Schools Hustle To Reach Kids Who Move With The Harvest, Not The School Year
Peter Balonon-Rosen/Indiana Public Broadcasting
If you're carving a jack-o-lantern tonight, take a minute to think about who picked that pumpkin.
Maybe it was Anayeli Camacho, one of the country's estimated 3 million migrant farm workers, and mother of two. For part of the year she rents a trailer on farmland in Oaktown, Indiana where she works in the fields, harvesting pumpkins and other crops.
But as the fall harvest comes to a close, she and her family will head back down south for the winter, following seasonal work. This is what Camacho has done for the last decade, traveling north and south, from Florida to Indiana, bringing her family, which now includes 4-year-old Ximena, along with her.
Ximena is young, but her education is arguably vital right now. Often children living this lifestyle face interrupted schooling, cultural and language barriers, and social isolation — all factors that inhibit a child's ability to do well in school.
Her preschool, a public school for migrant children ages 2 to 5, is working on that.
"Because their parents move around a lot, they don't have the stability of being in one location for very long where they might be able to take advantage of other preschool services," says Debbie Gries, education coordinator for the Indiana Migrant Regional Center.
"Our goal, when they're 5, is to have them ready for kindergarten," where ever that may be.
For migrant families, barriers to school services
The children of migrant workers are some of the country's poorest, most undereducated and hardest to track down.
But tracking them down is exactly what a preschool for migrant children needs to do.
"Staff go into fields trying to find and talk to these families and see if they want to Schools Hustle To Reach Kids Who Move With The Harvest, Not The School Year : NPR Ed : NPR: