same question: what have you done this week to help others?….I must always have a response.”

And the other thing Gil-Garcia’s mom always taught her?

“‘Haz bien y no mires a quien,’ which means ‘do good – for everybody.”

“Chicago Latino List 2009” was generously sponsored by the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Chicago White Sox, and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Restaurants. All nominees were independently nominated for this recognition; their rejection and/or selection to “Chicago Latino List 2009” was not, in any way, influenced by any disclosed or undisclosed personal or professional proximity to Esther J. Cepeda or to any sponsor of “Chicago Latino List 2009”.

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June 17, 2009

“Hoop Dreams” filmmaker makes “The Journey from Zanskar” via Chicago

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

After walking 17 four-to-twelve-year-old kids over a 17,500 foot pass from one of the most remote places on earth to a Buddhist monastery, Frederick Marx is coming home to Chicago to lead us on a journey toward the place in our hearts that’ll help these children finish their education.

Marx – now fifteen years removed from his star turn as the writer/producer who brought us the story of two black Chicago high school students who thought they had a shot at being pro basketball players in the critically acclaimed documentary Hoop Dreams – is again giving us the opportunity to study how people sacrifice in order to gain.

In The Journey from Zanskar, Marx chronicles the passage of a small band of children who were delivered by two Dalai Lama-dispatched monks from their remote village to a monastery where they’ll get the opportunity to learn their own language, culture, history, and religion.

The kids’ voyage away from family and to a life of study is critical because a new road will soon bring the outside world to Zanskar – the last remaining original Tibetan Buddhist society with a continuous untainted lineage dating back thousands of years – endangering its traditions and religious practices. It’s the sort of decimation that has already happened to many other Tibetan towns experiencing this version of gentrification.

Marx was drawn in by this slow, quiet drama.

"What really interests me as a filmmaker is the landscape of the human heart," Marx told me from his San Francisco home last week as he prepared the "preview cut" he’ll be screening at PRIMITIVE Gallery on June 26 and 27. "I’m so interested in heartbreak, in what people do, how they feel, what they think, and why they do what they do. Then when you throw all the layers of cultural differences and socio-economic realities, there’re just such amazing stories."

Marx started out on his own journey toward emotional and financial investment in these 17 kids when an old friend from Chicago called him up and asked if he’d be interested in a gig to go to Zanskar and film the monks for a group of people putting together a non-profit to support their work.

After Marx’ incredible expedition – "when, after climbing 14,000 to 17,000 feet to get over the pass, none of the animals could carry us I just thought ‘I’m going to die today,’" he chuckled – the non-profit failed to take off but Marx took the project upon himself.

"I said, ‘this is crazy, we have to do what we can to help these monks, these kids, and this school.’ So I took it over and it’s been my company’s project ever since," Marx said. His company, Los Angeles, CA-based Warrior Productions, is a non-profit, and his commitment to the 17 children whose story he tells in The Journey from Zanskar is 100% of the revenues – above the cost of production – the films garners.

Those pesky "cost of production" dollars are what brings him back home to the welcoming embrace of Chicago’s PRIMITIVE Gallery for an exclusive set of intimate screenings of this unfinished film in one of the holiest spaces I’ve ever visited.

"In terms of cash dollars, we only need about two hundred grand to get through the post production and then it’s all gravy," Marx said. "Then all the profits from the film will be funneled back to Zanskar for the monks and the kids."

Marx will be at the Friday screening at PRIMITIVE, 130 N. Jefferson, but if you can make it to the Saturday screening, Michael Fitzpatrick, the film’s composer, and Chicago’s own Harold Ramis (on a break from promoting the new Ghostbusters game) will gather with Marx in the breathtaking "Buddha Room" to watch the film.

"What you’ll see is this amazing example of service, of these monks doing what they can for these children, for these families and for the culture of this place they call home," Marx said. "To me there is no grater modeling of leadership than how they sacrifice and risk their own lives to help these families get a leg up."

"These monks demonstrate that the greatest joy in life just might come in doing what you can for others, and that’s the key message I hope people will respond to."

Watch YouTube clips of The Journey from Zanskar here or call PRIMITIVE at 312/575-9600 for more information on attending either the June 26 or 27 screening.

Posted at 11:44 PM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, education, Film, international relations, kids/teens, Religion, responsibility, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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May 12, 2009

Why “English-only” laws look so good

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

People, bear with me here, I’m only a few days removed from having completed a frustrating and maddening master’s level class in effective teaching strategies to help English language learners pick up our baffling but beloved language, and a report that was just released has me climbing the walls.

But more about that in a moment, let me vent some more:

It was the kind of class where the teacher framed everything in terms of "cultural respect" and where all the students felt it was imperative to teach kids in their native language and that to insist otherwise was to buy into the evil construct of the "white man" trying to keep poor Latinos "down."

Much like my experience being an actual teacher in a classroom of non-native English-language speakers, where I was castigated as the lone weirdo who insisted on talking to and teaching her students in English, I was the freakish anomaly in this class.

I was the nutcase in the back of the room advocating for the hundreds of thousands of non-Spanish speaking students in school districts across the country, insisting that segregating students into Spanish-speaking sheltered classes was a recipe for a permanent underclass.

Every week we discussed interesting language acquisition stories in the media and I almost wish I could have one more Saturday to beg the others to understand the perils of "bilingual classes" taught exclusively in Spanish and how damaging it can be to those who need to learn flawless English in order to thrive in this country (this was my idea of "fun" if you can conceive it!).

My pleas surely would have fallen on deaf ears – after all, who is more committed to the status quo than "bilingual teachers" whose main claim to fame and employment is the ability to teach solely in Spanish? – but check this out: a report from the National Center for Education Statistics on Basic Reading Skills and the Literacy of America’s Least Literate Adults.

You can go directly to the PDF here, but let me just give you a taste of the horrifying statistics, gleaned from the 2003 National Adult Literacy Survey which was designed to measure functional literacy and administered to more than 19,000 adults (ages 16 and older) in households and prisons:

· Basic reading scores were highest for White adults and lowest for Hispanic adults

· Among adults with Below Basic prose literacy scores, 39 percent of those who spoke only English before starting school read fewer than 60 words correctly per minute (i.e., at the lowest Basic Reading Score level), compared with 72 percent of adults with a Spanish language background

· 30 million adults have Below Basic prose literacy; of those, 7 million are Hispanic

· Among adults who spoke a language other than English before starting school, BRS scores were lowest for adults who learned English at a later age. The average score was lowest for adults who learned to speak English after they turned 21 and highest for adults who learned English at age 10 or younger

· The BRS score of adults who learned to speak English after age 20 was 35 points lower than the BRS score of adults who learned to speak English at age 10 or younger.

I’ll cut the numbers off right there, though you should plow into this report if you’re interested in knowing at just how much of a disadvantage some people in this country are.

But the point I’m trying to make is illustrated by those last two bulleted items – and you didn’t need a fancy report to tell you this – it is absolutely crystal clear beyond any doubt that the key to Hispanic and Latino success in the United States is fluency in the English language.

It doesn’t require giving up culture, giving up a native language, or giving up speaking a native language in the home – it very simply requires a country single-mindedly dedicated to making learning English the number one objective for public school students. By hook or by crook.

Some people reflexively rail at the very thought of "English-only" legislation; there is currently a bill called the "English Language Empowerment Act" being bandied about in New York state. Pro-Spanish-language education advocates are already complaining that such a move would make it mandatory to teach children in – gasp!!!! – English.

But the unacceptable alternative is hoards of students who get dumped into public school "bilingual ed" classes and, after years of sheltered Spanish immersion classes, walk out of high school still not fluent in English (read more about my experiences as a bilingual ed teacher here).

And that alternative is a denial of the American Dream. It is, in fact, an American tragedy – and not just for them, but for us all.

Posted at 09:34 PM in crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, international relations, kids/teens, politics, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

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May 07, 2009

Incubating the Scientists and Engineers of Tomorrow – Today!

"Way more than 600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

What do a sixteen year old immigrant from Bosnia and a sixteen year old Nigerian immigrant of extremely modest means have in common with the greatest scientists and inventors of all time?

They wake up every morning with the single-minded belief that anything – yes, anything – is possible.

What Raliat Abiola and Suad Causevic have in common with little old me is that we’re all proud standard bearers of the Myrtle and the Gold – Lane Tech HS Indians through and through – and all of us are proud to call ourselves "Alphas," as part of the elite club that Lane Tech, lo all these many years later, still calls the Alpha Science and Engineering Program. And that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Unlike I, who nearly failed my accelerated Biology class freshman year due to an unfortunate incident in which I killed my science experiment, these two are going to change this world dramatically within our lifetimes.

I met them when I had the privilege of judging Lane Tech’s Science Fair a few months ago. Amidst the projects on the sound wave patterns of electric guitars, the effects of food dye on mice, analyses of carbon particulate in our air, and way-too-complex molecular-level experiments I could barely understand, these two really stuck with me.

Raliat, whose father – well-known for helping others in their village – died when she was just ten, gave me a stunningly passionate presentation on the effects of Eastern medicine on microbes, a science experiment very much out of the ordinary.

"Where I come from medicine is vastly different from the way Western medicine is administered here," she’d told me in her regal accent, referring to the panoply of holistic principles, herbs, and other treatments that are the hallmarks of Eastern medicine. "I want to be a pioneer in this field, I’m setting out to prove that this is actually a form of science and it can help millions of people in the world."

Raliat stands a great chance – she’s already been singled out for scholarships, which she needs because her single mom is working toward her own degree and they need all the help they can get. And I’ve no doubt the future Dr. R. Abiola, who’ll be spending the rest of the summer sharpening up her project for next year, will someday make major additions to the practically-non-existent literature out there comparing Eastern and Western medicine techniques.

Now Suad, he’s waaay out there. Like, so brilliant that this weekend he’ll be presenting his project "Keep it Cool" at the Illinois Junior Academy of Science Exposition in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. His breakthrough research – the design for a cooling system for microprocessors – has already drawn in university money and attention from big tech companies worldwide. The totally unassuming kid who does Tae Kwon Do when he’s not toying with molecular biology, is one of 62 students who won at the city science fair (10 are from Lane), and an alternate for the International Science and Engineering, Fair in Reno, Nevada later this month.

"Basically, I designed a system that uses magnets and thermo-electricity to disperse the heat of the microprocessors in a computer with no fan, and therefore, no noise," Kausevic said.

Why?!

"Because a while ago my dad and I fried a computer because we overheated it and I was thinking, ‘liquid metals, nuclear reactions, no more fried boards,’ and I thought it’d make a pretty fun science project." This is the kid’s idea of "fun."

Now let me put it all into context for you: Lane Technical High School is one of the best schools in the city and has provided high quality educational opportunities for over 100 years. Lane is administering approximately 1,800 Advanced Placement exams this school year in 29 content areas. In fact, Lane submits more than 50% of all the AP Studio Art Portfolios in the City of Chicago.

It’s truly a school of champions, and is one of the most diverse – in race/ethnicity and family income – high schools in Chicago. According to Assistant Principal Chris Dignam, the driving force behind the Alpha program which he revived three years ago and has grown to approximately 300 kids, "Lane Tech has the highest number of students at or below poverty level in any of the College Prep high schools in Chicago – 60% – and the highest percentage of Hispanic students in any of the College Prep High Schools in CPS, they make up 41-42% of the school population."

Dignam stresses the importance of his program passionately, "There is an alarming deficit with regard to the number of students exiting high school and going on to major in engineering, science, and mathematics in the United States," Dignam said. "There are many talented, interested students of diverse backgrounds that are in need …and Alpha provides students a unique program that focuses on developing research skills, as well as reading and technical writing skills – skills all students need to achieve and succeed in college and upon entering the workforce."

He’s right, the number of kids going into science and math-based fields of study in college is low and the number of black and Hispanic kids doing so are painfully low, despite their representation in the U.S. population. But workplace equity is not what gets the kids up early – and keeps them up late – honing their research to perfection, these kids are having fun and are inspired, which is a nuclear reaction in and of itself.

"Sure it's hard," said Suad, "but it’s just fun and when you work hard for the science fair, you can know that when the future comes, you’ll be prepared."

"I want to make something of myself and then go on to be a doctor and be successful so I can tell others that anything is possible," Raliat said, "If they can send a monkey and a man to the moon you can do anything. And though you might want others to reach out and give you a hand, that would be nice, but you can do it yourself."

Posted at 12:37 PM in African American, Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, education, Health/Medicine/nutrition, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, Science, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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April 23, 2009

R.I.P “Digital divide” – Latinos are all over Internet

“600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda”

This rant is dedicated to all the people out there who are innocently laboring under the misperception that the vast majority of Hispanics in the United States are living in such crushing poverty that they are not able to access information on the Internet.

These people – distinguished academics, misguided do-gooders, and everyday Joes alike– go around with a picture in their mind of what a Hispanic person is and it involves challenges in language, lack of education, and low access to resources. Sadly, this is true in many cases. However, it is not when it comes to access to the internet.

And to the concerned parties, Nice Esther says: stop fretting about our electronic habits, we’re OK. To others who aren’t as benevolent toward the U.S.’s exploding Latino community and prefer to think of us all as illiterate immigrants, Mean Esther says: Take your “digital divide” and shove it up your assumptions.

Let me ply you with statistics:

• In a recent report called The Power of the Hispanic Consumer On-line, Scarborough Research says that the majority (54%) of Hispanics are now online.

• In fact, Internet access among Hispanics has been increasing at a faster rate than it has among total adults in the U.S - growing 13% (on a relative basis) since 2004 - from 48% in 2004 to its current penetration of 54%. By contrast, Internet access by all consumers nationally grew 8% during the same time period. (In 2004, 64% of all consumers accessed the Internet, and this increased to 69% in 2008.)

Of course, it’s not abuelita - 18-34 year-old Hispanics are more likely to access the Internet than Hispanics overall, and their rate of Internet access is growing at a faster pace than that of the total Hispanic population. Scarborough says:

“Younger consumers are more likely to download content online. Forty-nine percent of 18-34 year-old adult Internet Users downloaded digital content in the past month, compared to 35% of the total online population. Similarly, it is no surprise that when you examine this younger demographic of Hispanics, the percentage is even higher. 51% of 18-34 year-old Hispanics downloaded digital content during the past 30 days.”

And no, it’s not some tired dial-up connection made from a pre-historic machine in someone’s basement. This same report says, “Hispanics have been taking advantage of the expansion of broadband, and their rate of adoption has mirrored that of the total U.S. population. Currently, 68% of Hispanic Internet Users have a broadband connection in their household. This grew from 13% in 2002 – an increase of more than fivefold.”

In late March, Chicago-based research firm Mintel released results from a survey showing :

• Hispanics are more likely to have profiles on social networking sites than non-Hispanics: 48% of them have one versus 43% of black Americans and 31% of whites.

• Web-surfing Hispanics ages 18-34 visit social networking sites 3.6 times a week on average, versus just 1.3 times per week for over-35s.

• More than a third of all Internet-using Hispanics were age 24 or younger in 2006.

• Other findings from the survey suggest that Hispanics adopt new media technology more quickly than non-Hispanics, spend more time listening to Internet radio and downloading music than non-Hispanics and devote more time weekly to Internet browsing than non-Hispanics.

• The firm says Hispanics spend more time using electronic readers like Amazon's Kindle; playing multiplayer games online (although not single-player); and blogging or commenting online than other groups.

Then just last week, comScore, Inc., a leading Internet-usage research firm released numbers showing that:

• During the past year, the growth of the U.S Hispanic Internet audience outpaced that of the total U.S. online population in terms of number of visitors, time spent and pages consumed, an increase of 6 percent from the previous year.

Alright, say it all together with me now: “There is no ‘Digital Divide’ when it comes to Hispanics.” We know how to boot up, log on, and surf the web – in two languages!

And never mind the computer part of it, Hispanics – much like people who live in poverty and affluence all over the world – access their internet information via that little marvel we call the cellular phone.

Here’s what the Scarborough paper had to say on that topic: “Hispanics are avid cellular phone users. They are more likely than the typical adult to have a cell phone, and they are in the top spending brackets for cellular usage. Hispanics have been at the forefront of using the expanded functionality and technology in cellular devices, such as picture taking, text messaging and downloading ring tones or games. They are also more likely to use cell phones for tasks such as email or utilizing other Internet features.”

"As technology prices drop and the number of bilingual Hispanics in the U.S. grows, we see more Hispanic adults relying on the Internet for day-to-day communication and learning," comments Leylha Ahuile, multicultural expert at Mintel. "U.S. Hispanics who get online via their cell phones provide a great opportunity for marketers who want to reach them in a personal, direct way."

But I’m not here to tell you everything is perfect and, no need to look after the members of Latino communities who don’t yet have access to decent internet or even a computer, thank-you-very-much. Far from it!

There are still many, many great challenges for Latinos of varied socio-economic backgrounds and educational levels who, in all honestly, wouldn’t know a Mac from a PC if the Mac grew teeth and bit them. But that’s where I circle back to the greatest opportunity for growth in communicating with Latinos of all stripes and types: the cell phone.

What you’ll see, though, is that the cell phone will revolutionize Hispanics’ access to information on the web, making for infinite more connections to vital information that will bring access to social services, higher education, and political empowerment. Sort of like what Novelas Educativas, a Burbank, California-based digital entertainment company has done on YouTube, and in cell-friendly social platforms for the National Council on La Raza and for “Amigos de Obama” during last year’s elections.

"Today kids are all about cell phones just like we were about Air Jordans back in the day – popular and everywhere,” Miguel Orozco, Co-Founder, Novelas Educativas told me when we met a few weeks back. “And now that the digital gap is closing, the real issue we should be concerned about is the information gap. We should all be asking, 'How do we leverage access into knowledge.'"

Ahhh, yes, how DO we leverage access into knowledge? Well, I don’t have any easy answer for that one, but whatever the answer turns out to be, that lever will probably be translated to at-risk families via a broadband or cellular connection – and most likely into the palms of their hands.

Posted at 04:53 AM in advertising/marketing/media/merchandising, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

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April 02, 2009

Mixed Martial Arts at Clemente High School: where street life and ring life don’t collide

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

You’ve no doubt heard about the epidemic of Chicago Public High School children being murdered on the streets of our fine city.

It’s not a jungle out there so much as a flat-out war zone where women, children, and basically anyone caught in the street – or asleep in their bed – can be victimized by the random violence gripping certain Chicago neighborhoods.

It’s gotten so bad community organizations are writing to President Obama asking for troops to keep his hometown’s streets in check (see Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary A. Mitchell’s article here).

So the commonly-held idea that violence begets violence makes it difficult to understand how a full contact combat sport featuring a wide variety of martial arts fighting techniques – and few safety rules – could change the lives of kids living in gang-infested neighborhoods for the better.

But then again, you haven’t met Bryan Gomez. So let me introduce you.

Bryan is a 17-year-old junior at Clemente Achievement Academy High School on Chicago’s near northwest side who is doing pretty darn well considering that as an eighth grader at Ames Middle School, he was failing classes and getting in trouble for acting out angrily at his teachers. Getting abandoned by your biological father and living in rough circumstances will do that to a kid.

But a chance freshman-year meeting with Tony DiVittorio, a clinical counselor with Youth Guidance, a social service agency that works in more than 50 Chicago Public Schools, introduced Bryan to the artful sport of Mixed Martial Arts. Today Bryan is the captain of the school’s MMA club and is undefeated with three knockouts in competitions against Kelly High School, the only other Chicago school with a Mixed Martial Arts program.

You might know MMA as Ultimate Fighting or NHB – No Holds Barred – fighting which employs such signature styles as ground-and-pound, sprawl-and-brawl, clinch, lay-and-pray, and submission grappling. Don’t go getting the wrong idea, now – moves like biting, eye-gouging, strikes to the groin and the ever popular fish-hooking are no-nos.

And I can only assume that the kiddies take it easy with the elbow strikes, headbutts, and spinal locks...but I’ve digressed. My point is that this stuff saves kids’ lives, and not in the self-defense way, either, but I’ll let Bryan tell you himself, in his words.

"I’d always been into MMA, I was always wanting to know how to learn how to fight but Tony got me into it," Bryan told me shortly before one of their few tournaments a couple of weeks back. "Tony ended up teaching us once a week and showed us how to give it our best so I trained real hard."

"My parents, they like that I have something to motivate me, that I’m doing something to keep me busy and I’m not just walking around outside. I’m kind of like the only one who’s succeeding right now in my family so they support me."

"Mixed gave me a type of discipline that added to my life. Like, my family, my cousins and brothers… one of my brothers did real bad in life, ended up in jail. My other cousin is in gangs. The discipline MMA brought me made me look at my surroundings and people differently."

"I don’t go around the neighborhood like I’m a badass, I’m not the type. You get discipline and you don’t go around trying to beat up people. As for avoiding gangs, we get a smartness of what streets not to take, like if we know there are 10 guys on the corner try to avoid it. I avoid situations where I have to be forced to fight."

A bit about Tony: he’s been the driving force behind creative physical after-school programs at various CPS schools. DiVittorio, a licensed clinical counselor with Youth Guidance, has over a decade of martial arts training, brought the growing sport to both Kelly and Clemente in an attempt to help the students cope with the many challenges they face every day.

I asked him how well the school’s administration – and parents – took his innovative program.

"I brought it to the schools ten years ago when I got to Youth Guidance and when I first brought it to the administrations it was foreign, not well known they thought it would bring more violence." DiVittorio said. "But I brought my experience to the students who came to the MMA club – most of whom were either at-risk or struggling – and connected club to school and academics. It didn’t take too long before teachers and administrators started seeing less outbursts and positive character changes."

"There are a lot of single-family households, lots of poverty, gang activity, drugs and generally, a normalization of violence in these communities," DiVittorio said. "We teach them to honor anger, to find a positive way to express it."

But how do the parents take it?

"I use lot of tactics with the parents, every year we have an end-of-the-year parent ceremony for students, parents, teachers, and peers. We give trophies to the best kick-boxers, they all come with food and see we’re like family," Tony told me, "they see that the bottom line of the MMA Club is that it’s a Youth Guidance program that keep students in schools."

And beyond…Bryan has high hopes about his future as a result of his success with MMA, he now dreams of becoming a Chicago Police Officer.

"I was waiting to drop off my girlfriend one day and these gangbangers came out of nowhere, throwing bottles and we really wanted the cops," Bryan said. "It was kind of a classic moment we were thinking ‘Where is a cop when you need one?’ I thought about that and thought: ‘What if a cop was there and he didn’t help us?’"

"That motivated me," Bryan said, "I could be that cop that was there when someone needed me."

Posted at 05:23 AM in Chicago, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, culture, education, Games, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, Sports | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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March 31, 2009

More minorities in suburban schools yet they experience less diversity and more segregation

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

People bashful that they moved out to the suburbs for the better school systems often defend their actions (as if they needed to) by remarking that their child's classroom is a mini-United Nations.

"You should see Krystyn's school," they gush, "there are Japanese kids, and African kids, and Indian kids – it's so diverse!"

Sure, although that depends on what you consider "diverse."

Some people would imagine that a school district sporting a whopping 67% minority count would be offering their kids an education that celebrates the actual make-up of the population it serves, and providing their children with the kinds of experiences with people from different ethnic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds that will help them thrive in "the real world."

They'd be wrong.

According to a report the Pew Hispanic Center released today, though the student population of America's suburban public schools has shot up by 3.4 million in the past decade and a half – and virtually all of this increase (99%) has been due to the enrollment of new Latino, black and Asian students – there has been only a modest increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of student populations at the level of the individual suburban school.

The backgrounder for the report says: "For example, in 2006-07, the typical white suburban student attended a school whose student body was 75% white; in 1993-94, this same figure had been 83%.

So at a time when the white share of student enrollment in suburban school districts was falling by 13 percentage points (from 72% in 1993-94 to 59% in 2006-07), the exposure of the typical white suburban student to minority students in his or her own school was growing by a little more than half that much-or 8 percentage points."

This is not big news to me. It is a well-documented fact that African American students tend to be labeled as "Special Education" students and shunted off to "special" classes – at a rate of DOUBLE their white counterparts (Current statistics indicate that African American boys represent only 9% of the total student enrollment in public schools, yet in the category of mental retardation their enrollment percentage is more than double 20%).

Then we can move right along to Hispanics who are also often misdiagnosed as being special education students when, in fact, they have difficulties due to second language acquisition. Or they're simply shoved off into "bilingual classes" where a modified curriculum is presented in Spanish under the guise of "transitioning" the students into English-language classes, a day that rarely comes for too many students.

The numbers say that the presence of minority students in the suburban schools attended by whites (25%) is much lower than the overall representation of minority students in suburban school districts (41%).

The net effect is that even though suburban school districts are experiencing unprecedented growth in their minority populations they are not integrated into the schools districts, depriving them, and their classmates of valuable experiences with people who come from different backgrounds. Check this out:

In 2006-07, the typical suburban black student attended a school that was 44% black, up from 43% black in 1993-94

In 2006-07, the typical suburban Asian student attended a school that was 23% Asian, down from 24% Asian in 1993-94.

Suburban Hispanic student isolation has significantly increased: in 2006-07, the typical suburban Hispanic student attended a school that was 49% Hispanic, an increase from 42% Hispanic in 1993-94.

What's weird is that this is not an area anyone has put much attention on, probably because the numbers, as they so often are, are deceptive.

The Pew Hispanic Center's Report notes that, "The movement of minority students into suburban schools has had the overall effect of slightly reducing levels of ethnic and racial segregation throughout the nation's 93,430 public schools.

Minority students on average are less segregated in suburban school districts compared with city school districts, so the shift toward suburban school districts tends to reduce national segregation levels."

That these students are less segregated in suburban school districts than they are in city school districts is good, but certainly not great. We can do better.

But we don't. I can tell you from experience, as a teacher in two different suburban school districts, both experiencing large population shifts, that there is tremendous fear of African-American and Hispanic children in schools.

The administrators of and community-elected representatives on schools boards across the collar counties of Chicago are simply not adequately prepared to deal with the influx of students representing wildly different cultural and background experiences that have arrived in the past ten to twelve years. But they must.

And the parents of these children can not wait until school administrators see the light, they must make their voices heard at school board meetings, in principals' offices and in their local media.

Their message: we're here, we're not leaving, and our children deserve the same quality education as Caucasian students – in integrated classrooms.

Posted at 05:30 PM in African American, crime/violence/gangs/poverty, Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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March 23, 2009

Illegal Alien College Students: Cash cows with bleak futures

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Set aside the DREAM Act for a moment, I’m not here to tell you whether you should be for or against legislation that would make young illegal aliens with "good character" eligible for a conditional path to citizenship in exchange for a mandatory two year commitment in higher education or the military.

Let’s talk about how things stand today.

Currently, an illegal alien student can, in many cases, attend an institute of higher education if he or she is able to afford the tuition – many times at the "out-of-state" rate – and can make the grades to finish.

Then they get plopped out into the world and have two choices: 1) take a menial job, illegally or 2) take all that U.S.-bred brain power somewhere else.

Darn.

At any rate, I came across two pieces of information that just seemed to cry out for six hundred words, or so.

This from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars, who conducted a survey from February 25 to March 8, 2009 to "better understand the processes related to undocumented students that are used by U.S. postsecondary education institutions."

Of the 613 institutions of higher ed who responded – 260 full responses and 353 responses not completely filled out – here are a few salient facts for your consideration:

96.9% of respondents answered that they do seek information about applicants' citizenship/residence status on their admissions application

19.6% of responding institutions indicated they do verify all applicants claiming to have U.S. Citizenship/legal status.

30.6% responded that they verify applicants for financial aid

23.3% answered they do not verify at all

18.7% said that they verify applicants seeking in-state tuition, since they are a public institution

7.7% indicated other

Asked if required to report information on undocumented students 22.6% said that they are required to report information on undocumented students. 77.4% said they are not required to do so.

55.4% of institutions who said they’re required to report information about undocumented students said they report this information to a state entity.

30.1% said they are required to report information about undocumented students to an office or offices within their institution. 14.5% indicated "other"

If applicants specifically seeking admission as undocumented students don’t provide the required information?

38.4% said they are charged higher tuition

22.7% said that they are not permitted to enroll.

16.3% said they are permitted to enroll without conditions

10.8% indicated "other"

10.3% said they are permitted to enroll under certain conditions.

1.5% said that if already enrolled, they are asked to withdraw

If they find out, or have reason to believe students who claimed otherwise, are undocumented?

23% responded that they are not permitted to enroll

23% said they are charged higher tuition

20.5% indicated "other"

12% said they are permitted to enroll without conditions

11.2% said that if already enrolled, they are asked to withdraw

7.8% said they are permitted to enroll under certain conditions

And along those same lines, last week an interesting story out of North Carolina, Illegal immigrants' tuition pays way" revealed that the state, which has been caught in the cross-fire of differing and ambiguous state and U.S. immigration laws on the matter, is making money off illegal alien students attending the state’s community colleges.

According to Gina Shkodriani, a researcher with JBL Associates of Maryland, on average it cost $5,375 per year to educate a student at one of the state’s 58 community colleges. But for the undocumented students who were allowed into colleges between 2007 and 2008 who paid out-of-state rates, their average tuition cost was $7,024.

"In a sense ... it’s a revenue," Shkodriani was quoted in Mark Binker’s News-Record story.

Sen. Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, has filed legislation to stop those illegal aliens from being admitted to the community college system.

Apparently undocumented students are not worthy of being educated even if they are cash cows.

Posted at 08:25 PM in Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens, politics, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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March 15, 2009

The Future of Illinois: Our English Language Learners

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

I just couldn’t be more thrilled with today’s New York Times front page story "Where education and assimilation collide" by Ginger Thompson.

In it, she delves into the sociological ramifications of the waves of new immigrants – and their children – on U.S. school systems. Most of these school districts are completely unprepared for the host of issues and needs that come with large numbers of students with many varied native languages other than English, wildly different cultural norms, and challenging home experiences.

There’s no need to re-create her well-written, balanced article here, I suggest you take a look at it when you’re done visiting me, I’m providing the link at the end of this column.

Instead I will key in on one major point she makes – the one she leads with – is it right to segregate students who don’t speak English to a self-contained, sheltered learning environment where new skills are built on past experiences and shared background knowledge?

I say no – absolutely not!

Ginger, in the fifth paragraph of her story – after having remarked the beauty of the integrated main campus of Cecil D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge, Virginia – quotes a young woman from Guatemala who is segregated from the main population to one where all the students are English Language Learners. I’ll give you the flavor:

Walk with immigrant students, and the rest of Hylton feels a world apart. By design, they attend classes almost exclusively with one another. They take separate field trips. And they organize separate clubs.

"I am thankful to my teachers because the little bit of English I am able to speak, I speak because of them," Amalia Raymundo, from Guatemala, said during a break between classes. But, she added, "I feel they hold me back by isolating me."

Her best friend, Jhosselin Guevara, also from Guatemala, joined in. "Maybe the teachers are trying to protect us," she said. "There are people who do not want us here at all."

I was a "bilingual teacher" in two different Illinois school districts where the non-English-speaking students – 90% of whom happened to be native Spanish-language speakers – were shunted off to be with their own kind like Amalia and Jhosselin. It was horrible!

These students relied on each other so much they had no need to speak English, therefore they didn’t learn it. They were perpetually angry at me for insisting on speaking to them and teaching them with as much English as possible.

It wasn’t their fault – this is what the schools taught them that the normal "Bilingual classes" were supposed to be like.

That, of course didn’t hold true for the Polish-only speakers, the Chinese-only speakers, and the Russian-only speakers who numbered so few, they were simply thrust into "mainstream" classes with accommodations. Those kids subsequently thrived and picked up English at a rate I observed to be roughly three to six times faster than my students – some of whom were born in the U.S. and still didn’t have a decent command of the language.

The school district and the state thought I was insane for demanding that the Spanish language students be integrated with the rest of the school and taught in English – and guess what? I’m not a teacher anymore.

Schooling for English Language Learners must change – like 10 minutes ago! – across the country to better serve these students, and all the people who will have to live with them for generations to come.

Here are some statistics mined from the New York Times article’s on-line interactive maps, and from the National Center for Education Statistics, to give you a sense of what all this means to Illinois.

Keep in mind the U.S. Achievement gap: English Language Learners graduate from High School at a rate of 64% versus 80.1% for the "average" native English speaking student.

Illinois ranks #9 in the 51 states/Districts in terms of diversity according to latest figures, in 2006. (Top five are Nevada, Florida, California, New York, and Texas)

Following are statistics on the number of English Language Learners (ELL) in Illinois in 2006:

Cass County

% ELL 16.5%

total ELL students 391

total students 2,371

% Latino/Hispanic 23%

Kane County

% ELL 13.9%

total ELL students 16,483

total students 118,515

% Latino/Hispanic 35%

Cook County

ELL% 13.3%

total ELL students 106,756

total students 800,262

% Latino/Hispanic 31%

Lake County

% ELL 11.8%

total ELL students 16,469

total students 140,164

% Latino/Hispanic 24%

Jo Daviess County

% ELL 11.8%

total ELL students 410

total students 3,483

% Latino/Hispanic 2%

Boone County

% ELL 9.6%

total ELL students 1,005

total students 10,457

% Latino/Hispanic 28%

DuPage County

% ELL 7.5%

total ELL students 12,192

total students 162,017

% Latino/Hispanic 16%

Grundy County

% ELL 6.3%

total ELL students 740

total students 11,751

% Latino/Hispanic 10%

McHenry County

% ELL 5.3%

total ELL students 2,807

total students 53,515

% Latino/Hispanic 12%

I include the following counties because of their proximity to Chicago, but they, like the rest of Illinois’ counties, have less than 5% English Language Learners in their community schools:

Will County

% ELL 4.8%

total ELL students 5,537

total students 114,560

% Latino/Hispanic 18%

DeKalb County

% ELL 4.5%

total ELL students 743

total students 16,421

% Latino/Hispanic 11%

Kendall County

% ELL 4%

total ELL students 830

total students 20,579

% Latino/Hispanic 19%

Kankakee County

% ELL 1.1%

total ELL students 225

total students 19,656

% Latino/Hispanic 11%

Read the full text of the New York Times story "Where education and assimilation collide" by Ginger Thompson here.

Posted at 02:52 PM in Chicago, culture, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, kids/teens | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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March 11, 2009

A South American Penguin Story

600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

It’s been a while since I gave an update on my pal Isai Madriz.

He’s the guy who, on September 12, 2007 hopped on his rickety bicycle to pedal from the ‘burbs of Chicago to Argentina for twenty months to raise money for low-income students to go to college.

I’ve written about him several times (read the last post on him here), chronicling his amazing adventures as he rides 22,500 miles from Montgomery, IL, a tiny ‘burb outside Aurora, to Tierra del Fuego (''Land of Fire'') at the southernmost tip of Argentina.

All because after struggling to pay tuition and board at Humboldt State University in California, he wanted to make it easier on other young Latino students pursuing their college degree.

He’s been chased by dogs, broken a few bones (dislocated others), been bitten by truly horrifying bugs, and gotten several debilitating viruses because he’s been in starvation mode – he’s been relying on the kindness of strangers for food and shelter because a corporate sponsorship fell through before he started his odyssey 17 months ago.

He crossed into South America August 11 and was in Colombia in early September. In February he crossed into Argentina and here is a note he sent me a few days ago.

"Penguin Story

Penguins are the bestest, most adorable, clumsy little creatures on earth. In the refuge (Punta Tombo) there are almost 800,000 individuals and they walk all around you and make congested horn-like calls.

I have to tell you all, the story I told my Danielle over the phone.

Walking around hundreds of penguins, I became so excited to be in such a great place that I decided to enjoy it as much as I could.

In the absence of people at that time, I decided to lay down and I closed my eyes to hear the penguin calls and nothing else.

I laid down on the ground underneath a bush shadow, with my face facing towards the sky. I covered my face with my hat and closed my eyes. After a couple of minutes of tranquility I felt a heavy object fall on top of my stomach, squishing it down. I gently lifted my head and looking through my mesh hat I saw a 44cm, and about 4km male penguin on top of my stomach.

Apparently I was blocking the path that he takes to reach his nest and since the way around was too long, he decided to take the short cut. The little animal started to look around at the weird object underneath him and began to sit down on my squishy tummy. It started to move its little feet in the same place, making himself comfortable.

Lifting his short legs one at the time, rising and falling on my stomach as it moved, made him look like he was jumping. I, all exited of coarse, did not want that to end so stayed still looking through the hat at the magical moment.

The penguin made himself home and started to fall asleep on my stomach. Another individual, looking at the weirdness of the situation decided to take a closer look and moved near where all the fun was. Standing besides my arm, the new penguin began to look at the lazy pinguino on my tummy and with no apparent reason, started to peck the side of the lazy individual on top.

The penguin on top, after feeling the pecking, moved its feet in the same manner as previously but did nothing against the obvious discomfort of its buddy. Before it could sat down again, the pecking continued until he could not take it any more and jumped off and started to walk away in the cutest way that only a penguin can do.

I uncovered my face and looked at the other evil penguin. After ending the greatest moment since "Daniel the manatee" back in Mexico, the penguin just stared at me and started to move its neck to the sides while keeping its eyes on me. That is the characteristic sign that a penguin wants to fight.

With the little trouble maker a few inches from my face I decided to not get into a mess where definitely the penguin would have won. He was so cute and fluffy that I could not stare at him madly. All I wanted was to hug him and squeeze its tummy but I don’t think that would have been a good idea so I got up and moved away.

The little animal did not have enough and began to chase me for a few meters. Moving its cute little body side to side he ran behind me for a few meters until he could not keep up with the chase and turned around.

I hope you enjoyed the story."

I certainly did, and I hope you did too. I hope you enjoyed it so much that you’ll go on his website http://www.isaimadriz.com and donate – either to his odyssey fund or directly to the college-bound students he’s raising money for.

Isai’s fundraising efforts, need help. Aside from a few local donations – and the hospitality shown to him by the people he’s touched on his quest – the fund for other low-income Hispanic students to get a helping hand through college still needs help.

But that never enters into Isai’s equation when he’s on the hot road or under the stars in the mountains. "Education is like planting little seeds, and when those seeds grow everybody benefits."

As Isai continues on his way I’ll share his stories with you in this space. If you’d like to help you can send donations – which will go to the education fund, not Isai’s travel expenses – to: Jesus Guadalupe Foundation, 902 S. Randall Road, Suite C-322, St. Charles, IL 60174. Write "For Isai" on the check.

Posted at 08:59 PM in Chicago, education, Hispanic/Latino, immigration, international relations, kids/teens, responsibility, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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March 10, 2009

Remarks of President Barack Obama US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce March 10, 2009

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_________________________________________________________________

Remarks of President Barack Obama

A Complete and Competitive American Education

US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

March 10, 2009

Washington, DC

Every so often, throughout our history, a generation of Americans bears the responsibility of seeing this country through difficult times and protecting the dream of its founding for posterity. This is a responsibility that has fallen to our generation. Meeting it will require steering our nation’s economy through a crisis unlike any we have seen in our time. In the short-term, that means jumpstarting job creation, re-starting lending, and restoring confidence in our markets and our financial system. But it also means taking steps that not only advance our recovery, but lay the foundation for lasting, shared prosperity.

I know there are some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time. They forget that Lincoln helped lay down the transcontinental railroad, passed the Homestead Act, and created the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of Civil War. Likewise, President Roosevelt didn’t have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war. President Kennedy didn’t have the luxury of choosing between civil rights and sending us to the moon. And we don’t have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term.

America will not remain true to its highest ideals – and America’s place as a global economic leader will be put at risk – unless we not only bring down the crushing cost of health care and transform the way we use energy, but also do a far better job than we have been doing of educating our sons and daughters; unless we give them the knowledge and skills they need in this new and changing world.

For we know that economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand in hand in America. Land-grant colleges and public high schools transformed the economy of an industrializing nation. The GI Bill generated a middle class that made America’s economy unrivaled in the 20^th century. And investments in math and science under President Eisenhower made it possible for Sergei Brin to attend graduate school and found an upstart company called Google that would forever change our world.

The source of America’s prosperity, then, has never been merely how ably we accumulate wealth, but how well we educate our people. This has never been more true than it is today. In a 21^st century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there’s an internet connection; where a child born in Dallas is competing with children in Delhi; where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know – education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it is a prerequisite.

That is why workers without a four-year degree have borne the brunt of recent layoffs, Latinos most of all. And that is why, of the thirty fastest growing occupations in America, half require a Bachelor’s degree or more. By 2016, four out of every ten new jobs will require at least some advanced education or training.

So let there be no doubt: the future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens – and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation. We have the best universities and the most renowned scholars. We have innovative principals, passionate teachers, gifted students, and parents whose only priority is their child’s education. We have a legacy of excellence, and an unwavering belief that our children should climb higher than we did.

And yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. In 8^th grade math, we’ve fallen to 9th place. Singapore’s middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our thirteen and fourteen-year olds can read as well as they should. And year after year, a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy, and unacceptable for our children – and we cannot afford to let it continue.

What is at stake is nothing less than the American dream. It is what drew my father and so many of your fathers and mothers to our shores in pursuit of an education. It’s what led Linda Brown and Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez to bear the standard of all who were attending separate and unequal schools. It is what has led generations of Americans to take on that extra job, to sacrifice the small pleasures, to scrimp and save wherever they can, in the hopes of putting away enough, just enough, to give their child the education that they never had. It’s that most American of ideas, that with the right education, a child of any race, faith, or station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way and fulfill their God-given potential.

Of course, we have heard all this year after year after year – and far too little has changed. Not because we are lacking sound ideas or sensible plans – in pockets of excellence across this country, we are seeing what children from all walks of life can and will achieve when we do a good job of preparing them. Rather, it is because politics and ideology have too often trumped our progress.

For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline. Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom. Too many in the Republican Party have opposed new investments in early education, despite compelling evidence of its importance. It’s more money versus more reform, vouchers versus the status quo. There has been partisanship and petty bickering, but little recognition that we need to move beyond the worn fights of the 20^th century if we are going to succeed in the 21st Century.

Well, the time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding ourselves accountable is here. What’s required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It is time to expect more from our students. It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones. It is time to demand results from government at every level. It is time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world. It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career. We have accepted failure for too long. Enough. America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world.

And that is exactly what the budget I am submitting to Congress has begun to achieve. At a time when we’ve inherited a trillion-dollar deficit, we will start by doing a little housekeeping, going through our books, and cutting wasteful education programs. My outstanding Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars. It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works. This will help free up resources for the first pillar in reforming our schools – investing in early childhood initiatives. This isn’t just about keeping an eye on our children, it’s about educating them. Studies show that children in these programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job, and more likely to earn more in that job. For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get nearly ten dollars back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health costs, and less crime. That is why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act I signed into law invests $5 billion in growing Early Head Start and Head Start, expanding access to quality child care for 150,000 more children from working families, and doing more for children with special needs. And it is why we are going to offer 55,000 first-time parents regular visits from trained nurses to help make sure their children are healthy and prepare them for school and life.

Even as we invest in early childhood education, let’s raise the bar for early learning programs that are falling short. Today, some children are enrolled in excellent programs. Some are enrolled in mediocre ones. And some are wasting away their most formative years. That includes the one fourth of all kindergartners who are Hispanic, and who will drive America’s workforce of tomorrow, but who are less likely to have been enrolled in early education programs than anyone else.

That is why I am issuing a challenge to our states. Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs. Show us how you’ll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact. That is how we will reward quality, incentivize excellence, and make a down payment on the success of the next generation.

Second, we will end what has become a race to the bottom in our schools and instead, spur a race to the top by encouraging better standards and assessments. This is an area where we are being outpaced by other nations. It’s not that their kids are any smarter than ours – it’s that they are being smarter about how to educate their kids. They are spending less time teaching things that don’t matter, and more time teaching things that do. They are preparing their students not only for high school or college, but for a career. We are not. Our curriculum for eighth graders is two full years behind top performing countries. That is a prescription for economic decline. I refuse to accept that America’s children cannot rise to this challenge. They can, they must, and they will meet higher standards in our time.

Let’s challenge our states to adopt world-class standards that will bring our curriculums into the 21^st century. Today’s system of fifty different sets of benchmarks for academic success means 4th grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming – and getting the same grade. Eight of our states are setting their standards so low that their students may end up on par with roughly the bottom 40% of the world.

That is inexcusable, and that is why I am calling on states that are setting their standards far below where they ought to be to stop low-balling expectations for our kids. The solution to low test scores is not lower standards – it’s tougher, clearer standards. Standards like those in Massachusetts, where 8^th graders are now tying for first – first – in the world in science. Other forward-thinking states are moving in the same direction by coming together as part of a consortium. More states need to do the same. And I am calling on our nation’s Governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21^st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity. That is what we will help them do later this year when we finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding they need, but that the money is tied to results. And Secretary Duncan will also back up this commitment to higher standards with a fund to invest in innovation in our school districts.

Of course, raising standards alone will not make much of a difference unless we provide teachers and principals with the information they need to make sure students are prepared to meet those standards. Far too few states have data systems like the one in Florida that keep track of a student’s education from childhood through college. And far too few districts are emulating the example of Houston and Long Beach, and using data to track how much progress a student is making and where that student is struggling – a resource that can help us improve student achievement, and tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what’s working and what’s not. That is why we are making a major investment in this area that we will cultivate a new culture of accountability in America’s schools.

To complete our race to the top requires the third pillar of reform -- recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers. From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it’s the person standing at the front of the classroom. That is why our Recovery Act will ensure that hundreds of thousands of teachers and school personnel are not laid off – because those Americans are not only doing jobs they cannot afford to lose they are rendering a service our nation cannot be denied.

America’s future depends on its teachers. And so today, I am calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms. If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make the most of your talents and dedication; if you want to make your mark with a legacy that will endure – join the teaching profession. America needs you. We need you in our suburbs. We need you in our small towns. We need you in our inner cities. We need you in classrooms all across our country.

And if you do your part, we’ll do ours. That is why we are taking steps to prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities and encourage them to stay in the profession. That is why we are creating new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they are needed most. It is why we support offering extra pay to Americans who teach math and science to end a teacher shortage in those subjects. And it is why we are building on the promising work being done in South Carolina’s Teacher Advancement Program, and making an unprecedented commitment to ensure that anyone entrusted with educating our children is doing the job as well as it can be done.

Here is what that commitment means: It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable – in up to 150 more school districts. New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools. Teachers throughout a school will benefit from guidance and support to help them improve.

And just as we have to give our teachers all the support they need to be successful, we need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. That means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. Let me be clear: if a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high. We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children’s teachers and to the schools where they teach.

That leads me to the fourth part of America’s education strategy – promoting innovation and excellence in America’s schools. One of the places where much of that innovation occurs is in our most effective charter schools. These are public schools founded by parents, teachers, and civic or community organizations with broad leeway to innovate – schools I supported as a state legislator and United States Senator.

Right now, there are caps on how many charter schools are allowed in some states, no matter how well they are preparing our students. That isn’t good for our children, our economy, or our country. Of course, any expansion of charter schools must not result in the spread of mediocrity, but in the advancement of excellence. That will require states adopting both a rigorous selection and review process to ensure that a charter school’s autonomy is coupled with greater accountability – as well as a strategy, like the one in Chicago, to close charter schools that are not working. Provided this greater accountability, I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place.

Even as we foster innovation in where our children are learning, let’s also foster innovation in when our children are learning. We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21^st century economy. That is why I’m calling for us not only to expand effective after-school programs, but to rethink the school day to incorporate more time – whether during the summer or through expanded-day programs for children who need it. I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas. Not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America.

Of course, no matter how innovative our schools or how effective our teachers, America cannot succeed unless our students take responsibility for their own education. That means showing up for school on time, paying attention in class, seeking out extra tutoring if it’s needed, and staying out of trouble. And to any student who’s watching, I say this: don’t even think about dropping out of school. As I said a couple of weeks ago, dropping out is quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country, and it is not an option – not anymore. Not when our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past thirty years. Not when high school dropouts earn about half as much as college graduates. And not when Latino students are dropping out faster than just about anyone else. It is time for all of us, no matter what our backgrounds, to come together and solve this epidemic.

Stemming the tide of dropouts will require turning around our low-performing schools. Just 2,000 high schools in cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia produce over 50% of America’s dropouts. And yet, there are too few proven strategies to transform these schools. And there are too few partners to get the job done. So today, I am issuing a challenge to educators and lawmakers, parents and teachers alike – let us all make turning around our schools our collective responsibility as Americans. That will require new investments in innovative ideas. That is why my budget invests in developing new strategies to make sure at-risk students don’t give up on their education; new efforts to give dropouts who want to return to school the help they need to graduate; and new ways to put those young men and women who have left school back on a pathway to graduation.

The fifth part of America’s education strategy is providing every American with a quality higher education – whether it’s college or technical training. Never has a college degree been more important. And never has it been more expensive. At a time when so many of our families are bearing enormous economic burdens, the rising cost of tuition threatens to shatter dreams. That is why will simplify federal college assistance forms so it doesn’t take a PhD to apply for financial aid. And that is why we are already taking steps to make college or technical training affordable.

For the first time ever, Pell Grants will not be subject to the politics of the moment or the whims of the market – they will be a commitment that Congress is required to uphold each and every year. Further, because rising costs mean Pell Grants cover less than half as much tuition as they did thirty years ago, we are raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 a year and indexing it above inflation. We are also providing a $2,500 a year tuition tax credit for students from working families. And we are modernizing and expanding the Perkins Loan Program to make sure schools like UNLV don’t get a tenth as many Perkins Loans as schools like Harvard. To help pay for all of this, we are putting students ahead of lenders by eliminating wasteful student loan subsidies that cost taxpayers billions each year. All in all, we are making college affordable for seven million more students with a sweeping investment in our children’s futures and America’s success. And I call on Congress to join me – and the American people – by helping make these investments possible.

This is how we will help meet our responsibility as a nation to open the doors of college to every American. But it will also be the responsibility of colleges and universities to control spiraling costs. And it is the responsibility of our students to walk through those doors of opportunity. In just a single generation, America has fallen from second place to eleventh place in the portion of students completing college. That is unfortunate but it is by no means irreversible. With resolve and the right investments, we can retake the lead once more. That is why, in my address to the nation the other week, I called on Americans to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training, with the goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. To meet that goal, we are investing $2.5 billion to identify and support innovative initiatives across the country that achieve results in helping students persist and graduate.

And let’s not stop our education with college. Let’s recognize a 21st century reality: learning does not end in our early 20s. Adults of all ages need opportunities to earn new degrees and skills. That means working with all our universities and schools, including community colleges, a great and undervalued asset, to prepare workers for good jobs in high-growth industries; and to improve access to job training not only for young people who are just starting their careers, but for older workers who need new skills to change careers.

It is through initiatives like these that we will see more Americans earn a college degree, or receive advanced training, and pursue a successful career. That is why I am calling on Congress to work with me to enact these essential reforms, and to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act. That is how we will round out a complete and competitive education in the United States of America.

So, yes, we need more money. Yes, we need more reform. Yes, we need to hold ourselves more accountable for every dollar we spend. But there is one more ingredient I want to talk about. The bottom line is that no government policies will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents. Because government, no matter how wise or efficient, cannot turn off the TV or put away the video games. Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your children leave for school on time and do their homework when they get back at night. These are things only a parent can do. These are things that our parents must do.

I say this not only as a father, but as a son. When I was a child, living in Indonesia with my mother, she didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school so she supplemented my schooling with lessons from a correspondence course. I can still picture her, waking me up at 4:30 in the morning five days a week to go over some lessons before I left for school. And whenever I’d complain or find some excuse for getting more sleep, she’d patiently repeat her most powerful defense – “This is no picnic for me either, buster.” And it is because she did this day after day, week after week, and because of all the other opportunities and breaks I had along the way, that I can stand here today as President of the United States. And I want every child in this country to have the same chance that my mother gave me, that my teachers gave me, that my college professors gave me, that America gave me.

I want children like Yvonne Bojorquez to have that chance. Yvonne is a student at Village Academy High School in California. Village Academy is a 21^st century school, where cutting edge technologies are used in the classroom, where college prep and career training are offered to all who seek it, and where the motto is – “respect, responsibility, and results.” A couple of months ago, Yvonne and her class made a video talking about the impact that our struggling economy was having on their lives. Some of them spoke about their parents being laid off, or their homes facing foreclosure, or their inability to focus on school with everything that was happening at home. When it was her turn to speak, Yvonne said:

“We’ve all been affected by this economic crisis. [We] are all college bound students…We’re all businessmen, and doctors and lawyers and all this great stuff. And we have all this potential,” she said, “but the way things are going, we’re not going to be able to [fulfill it].”

It was heartbreaking that a girl so full of promise was so full of worry that she and her class titled their video, “Is anybody listening?” And so, today, there’s something I want to say to Yvonne and her class at Village Academy. I am listening. We are listening. America is listening. And we are not going to rest until your parents can keep their jobs, your families can keep their homes, and you can focus on what you should be focusing on – your own education. Until you can become the businessmen, doctors, and lawyers of tomorrow, until you can reach out and grasp your dreams for the future.

For in the end, your dream is a dream shared by all Americans. It is the founding promise of our nation. That we can make of our lives what we will; that all things are possible for all people; and that here in America, our best days lie ahead. And I truly believe that if I do my part and you, the American people, do yours – then we will emerge from this crisis a stronger nation and pass the dream of our founding on to posterity, ever safer than before. Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Posted at 09:15 AM in Current Affairs, education, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, politics, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

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March 08, 2009

Act of futility number 463: the RNC’s black chairman

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

It was a nice try, a nice gesture if you will, for the Republican National Committee to name its first African American chairman to show those snooty Democrats: "Ha! We have one, too! See? You’re not so special!" But apparently – after just a month – the honeymoon is over.

OK, by any measure it’s been over since last Monday when he insulted Rush Limbaugh by describing him as an "entertainer" whose show could get "ugly." There’ve been other comments shedding a light on the dysfunctions of the GOP, as well.

Of course, Steele’s comments made me kinda like the guy, and got me to wondering whether the party who’d endorse that sort of straight-talkin’ leader was maybe not so bad after all.

Um, not so much. Steele’s pie-in-the-sky vision of a Republican Party where the wealthy mingle with the colored and poor in the name of conservative values and party unity is under attack, by…drumroll please…his own party.

These are not people for whom Census figures and population forecasts matter much.

Last Thursday Hope Yen of the Associated Press reported that "In 2007, more than 40 percent of all students in K-12 were minorities — Hispanics, blacks, Asian-Americans and others. That's double the percentage of three decades ago."

Of those, one-fourth of the nation's kindergartners are Hispanic and also represent one-fifth of all K-12 students.

For the fifty-millionth time: minorities are projected to become the majority of the overall U.S. population by 2042 and Latinos will be a full third of the population by 2030.

Michael Steele gets this. He’s talking about reaching people with "off the hook," hippety-hoppity tactics but what he’s thinking about is how to play a flat-out numbers game. More minorities equals more warm voting bodies to ensure the future of the now-faltering Republican Party in this country.

And isn’t that really all the Republican Party should care about?

You’d think. But no, they’re hatin’ on Michael Steele, big-time. Today’s New York Times quotes an email from a black RNC member, Ada Fischer, who last week called on him to resign, saying Steele makes blacks appear foolish.

Frankly, even if that were true, Fischer has no one to blame but her Party leadership, not Steele, for that. He certainly has his shortcomings – little experience managing on a large scale and a bombastic personality are the biggies – but he didn’t elect himself.

I don’t doubt the Republican Party elected Steele to go head-to-head with President Barack Obama and prove that the Republican Party can be the party of the affluent and "the people." I’m just shocked they picked someone with such reasonable viewpoints on the future of minorities in America.

Too bad the GOPers weren’t smart enough to realize the guy has real ideas and intends to do his best to make them reality, which, again, says more about the GOP than it does about Steele.

Who knows what amusing thing Steele and his GOP cabal will bicker about but I have a thought for the future: Though ideologically far apart, once this whole business is over and they’re getting ready to move on to new things, Barack Obama and Michael Steele should get together to write about their experiences this year.

It would be a fascinating behind the scenes look at what it feels like to have the weight of the world’s hopes, expectations – and disappointments – bearing down on you at every moment of your life in the spotlight.

They could call it: It’s tough being "The First."

Posted at 06:02 PM in African American, Current Affairs, Hispanic/Latino, kids/teens, politics, responsibility | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

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Washington Post Writers Group columnist, Chicago Sun-Times columnist

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