Parent Fair expands perspectives and offers fresh ideas
EL CENTRO — Elizabeth Raygoza didn’t have to think too much about what she wanted to present to parents during El Centro Elementary School District’s annual Parent Fair on Saturday.
Over the years, Raygoza, Lincoln Elemetary School’s reading coach, has worked extensively with students who are English language learners.
With an understanding of how normal it is for ECESD to have primarily Spanish-speaking students, Raygoza decided her first-ever presentation in the fair — entitled “I’m Bilingual; What’s Your Superpower?” — would discuss the benefits of a student being bilingual.
“We’ve seen with plenty of research that students that are in a dual-immersion program that speak two languages outperformed students that are monolingual,” she said.
Like Raygoza, more than 20 other ECESD teachers on Saturday chose something they’re passionate about or they believed the community should hear, and presented it to the hundreds of parents who attended the event.
Parents, some accompanied by ECESD students, chose three of out of 22 breakout sessions offered.
These were set up in different classrooms throughout the Sunflower Elementary School campus.
Each session lasted an hour, and some were presented in both English and Spanish.
“There were a lot of parents here, but the groups were small enough that they felt comfortable asking questions,” Raygoza said.
The Lincoln reading coach found one parent’s question about ECESD’s dual-immersion program (Spanish and English) to be particularly interesting.
“The parent was thinking that, being a dual-immersion classroom, they learn less because it takes them double the time to learn one thing, compared to the monolingual student,” she said. “The truth is that both the monolingual classrooms and the dual-immersion classrooms are learning at the same pace.”
After each session ended, parents were given an evaluation form to fill out, evaluating what they thought about the presentation.
Feedback from last year’s fair played a significant part in selecting the sessions for this year’s fair, ECESD parent and community engagement principal Esther Green explained.
“They’re just different topics that parents are interested in to really help their children succeed,” Green said. “We’re here to let them know that we’re listening to their needs and we support them in whatever areas they need support in order to help their children succeed.”
While traditional sessions, such as “Helping Your Child Be a Successful Reader” and “Nutrition and Physical Exercise at Home,” made a return, the suggestions of parents called for new sessions, such as “Get Going with Google:
Gmail, Classroom Docs and Slides” and “ParentVUE Online Enrollment.”
A highly suggested topic from parents was social and emotional wellness, which Sunflower teacher Virginia Pineda covered in her “Mindfulness and Yoga: Supporting Behavior, Mental State, Health and Performance” presentation.
Pineda explained to parents the importance of teaching students to self-regulate, that is, learn to control their emotional responses to stressful situations.
The Sunflower teacher also showed parents, as well as students in attendance, how one could self-regulate physically with yoga poses, breathing techniques and blowing bubbles (using real soap bubbles).
“This is just to build that connection with the moment, with right now, while blocking out anything else that might be worrying the child, or even the parent,” she said. “Our students come to school sometimes and they let their emotions get the best of them. When their emotions get too big, it affects their school performance.”