The youngsters at Calistoga Elementary School summer school weren’t the only ones getting an education, so were some of their teachers.

A week ago today was a big day for the summer school students — especially kindergarten and first-graders — and their families. Not only was it the last day of summer school, but also the students, many of whom are the children of migrant farm workers, enjoyed a program that reminded them of home.

Yabel Bucio Dorismond, a young-looking woman with brilliant eyes and a welcoming smile, led several groups of young students — all dressed in the festive, colorful attire of their native state of Michoacan, Mexico. Dorismond is from the city of Morelia in Michoacan. She has been a Calistoga resident for the last six weeks, and will return home in the next few days.

“It’s been very nice to be here, to see the families and to work with the other teachers,” Dorismond said. “The children living here sometimes miss their families and often miss being with people who speak their language and share their culture. I’m able to give some of that back to them while I’m here.”

Indeed, one report from the federal government’s General Accounting Office reported that children in migrant agricultural worker families often face significant developmental and educational obstacles, including poverty, limited English proficiency, rural and social isolation, and health risks associated with intermittent medical care and pesticide exposure. For migrant children, these obstacles are compounded by mobility as families move from site to site in search of work.

Congress created the Department of Education’s Migrant Education Program in 1965 and teamed that program up with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Migrant Head Start program in 1969. Calistoga has participated in a Binational Education Program for 10 years, according to Elaine Pearson, who is the Migrant Education Program Director for this area — officially known as Region 2, Area 1 — based in Ukiah.

According to the most recent report on the Binational Migrant Education Program available, from 2006 — there about 400,000 students whose families have moved back and forth between Mexico and the United States in the past three years to secure agricultural jobs, who are currently being served by schools in the United States.

Nationwide, according to that report, 231 teachers visited the United States from Mexico during the summer of 2006 to work with migrant students, and 57 teachers or administrators from the United States visited Mexico.

Dorismond participated in the summer school exchange program.

According to the California Department of Education, California has the largest migrant student population in the country. Overall, the state’s migrant population is more than twice that of Texas.

The most recently published figures from the U.S. Department of Education have shown a growth trend, that in 2002-2003, California’s migrant student population was 300,982 (33.5 percent of the nationwide total), while Texas reported 139,635 students (15.6 percent).

California and Texas account for almost half of all the migrant students in the United States. California’s migrant student population increased by 64 percent from 1996 to 2004.

However, that growth trend ended in 2005 when 299,436 students were identified, showing a 4 percent decrease from the previous year’s figures. Hispanic students make up 98 percent of the eligible migrant student population, the remainder come from Asian countries, or India.

The program

The binational summer program is defined as a collaborative effort between the Secretary of Foreign Relations and the Secretary of Public Education of individual states in Mexico, the Mexican Consulates, and the six participating Migrant Education Regions. As part of the program, teachers from Mexico, like Dorismond, spend six to eight weeks sharing culture and teaching strategies to support migrant students.

A transfer document is issued for each student by the Mexican Consulate that ensures the enrollment of binational migrant students who return to Mexico's elementary and junior high schools after the start of school in Mexico each new school year. That document serves as a binational report card for migrant students. Students here are also provided free textbooks from Mexico to promote literacy in Spanish and provide supplemental instructional materials and texts that are used in public schools in Mexico.

“I have no way of knowing how many children during the regular school year are here with migrant farmworker families,” said Calistoga Elementary School Summer School Principal Joe Zavala. “But during summer school, I’d say at least 30 percent of the students are from migrant worker families.”

Teachers learn

“This is the first time, as a new teacher, that I’ve been exposed to this kind of diversity,” said Wendy Dondero, a Santa-Rosa based teacher who was part of the tag team of teachers working in Calistoga with Dorismond during the summer school session. “It’s easy to get wrapped up in the culture where you normally live and work, but experiences like this help you break out of that.”

In the state of Michoacan, families do much of the work at the schools where their children attend, according to Dorismond. Through a translator named Lourdes Gonzalez she explained, “Here, things are very different. The parents here have to work so much, they aren’t able to help they way they would if they were back home in Mexico.”

The July 17 program of performances by the kindergarten and first-grade classes were planned for the evening, so parents would be able to attend.

During the hour-long program, the kids performed some popular songs and dances popular in their native Michoacan, including  “It’s a child’s world,” a song and dance featuring lots of pink and white balloons. Two more traditional Mexican songs — Arriba Pichataro, a song about a town in Michoacan, and Toro Pinto, during which two boys dressed as bulls were paraded through the standing-room-only crowd — were part of the performance. They also tossed confetti and candy to the children in the audience.

Cultural exchange

Irais Lopez, owner of the family business, Irais of the Valley, in Calistoga, says Dorismond “stayed at my home during the five or six weeks she was here,” and added,

“She did much more than just help with the students at school, she worked with the parents to make them feel a little more like they were back home in Mexico.”

Dorismond worked with some of women to create handbags from craft materials, and taught some of them to made beautiful designs with needles and thread on cloth. She also helped the children make frames for pictures of their summer school experience.

“The frames are made from rolled-up newspaper,” Yabel said. “They used coffee to color them brown, and glued their pictures to the backs of frames on cardboard.”

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