Parents sing for their children's sake

On Wednesday evenings, the Hokey Pokey becomes a teaching tool as Spanish-speaking parents learn to help their kids understand English through Cox Elementary's family literacy program.

	[Times photo: Lance A. Rothstein]
	Maria Andrade, 28, walks 30 minutes with her five children, including her daughter Dominica Baeza to attend English class at Cox Elementary.

DADE CITY - About a dozen parents gather in a circle, frowning in concentration, studying sheets of paper like scripts in a play.

"You . . . put . . . your . . . left . . . foot . . . in," they begin together in a slow drone. "You . . . put . . . your . . . left . . . foot . . . out. . . .

"You . . . put . . . your . . . left . . . foot . . . in."

Feet wiggle.

"And you shake it all about," they read. "You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around."

They spin, laughing at themselves.

"That's what it's all about."

What it's really all about every Wednesday night in a small annexed classroom at Cox Elementary is reading. Helping children learn to read.

For these parents, it's not so simple. Because they themselves don't understand the words on the page. They speak Spanish, not English. And in an educational climate that increasingly stresses the importance of reading, including holding back third graders who score poorly on the FCAT, these parents feel helpless to assist.

And so they come to Cox Elementary, every Wednesday night, some walking miles, others calling taxis, to take part in a tailor-made combined program on family literacy and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

As their children read and play word games in another classroom, they learn conjugation and new songs such as Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. "I want to help," Maria Andrade, 28, said in Spanish of her five children before class began. "But I can't. I don't understand."

Amparo Nunez wanted to do more than just drive people to the grocery store and doctor's office.

When she started her job as migrant advocate 18 months ago at Cox and Lacoochee elementary schools, she got just the chance.

For years, the school district's instructional trainer, Linda Beebe, had wanted to target the Spanish-speaking families. Different programs existed to help adults learn to read, to help families read together, to help families learn English. But Beebe wanted to combine them. When Nunez arrived, Beebe says, the idea took off.

"She's a dynamo," she said.

The Wednesday night classes, offered for the first time in the 2003 spring semester, started again in January. They are for parents and children, funded through federal grants as a mesh of several programs. They include adult education, ESOL and Families Learning at School and Home.

A similar class has been offered on and off at Lacoochee Elementary, which, like Cox Elementary, educates many of the district's Hispanic children. Aside from English, the night classes teach reading and math skills to some parents who might have been forced from school into work at an early age to help support their families.

"If I'm going to really help them in a more meaningful way, education is the best road," Nunez said. "This strengthens their survival skills."

It also strengthens the child's chances of success, said Carolyn Allen, supervisor of adult and community education.

"The parents are the first teachers," Allen said. "If the parents aren't educated, we know the research indicates that the children are at a disadvantage."

But even when the Spanish-speaking parents are educated, their children often know more English than they do. How are they supposed to teach the children how to read English?

The stakes are high for children in third grade. This year, third-graders were held back for the first time if they scored poorly on the reading part of last year's FCAT.

About 8 percent of about 600 third-graders held back in Pasco were Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students, said Sandy Ramos, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instructional services.

And yet LEP students make up only 3.5 percent of all third-graders, the school district said.

The state is expected to give districts the authority to develop their own alternative assessments for LEP students next school year, Ramos said.

Meanwhile, every Wednesday night, come rain or shine, a dozen or more parents find their way to Cox Elementary with their children in tow.

Andrade walked 30 minutes with her five children to get to class on Feb. 18.

Her long brown locks drape over her shoulders and patterned blouse as she scribbles new words and math equations in a notebook.

Andrade went to school only to third grade in Mexico because her town was so far from the nearest school, she says. She's trying to master both English and mathematics to help her children, ages 10 to 2.

At a nearby table, Eva Perez sits and watches the class, participating at times with an embarrassed laugh.

Her daughters, 10-year-old Lizabeth and 5-year-old Brenda, are in another classroom. Lizabeth, a third-grader anticipating the FCAT reading test in March, links words such as breath and boast to possible definitions.

Perez learned about the classes during a recent hands-on learning night with teachers and parents at Cox Elementary.

On that evening, teachers told Spanish-speaking parents through Nunez's translations that they could still help their students with reading, even if they don't know English.

This is how: ask lots of questions of what your child reads; stay involved and make them do homework; look at pictures in books with them and have them tell stories about them; make them describe events, setting, problems, characters and the endings of stories.

If the answers don't make sense in Spanish, that means the child doesn't understand the story in English, the teachers said. Also, keep reading with the child in Spanish, they added.

After that workshop, Perez said she tries very hard to help.

"I read (with Lizabeth) all the time, but I can't tell if she's reading well or not because I can't understand," she said.

Other moms have sought out neighborhood children or other good students to tutor theirs.

During the hands-on workshop, parent Carmen Frias described her attempts to read with 8-year-old son Daniel, a third-grader.

"Sometimes I turn it around and try to read to him (in English)," she said, "but he laughs and laughs."

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