My Turn
Harvesting Success for Migrant Students

Growing up as a migrant laborer gave this Texas elementary teacher insight into the influence educators have on their students' futures.

By Rosa Maria Rodriguez

First days of school always used to intimidate me growing up, because I knew the teacher would make us write about our summer vacation.

What summer vacation? Getting up at 5 a.m. to help my mother make tortillas. Working the fields 10 hours a day. This is summer vacation for many migrant students.

I was in third grade the first time my family took me north from Weslaco, Texas. The pattern was the same for years.

Starting in March, I would plant, prune, tie tomatoes, and complete my school year in Virginia. In June, we would migrate to Michigan, where I would pick cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries, and eventually start school again.

In October, I would return to Weslaco for the winter term, my only chance to focus only on my studies.

I received an education in the fields. At an early age, I became the family translator. I learned how to add up the money I earned each day and how many buckets of tomatoes we picked.

I also learned about injustice--picking tomatoes while crop dusters flew over spreading pesticide, wondering helplessly why I got 25 cents for a bucket of tomatoes filled above the rim, the same tomatoes that sold at the grocery store at five for a dollar.

Injustices like these helped me realize the importance of education. One early morning, after the first freeze, I shivered as I began to pick the first tomato. I vividly remember crying, wishing I was home with a warm blanket.

"I will go to college," I decided on the spot, "and get a better life."

College was a luxury my parents could not possibly afford, but a school counselor convinced me I had many opportunities.

My senior year, my parents left me behind to graduate with my class. I did, without my family cheering for me.

I remember taking days to open a package from St. Edward's University, for fear of finding a rejection inside. Instead, there was a scholarship offer for the first year.

I now teach second grade in an air-conditioned room, away from the sun and the torturous field work I endured. I look back and wonder why I became a success while some of my friends still toil for minimum wage.

The difference? I had compassionate, caring teachers who saw my potential and kept encouraging me --an English teacher who tutored me before school, a counselor who helped me find a scholarship.

Teachers play such an important role in our students' lives. We influence their love or hate for school.

We need to understand our students. Many come from impoverished homes. Some must work to help the family make ends meet. They see work as their first priority.

As a teacher, I understand the concern about getting a new student. Have they learned what I've already taught? How far behind are they? Can they write? Several of my migrant friends left school for that exact reason. Falling behind every year, some students are waiting for their 16th birthday to quit.

We need to reach out and motivate these students to continue education.

That motivation might be as easy as allowing a student extra time to turn in assignments or providing some one-on-one tutoring before school and during lunch.

Many migrant parents have little or no education. They don't understand the support a teacher needs from home. Many don't speak English.

Some take their children out of school when harvest season starts in order to survive.

They feel forced to put the education of their children on the back burner. We can't afford to.

Rosa Maria Rodriguez teaches at Hermelinda Rodriguez Elementary in Austin, Texas. She can be reached via E-mail at rrodrig3@austin.isd.tenet.edu.

Editor's Note

No one would blame Buffalo school bus aide Mary Byrd if she decides not to return to work this fall.

On a warm spring day last May, the veteran bus aide was struck in the ankle by a stray bullet as she escorted the last of her charges off the bus.

"I didn't know what was going on,'' Byrd told NEA Today. "I heard parents yelling, 'They're shooting! They're shooting!' And then I just screamed for my children to get back up on the bus. Everything was happening so fast, I didn't know where I was shot. Then I just lost consciousness."

Byrd, a bus aide for many years, had volunteered to travel with a bus that was missing an aide. It was not her normal route,but the bus was filled with kindergarten children and she thought they might need her. She was right.

As Byrd walked into the middle of the street to stop traffic for the children, a 17-year-old opened fire at another man down the street. Byrd was caught in the middle.

"I was standing down in the street and my children were getting off," Byrd said. "Whoever it was started shooting. I remember a child lying over this woman on the sidewalk. I didn't know if they were dead. And that is the last thing I remember."

In fact, colleagues recall Byrd's first words at the hospital after regaining consciousness were, "Are the children okay."

Byrd was standing only a foot away from the closest child. Luckily, none of the children was injured in the gunfire.

"I feel safe, because I have someone looking out for me. When you are on the job, you are not alone, no matter what the circumstances are," Byrd says. "We know that our jobs can be dangerous, but we are there for our children, because we love our children.

"Come next fall, I'll be back on the bus route."

—Bill Fischer