Juanita Oyague dropped out of high school 17 years ago. At age 34, she found herself a stay-at-home mom with five children, no job skills, and a bleak future. California's welfare reform laws of 1997, however, generated an innovative welfare-to-work program that has given Oyague new hope. Building Individual and Community Self Sufficiency Through Service, spearheaded by the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, combines the goal of welfare reform self-sufficiency - with the ethic of community service and the literacy needs of California's young children.
Funded through the Corporation for National Service, the program is a collaboration of the California Commission on Improving Life Through Service, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, the State Department of Social Services, and 24 local service partnerships that include community colleges, welfare offices, public schools, Head Start programs, parents, and local literacy programs. Recipients of Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), other welfare recipients, and interested students are recruited to serve in AmeriCorps. Simultaneously, they are enrolled in early childhood education classes at community colleges and trained as literacy tutors.
"Our program is based on the premise that welfare recipients, when called upon to serve their community and when adequately supported with educational and job training opportunities, can become a part of the solution in addressing community problems," says Brad Duncan, Program Development Coordinator for AmeriCorps and America Reads. "This is particularly important in helping the children-those most vulnerable to rapid changes in an already over-burdened system."
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Photo by Bonnie Burrow, Glendale News-Press AmeriCorps volunteer Sharon Goode reads |
The program operates with high expectations. AmeriCorps members enroll for an average of eight units in early childhood education courses at their local community colleges. After an extensive preservice tutor training, they are expected to tutor 20 hours a week at a preschool center or in a K-3 classroom serving children from low-income and limited-English-speaking families. Tutors are supervised by classroom teachers or school site coordinators.
Participants are also expected to attend weekly reflection and support meetings where they share their experiences, talk about personal and program concerns, and take part in inservice trainings-all while balancing homework, child care, and other family responsibilities.
Juanita Oyague, after eight months of child development classes, tutor training, and tutoring experience, now has enough early childhood units to qualify as an assistant in a preschool, the first step toward her goal of becoming a preschool teacher. As an AmeriCorps member, she will receive an award of up to $2,362 to continue her early childhood education and training. She says her experience has not only opened up new career possibilities, but also has helped her understand her own five children better. "It's been a challenge to me," says Oyague, "but what I've accomplished, no one can take away."
At the end of the first year of the program (1998), 37 percent of the 700 AmeriCorps members had completed enough units in early childhood education to qualify as teachers' assistants or master teachers in preschools or child-care centers; 64 participants received Early Childhood Education certificates. An estimated 50 members were offered jobs at their service sites, and 17 new community/early-childhood literacy partnerships were strong enough to stand on their own feet and continue to deliver community-based literacy programs.
Through the program, approximately 4,800 preschool and K-3 children at 200 school sites have received extra literacy development attention they would not have experienced otherwise. Reports from teachers and reading assessments show that a majority of these children have achieved their defined literacy development goals and have improved their reading skills significantly.
Building Individual and Community Self Sufficiency Through Service is part of a larger vision within the community college system for creating the "engaged campus," says Duncan. "Based on our solid experience with the AmeriCorps program, we hope to promote other service-learning projects, for both welfare and non-welfare students, that address pressing community needs(environmental, human, educational, or public safety. We are particularly excited about implementing the Teacher Preparation and Reading Improvement Program, a $10 million, community college initiative proposed by Governor Gray Davis that will combine early exploration of teaching as a career with community service. Our AmeriCorps/America Reads program will serve as the building block for this statewide effort."
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