Literacy sessions benefit families

English-learning parents go to school with their children

SPRINGDALE — Evangelina Arauja Martinez smiled Friday as she walked across the stage in the Performing Arts Center at Springdale High School to receive her certificate of participation from the school district’s Family Literacy Program.

Arauja Martinez, 52, was among about 250 adults recognized during the annual end of the school year celebration.

Arauja Martinez remembers not being able to write or speak English three years ago when she began Family Literacy Program classes at Elmdale Elementary School. She went because she wanted to help her six grandchildren with school.

Now when they have questions about their homework, she can say, “OK. I’m here to help you.”

“I love this program,” Arauja Martinez said. “I learn every day.”

Springdale School District has the largest population of students learning English in the state. The population of students with limited English has grown in 10 years, from 5,050 students in 2004-05 to nearly 9,700 students this school year. The students make up 45 percent of the district’s enrollment of 21,120 students, with Spanish and Marshallese being the predominant foreign languages.

The Family Literacy Program started during the 2008-09 school year with a $600,000, three-year grant from the Toyota USA Foundation. A partnership with the Northwest Technical Institute’s Adult Education Center has sustained the program, said Mary Bridgforth, the district’s English-as-a-secondlanguage coordinator.

One focus of the Adult Education Center at Northwest Technical Institute is to teach adults English, and the center is able to reach more people through the school district’s program, said Terri Ralston, director of adult education. The center receives federal funding to pay 12 teachers in the literacy program, Ralston said.

In seven years, the Family Literacy Program has grown from classes in three schools — Elmdale, Jones and Lee elementary schools — to classes in 14 schools. Monitor Elementary was the most recent school to join, Bridgforth said.

Classes meet for three hours, four days a week, Bridgforth said.

“Parents are learning how to speak English,” Bridgforth said. “They’re learning how to navigate their community. Parents are comfortable asking questions about their children in school. It’s empowered our parents.”

At Elmdale Elementary School, each day begins with the adults spending 45 minutes in classrooms with their children or grandchildren. The adults then leave and meet up in a separate classroom to talk about what they experienced with their children, to hear from guest speakers and to learn English, Principal Michele Hutton said.

Some come every day, while others come on their days off from work, said Kinsey Dickey, the adult education teacher at Elmdale. They fit classes around doctor’s appointments and responsibilities at home.

“This is a way for them to get involved in their child’s education,” Dickey said. “When your kids bring home homework and they need help with it and it’s in a language you don’t read or understand, how can you help them?”

This school year, Hutton urged Dennis Silva, 40, to join the Family Literacy Program. The family moved to Springdale from Mexico for Silva’s husband’s job. He speaks English, but she didn’t know the language.

Silva said the program has made a difference because she is able to help her second-grade daughter with her spelling words. Silva was able to tell Hutton her daughter was not happy, and she and a group of parents went to Hutton when they had concerns about supervision in the cafeteria.

Silva and Hutton worked together to address the problems, Hutton said.

Before the Family Literacy Program began at Elmdale seven years ago, Hutton remembers many parents would smile and nod as they talked but couldn’t understand a word she said. Now they can understand each other.

“They feel like part of our Elmdale family,” Hutton said.