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For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
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1 report, the report of the other commissioners creating
2 it really sets its stage for what brought us together
3 for this project. And that is that there's an urgent,
4 urgent need to address the needs of Latino children in
5 this country.
6 It's not only the growth, but also the type
7 of growth that a lot of people are coming in that are
8 going to be immigrants projected in the next 20 years.
9 The report says one in four children will be of Latino
10 origin, yet Latinos are underrepresented in preschool,
11 and disproportionately represented in special need
12 programs and in high school dropout numbers.
13 And one piece of information that makes this
14 very important for us in early childhood and why we need
15 to focus on the realities for Latinos in early childhood
16 is that the onus in most programs that are licensed and
17 supported by materials and professional treatment, they
18 aren't there. And there's been research about that,
19 including some of my own, that tells a little bit of the
20 story, and it's not all economic.
21 There's a large proportion of people, and
22 when we did some qualitative research, we did get a
23 little deeper that really have cultural and linguistic
24 for keeping their children with family and kin and with
25 Latino family child care providers and those are the
70
1 ones who have least access to professional development,
2 which is what brought this whole project about.
3 And we felt after gathering all this
4 information from the practitioner, from the field, that
5 it really couldn't be with one organization to pull this
6 together to both identify the needs and to create a
7 discourse and linkages that will support Latinos in
8 their access and opportunity in professional development
9 because they are in family child care, which is isolated
10 for most situations.
11 So one thing that we really discussed was how
12 to best reach these, and there's really a three-prong
13 approach that we needed in this consortium which brought
14 together from representatives, National Association for
15 Child Reach, a member from the Latino caucus in Miami
16 for the National Association of Early Education and also
17 college centers which create a whole support network for
18 the programs for early child development. And the
19 National Children's Latino Institute. I almost forgot
20 that with all these people here.
21 When we got together, this three-prong
22 approach was really very focused on the finding that we
23 have these urgent needs because these Latino providers
24 are going to be marginalized from the field because as
25 many of you know there is the requirement for
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1 certification and NA right now coming up for both Head
2 Start and many other projects that are emphasizing the
3 quality in child care programs. And these women don't,
4 mostly women, so Latinos as we say in early childhood,
5 have language barriers.
6 Many come from different countries and might
7 have a lot of experience with children, but don't have a
8 lot of formal education even in their own language. So
9 their access also to English is very limited.
10 And one thing that brought us together, we
11 really wanted to discuss what makes really good
12 professional development material that's accessible in
13 Spanish and in English so as they learn English they can
14 also use the same vocabulary and experiences that
15 they're learning.
16 So one piece of this is to gather information
17 about which materials, which if you look on the web site
18 -- I think it's in the report that I gave you -- it will
19 show you a list of resources in Spanish and English for
20 various levels of the field. Because another piece that
21 we found out, it's not only that the Latinos have to
22 have access, but the non-Latinos have to have access,
23 because that's a very important piece of what's going
24 on, is that the directors and the trainers don't know
25 how to best work with the Latino family or children or
72
1 even the teachers that they're trying to promote.
2 So one thing that we developed then is this
3 connections and commitments, which is a new reference
4 point.
5 Can you hear me when I walk away? Great.
6 A new way of looking at what makes best
7 practices that's based on Latino values that we culled
8 from the community, from many different sources,
9 including research, successful programs that we
10 identified, and the thing about this is that we really
11 understand that it has to be CDA aligned.
12 So in the end of this report that we have
13 here, there's a chart that shows you a little bit about
14 how it aligns with CDA requirements and performance
15 standards, but also the values that we picked really or
16 best practices that are very developmentally responsive
17 to Latino, not the word appropriate, might not be quite
18 appropriate right now. It's also coming out of style.
19 So I'm saying mostly it's cultural and linguistically
20 responsible.
21 How many of you know Spanish?
22 Okay. Great. This is going to be in
23 Spanish, most of it, but I'll explain it in English.
24 So basically what was important here is to
25 understand that both the teachers and the children have
73
1 to be developed, both hand in hand, and that also meant
2 a totally different concept of family involvement which
3 I'm going to talk about next and the values, because we
4 have a resource there. They're taking care of Latino
5 children. They're speaking to them in Spanish. They're
6 facilitating their use of language from the very
7 beginning, yet they don't have the tools to be able to
8 build conversations, to connect with the experiences,
9 and they're very willing, but they just don't have
10 access.
11 So it's both have to be hand in hand, and one
12 thing that we came up with -- please tell me around the
13 time. I don't want to run into David's time, too. How
14 long do I have?
15 MS. MAZZUCA: About ten. About another ten.
16 MS. EGGERS PIEROLA: Okay. All right. So
17 what we proposed to the practitioner, the places where I
18 presented this idea and how we talked about it with
19 practitioner and trainers, it's really talking about the
20 reality that's out there, and we know right now what's
21 going on here, and just the fact that I presented three
22 times in Spanish at a conference, national conference
23 that had significant numbers of workshops in Spanish and
24 a great number of participants that were going there
25 specifically because there were workshops in Spanish,
74
1 and then I also went to two regional conferences in
2 Maryland and in Massachusetts that were totally in
3 Spanish for family child care providers and people that
4 are usually not receiving that and the enthusiasm there
5 was like give me more, give me more, and they want more
6 common sense. That's very, very important, and it's a
7 very good sign.
8 We have 35 million Latinos in this country
9 right now. That's a huge number, and a third of those
10 are children and we know not many of them are in formal
11 care. The two prong is retain and to reflect their
12 value and practices in the Latino culture, as well as
13 integrate, and this is not either or, as well as
14 integrate as a practice.
15 So we chose an approach that was really to
16 put values up front because it's really very important
17 to acknowledge that the way that we walk, the way we
18 talk, the way we teach, the way we learn has a cultural
19 basis, and this cultural basis is very -- it's projected
20 by values and integrated by values, and nobody really
21 talks about that and maybe politically it's a little bit
22 vague, but it's very important to put it up front and.
23 We have values and the reason why is these
24 values work in our families and in our education. So to
25 acknowledge them and understand what they are and see
75
1 what the implications would be for a teacher, for a
2 program and for professional development.
3 And also there are examples of those values,
4 everyday practices in both childbearing in home and a
5 family. So we chose these four, which might be
6 familiar.
7 Familial. By family we don't just mean
8 family. We mean extended family, kinship. It's a
9 different concept of family involvement. It's actually
10 teacher involvement and the whole community surrounding
11 the child.
12 And then pertenencia, which is a key piece.
13 I came -- especially for newcomers. I came here when I
14 was seven years the first time and then I left. I never
15 spoke English. Nobody actually knew my name. They
16 actually called me Maya because they couldn't say
17 Costanza. It was very important to feel a belonging,
18 and I didn't feel that until I came back the second
19 time, for many reasons, and the way the teachers were in
20 my presence in the class room.
21 The third one, educacion, goes beyond the
22 meaning in English. It means how to be in society, how
23 to be a human being that is caring and responsive and
24 take their places in society, and also who learns them
25 everything. It's not just the knowledge that you bring,
76
1 but the capacity that you build as a human being.
2 And compromiso. Compromiso is commitment to
3 go beyond the role, go beyond the definition of what it
4 means to do your job, go beyond your door if you're a
5 teacher and watch what's happening in the classroom of
6 somebody else or in the world or in the community and
7 become a part of that.
8 So familia, one thing (Speaking Spanish).
9 I'm an auntie even to my friend's kids and I would say
10 (Speaking Spanish). You know, you have to be careful
11 and always be sticking your nose in the children's
12 business. You're actively becoming a caregiver and an
13 educator to other people's children, to your whole
14 family's children.
15 It's just typical of people's culture and
16 really an important piece for a practitioner to
17 understand because what that means, they have to open
18 the door to the whole family. Don't think about just
19 parent involvement.
20 When that auntie comes, do you call her by
21 her first name? Do you say senora? Would you like to
22 bring a book to read? Could you stay for a while and
23 have some lunch? Some way of bringing them in that's
24 cultural appropriate, because the many times more than
25 the parents themselves are involved in taking care of
77
1 the children, especially in terms of transportation.
2 So the program has to understand that to know
3 the child, they have to know the whole family and
4 participate in the community, meaning also go out to the
5 community and the places where parents are experts, like
6 in the church or in community agencies or in the
7 neighborhood, where they organize.
8 If the educators go in there -- and there's
9 some many wonderful programs in California where it's a
10 very rich outreach to the community where educators get
11 something from them, not just give.
12 Now, I'll go quickly through three more. Oh.
13 That was just a picture of one of the activities where a
14 father came. I wanted to give you -- I had a lot of
15 examples. This is one thing that is the next piece of
16 the project, to look for more examples and make them
17 available and accessible so people get ideas, not to
18 copy, but inspire people to see what they can do. A
19 father was a cook, was invited to come in and both
20 Spanish and English was developed around his own
21 expertise, something very easy and simple to do in early
22 childhood programs.
23 Pertenencia is important as a sense of
24 belonging. It has a dual responsibility. It's not just
25 the teachers or the child care program making a
78
1 welcoming environment that is family like, but it's also
2 the giving feeling, an obligation towards their group
3 which creates a whole atmosphere for learning that is
4 very different than if you're only focused on individual
5 development of the child and making that one child feel
6 like they belong.
7 The implications are that you do a lot of
8 things together and you connect with the family, that
9 you have a lot of opportunities that are formal and
10 informal for the children to get together, and you also
11 bring in lots of people, so everybody feels belonging.
12 And it goes beyond this little circle. The
13 circle is big but very intimate, because it's through
14 relationships that Latinos learn and this is the key and
15 this is why all these four values were selected. It's
16 because it's through relationships.
17 Educacion is more complicated. There's two
18 pieces to it, but basically it's to realize -- like I
19 said before, it means to be more than just a provider of
20 knowledge, but it's also to know how to (Speaking
21 Spanish) which is part of it, and you give back to the
22 community.
23 If you saw any of these wonderful public
24 announcements that have been going on in Latino month --
25 when was that, February or January -- it was wonderful
79
1 to hear what the people were saying, when they give back
2 to the community, which echoes something that many other
3 ethnicities also say.
4 It's a very important piece in bringing up
5 the child from age zero. It is developmentally
6 appropriate for Latinos and everybody to understand
7 this.
8 The last one is compromiso. Compromiso is a
9 wonderful word in Spanish. It's what you do when you
10 become engaged to be married. It's you make a promise
11 with somebody. It's very important and it tells about
12 the culture. There's a lot of reflection of words in
13 Spanish.
14 To make a promise with somebody. It's not
15 just an obligation. It goes beyond obligation. So it's
16 really important to look at this in terms of what you
17 give beyond your own self. And what that means in terms
18 of implications for the teacher is they understand the
19 whole family's needs and they try to connect with them,
20 so they become a resource for the family, because a
21 teacher is the authority for Latinos.
22 I mean you just respect the teacher as a
23 leader and they are your links to America's sight. So
24 if a teacher understands the role, then they can really
25 serve a good piece of what's important for Latino
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