The two women began recruiting in low-income Latino neighborhoods. They stationed themselves in apartment parking lots and walked through trailer parks. Mirla Coronado de Low took Boulder. Erendira Juarez took Longmont and Lafayette. In all three towns, they asked the same question: “Do you know any women here who take care of children?”
They knocked on doors. They said to the women who answered: “Listen, we can help you take better care of children. We will give you training and books and blocks and charts. Just give us five minutes.”
The two women do not call themselves outreach workers or mentors or counselors, though they have become all of these. Instead, Coronado de Law and Juarez call themselves tías, or aunties, a warmer title, one that closes distances.
Most of the time, the babysitters opened the door wider. Come in, come in. And the tías walked into living rooms where the television was blaring, where there were no books, where the children were drinking soda. When the kids played too loud, their babysitters yelled. Be quiet! Get back here! Sit down! Stop that!
Listen, the tías said, you have much to offer these children. The women would shrug. They were taking care of relatives, of neighbors’ kids. They were earning $10 a day. Some of them never finished school. They did not believe their value lay in anything other than keeping the kids safe. But they listened.
And this is how the tías found their first 20 recruits.
I left you last week with the words of retired Florence Crittenton teacher Dorotha Hogue: “If the hand that rocks the cradle influences the world, then isn’t it possible that the hand that guides the hand that rocks the cradle influences it, too?”
The tías are hands that guide the hands. Through the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, they work with low-income women who provide child care in their homes. These are relatives or friends who may spend more waking hours per weekday with a child than the child’s parents.
Right now, the PASO program — Providers Advancing School Outcomes — is focused on Latino neighborhoods of Boulder County, where the achievement gap has been among the highest in the metro area.
In the Boulder Valley School District, 88 percent of white students are partially proficient or above in reading, compared with 42 percent of Latino students. The gap is larger in writing, math and science. More troubling, student growth has been stagnant.
“Our aim is to prevent — not reduce — prevent the achievement gap,” says Tikki Heublein, program coordinator.
The PASO program targets the family, friend and neighbor child-care network for the simple reason that it is largely invisible — and yet half of all parents in this country rely upon it, Heublein and her partner, Denys Vigil, tell me.
PASO child-care providers go through 130 hours of training over 16 months. Coronado de Low and Juarez conduct regular home visits to mentor the women and observe the children. At the first orientation, the women are told about the achievement gap and introduced to research on child brain development.
“This is information that has not percolated into low-income communities,” Heublein says. “In other situations, parents have been angry. They’ve said, ‘Why don’t we know that?’ They don’t see it as a put-down, but rather as, ‘tell us, and we can do it.’ “
The training, funded by government and the Community Foundation of Boulder grants, encompasses the many ways in which children learn, as well as communication, structure, discipline, play, stages of development, safety and nutrition.
So far, about 40 women have graduated from the program and their transformation is remarkable, Juarez says. “They begin to learn their own power. They see the way in which they can change the lives of children.”
Living rooms have been turned into classrooms. In Imelda Ramirez’s home, one wall is covered with children’s artwork. Another wall holds charts with vocabulary words, colors, shapes. One corner is stocked with books, blocks, art supplies. She keeps a daily schedule on her refrigerator. “8 a.m.: Free time; 9 a.m.: Practice shapes and colors; 2 p.m.: Read two or three books and talk about what we’ve read.”
Down the street, Esther Ferreira, another PASO graduate, works miracles in arts and crafts with empty soda cans, corks and straws.
“I have learned so much,” Ramirez says. “I didn’t have any of this. No books. No little tables. Nothing. I kept the TV on all the time. I yelled at the kids. I don’t do any of that anymore. . . . Someone helped me when I was a little girl, and I understand now how I can help.”
A 3-year-old girl plays the whole time we are visiting. When the child stops to talk to Ramirez, I notice that she does not call her “Missus.”
She calls her teacher.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
