Equipping Tomorrow's Leaders
Preparing middle-grades students to succeed in college and careers requires more than academic support. Students must also have the skills and competencies to take on leadership roles in the classroom, community, and the workplace. To help students develop these abilities, programs focus on building confidence and honing leadership skills. Programs also pay special attention to helping students preserve connections to their families and communities, and to recognize this as a resource upon which they can draw throughout their entire lives. According to Josias Arteaga, director of the Harding Place (Tennessee) Family YMCA’s Hispanic Achievers Program, students should view educational attainment as more than an individual goal. “Students in our program understand early on that a college education is our vision for the entire community,” he says, “It’s not just about the Rodriguez family or the Alvarez family becoming successful. We have a responsibility to all Latinos.” Instilling a sense of belonging and social responsibility early on can profoundly shape the experiences middle-grades students will pursue in high school and beyond.
Learning To Be in Charge
The Cultural Awareness Leadership Councils (CALC) set up by the pre-college program at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside seeks to prepare middle school students for positions of leadership. Set at several middle schools in the cities of Racine and Kenosha, each CALC is sponsored by a school staff member and all council meetings are run entirely by students using parliamentary procedure. Through their participation in CALC, students develop an impressive set of skills: they learn to organize and hold elections, build consensus, resolve conflicts, and make decisions as a group. CALC’s culminating event is a quiz bowl that tests students’ knowledge of important achievements by individuals of color.
Program director Mary Day explains that students who are part of CALC develop a sense of pride in their cultural heritage. “At the beginning of the year, they barely want to identify themselves as part of a particular ethnic group,” she says, but being part of the council changes that. Through the program, students are also taught how to find things in the library, introduced to business etiquette and civic participation, and guided through year-long career exploration experiences. All of these activities are essential complements to the academic support that the program provides, says Day. “The students need to know how to prepare themselves for high school and college,” she explains, “but they also need to understand how their communities and the government work, and how they can play a role in both.”
The Roots of Leadership
Josias Arteaga, founder and director of the YMCA Hispanic Achievers, sees the value of keeping students in his program connected closely to their heritage. As part of their programming, which includes sizeable academic and career exploration components, Hispanic Achievers organizes events around food, holds talks about writers, demonstrates traditional dances, and hosts a variety of other activities for the whole family. The program also organizes community service events through which parents use their construction skills to repair homes in the neigborhood. “This activity heightens pride in the community and provides an important model for our students,” says Arteaga.Another of the program’s goals is to helps students develop English-Spanish biliteracy.
"We want students to be fully proficient in English, but we also
want to help them preserve the Spanish language so they can maintain a
connection
to their families and heritage” says Arteaga. Plus, being bilingual
is a big asset in today’s workforce, he says. Sixteen students
in the program participate in classes designed to help students retain
the
ability to read, write, and speak fluently in Spanish. This is particularly
helpful for students who immigrated when they were very young and are
no longer comfortable with the language. Acknowledging the recent growth
in
Tennessee’s Latino population, Arteaga explains, “Young Hispanics
here are immersed in a new culture, and often times they lose knowledge
or interest in their culture. We want young people to feel the importance
of where they come from and to value their cultural roots.”
Dreaming of a Better Community
In Fort Worth, students who participate in the I Have a Dream Program can be found visiting with seniors at a local retirement center four to five times a year. Students create cards and flower arrangements to bring to the center. Matt Torres, director of the program, understands that service to the larger community instills students with a sense of pride and responsibility. The current cohort of students, known as “Dreamers”, has completed many service projects, including planting trees at a nearby park and working at a food bank and a discount clothing store.
Torres recognizes the importance of a student’s history of community
service in college admissions decisions. “We want to give the students
a leg up when applying for scholarships, too,” he says. He uses a
database to keep track of all the projects in which students have participated.
The program is careful to help students view community service as more
than a stepping stone to college, however. “We try to get kids to
see the connection between service and being a future leader,” says
Torres. He often integrates the service events into field trips and recreational
activities for the students. The program’s message is that responsible
leaders give back to their communities and have fun doing so.
Attending to the Whole Student
The Hispanic Mother-Daughter program run by the Junior League of Austin (Texas) operates on the principle that the physical and emotional health of their students contributes to their academic outcomes. This program has formed a partnership with the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Social Work, through which college interns provide weekly counseling sessions for girls who are having academic or personal challenges, including special counseling for pregnant teens. In addition, female college students and professionals from the community serve as mentors, meeting with their mentees twice a month.
Sonia Castellanos, director of the program, explains, “In middle school our students go through so many things, especially girls, because of girlfriend problems, problems with their moms, and self-esteem issues which obviously affect their school performance.” In addition to the individual counseling offered, students in the program meet every other week for an hour during the school day to participate in a support group. Discussion topics include self-esteem, conflict resolution, anger management, relationships between mothers and daughters, healthy romantic relationships, and study habits. Through their participation in the program, the girls learn “to help each other out and use each other as resources,” says Castellanos, “which we encourage because it’s preparation for what they will need to do as adults.”
