Immigrant workshop helps students’ parents

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2002 | 9:58 a.m.

Hermelinda Cibrian never set foot in a school.

The oldest of 18 children growing up in a small town in western Mexico, she was too busy washing the clothes of her siblings and helping sell produce grown on her father's farm.

Rosa Vargas started elementary school in El Salvador, but never got any further.

Both now are mothers of children enrolled in the Clark County schools, and they are determined to see their children get the schooling they never did.

To help achieve that goal, they are taking a 16-week Parent Leadership Training workshop at the Roy Martin Middle School.

The idea is to learn how to get what they want for their children out of the Clark County School District, said Alex Vargas (no relation to Rosa), a teacher at Martin and organizer of the workshop.

The workshop is targeted to parents of Spanish-speaking undocumented immigrants, who represent about 40 percent of the 67,000 Hispanic students in the school district, said Thomas Rodriguez, executive manager for diversity and affirmative action programs at the school district.

It's training many immigrant parents need, said Aldo Aguirre, an adviser to the workshop and cultural diversity consultant for the Nevada Board of Education. Many Hispanic families bring the idea from their home countries that schools and teachers know best, and that they shouldn't get involved in their children's education.

"Here, we're trying to teach them that getting involved can only help their children," Aguirre said.

The workshop covers topics ranging from how to gain access to a child's academic records to sources of financial aid for college. The parents are expected to teach other parents the same information, informally or in planned events at different schools.

"Every parent wants to know if their kids are getting a good education, if the facilities at the school are useful. They want information from their children's school," Rodriguez said.

"But here in Clark County we have a huge influx of Hispanics who have language barriers and are unfamiliar with the system. So they need this sort of information."

Rosa Vargas agreed.

She said she has already put the workshop's theory into practice by seeking the past grades of her daughter, Santos, who studies at Martin.

"At first they didn't understand what I was asking for, since I don't speak English very well," Vargas explained in Spanish.

After getting help from a bilingual teacher, she got to see her daughter's records.

"I did it," she said, beaming.

Emilio Abrica, one of three fathers in the workshop, said in Mexico his main contact with his children's schools was when they asked parents for money, for everything from textbooks to brooms -- a common practice in Latin America.

"Here, I've learned that we have the right to visit our children's classrooms, or ask for an interpreter in parent-teacher conferences. Plus, I hope we can gain access to financial aid for our children to go on to college," he said.

"With this sort of information, you get motivated to tell your children to study hard and become professionals."

Alex Vargas, the workshop organizer, was born in Alamo to immigrant parents 31 years ago. He was the first of seven siblings to graduate college and said he wishes his parents could have been more involved in his schooling as a child.

"It's not that they didn't want to. They just didn't always know how," he said.

"With this workshop, I'm hoping to give parents that are like mine were three decades ago the tools that they never had."