Letter to the Judges
4312 37th, ave
Sacramento, CA 95824
April 13th, 2015
Senior Project Board of Judges
Sacramento New Technology High School
1400 Dickson Street.
Sacramento, CA 95822
Dear Judges:
My name is Candie Maria Amezquita. I am a four year student at New Technology High School and I will be graduating this June 3rd. I am happy of reaching all my accomplishments throughout my time here. And I am proud to say that I will be continuing my education at UC Merced this Fall 2015.
All my life my parents have had to worry financially and work hard to provide for me and my younger sister. Not being U.S. citizens has been an obstacle and has a reason for fear. Since my parents have always been busy with work, It always has been hard for them to be engaged in my education. Growing up I wish my parents would have been more involved in my school. I decided to focus on outreaching to the Latino parents of New Tech for my senior project, because helping people is my passion. With trying to outreach to the parents came many obstacles as well as a great learning experience. The easiest part of my senior project was planning with Ms.Martinez because she helped me a lot with my meeting agendas. The hardest part was writing my papers because I was not getting the help I wanted in correcting my senior project papers. Thankfully I had three great mentors; Ms.Martinez, Mr.Cespedes, and Ms.Acquisto. Ms.Martinez and Ms.Acquisto helped me plan my meeting in ELAC and also gave me good feedback. Mr.Cespedes has been helping me with a Dapa meeting I will have on May 1st. Thanks to my mentors I have been able to move forward with my meeting and keep engaging parents.
During my senior project I learned that people can be very difficult to communicate with and some people are not reliable. I have learned that incentives matter when advertising events. I know I improved my oral communication skills and my Spanish as well. I also learned that if I want something done right and quick that I shouldn’t rely on people. I advise future students to start early on their senior project papers and to make sure they focus on a topic they are truly passionate about. I will also advise them to try to turn in several drafts before the due date to make sure everything is great before presentations.
Finally, I would like to thank all of you. Thank you, for taking the time out of your day to come here and be on my panel. Thank you for also taking the time to look over my senior project binder and I would also like to thank you all in advance for listening to my senior project presentation.
Sincerely,
Candie M. Amezquita
Sacramento, CA 95824
April 13th, 2015
Senior Project Board of Judges
Sacramento New Technology High School
1400 Dickson Street.
Sacramento, CA 95822
Dear Judges:
My name is Candie Maria Amezquita. I am a four year student at New Technology High School and I will be graduating this June 3rd. I am happy of reaching all my accomplishments throughout my time here. And I am proud to say that I will be continuing my education at UC Merced this Fall 2015.
All my life my parents have had to worry financially and work hard to provide for me and my younger sister. Not being U.S. citizens has been an obstacle and has a reason for fear. Since my parents have always been busy with work, It always has been hard for them to be engaged in my education. Growing up I wish my parents would have been more involved in my school. I decided to focus on outreaching to the Latino parents of New Tech for my senior project, because helping people is my passion. With trying to outreach to the parents came many obstacles as well as a great learning experience. The easiest part of my senior project was planning with Ms.Martinez because she helped me a lot with my meeting agendas. The hardest part was writing my papers because I was not getting the help I wanted in correcting my senior project papers. Thankfully I had three great mentors; Ms.Martinez, Mr.Cespedes, and Ms.Acquisto. Ms.Martinez and Ms.Acquisto helped me plan my meeting in ELAC and also gave me good feedback. Mr.Cespedes has been helping me with a Dapa meeting I will have on May 1st. Thanks to my mentors I have been able to move forward with my meeting and keep engaging parents.
During my senior project I learned that people can be very difficult to communicate with and some people are not reliable. I have learned that incentives matter when advertising events. I know I improved my oral communication skills and my Spanish as well. I also learned that if I want something done right and quick that I shouldn’t rely on people. I advise future students to start early on their senior project papers and to make sure they focus on a topic they are truly passionate about. I will also advise them to try to turn in several drafts before the due date to make sure everything is great before presentations.
Finally, I would like to thank all of you. Thank you, for taking the time out of your day to come here and be on my panel. Thank you for also taking the time to look over my senior project binder and I would also like to thank you all in advance for listening to my senior project presentation.
Sincerely,
Candie M. Amezquita
Senior project Paper #1
I chose to work with the Latino community because being Latino myself, I know that my parents are not well represented at New Tech and I am sure this holds true for most Latino families. Latino parents are not informed about what goes on in their children's school life. I want to be the person that lets them know about opportunities that come about for them throughout the year. My goal is to have Latino parents more involved with New Tech, for example having the parents participate with school events. This includes activities such as attending meetings or coming to help out with feeds. I also plan on helping parents understand Echo and how to navigate it because many parents do not know how to use Echo or even know it exists.
I chose this topic for my senior project because I want to see Latino parents get involved with New Tech because I know they are willing to help. Many parents want to help out but do not know how they can or if they can. This issue also interested me because New Tech needs parent’s help and the parents need New Tech to inform them about things that go on at school. There is not anyone advocating for Latino parents and their inputs. New Tech’s population has more than 60% Latinos. We are a large and important part of our school. I believe Latinos should have a say on things that go on in our school, they also could have ideas that the school can benefit from. As ASB president, advisory board member, ELAC member and school site council member I feel like Latinos parents from New Tech should be aware of the problems New Tech is facing. There is a gap between New Tech and these Latino parents and there should not be. I want to be the one to help close the gap.
My biggest influence to chose this project was actually Mr. Newman. Before he left he told me he wanted me to get other parents involved with the school and Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA). So I decided to focus on the Latino parents here at New Tech since they are the majority of our population. I also was influenced by my past in a sense because as a child I did not inform my parents about all the opportunities available to them and I regret not doing so. Many times students do not want their parents to be involved in their school because they are embarrassed or the parents are embarrassed by their language and cultural difference. It also could simply be like in my case I got lazy, or forgot to tell my parents what was going on at school. The communication between school and home should not solely be on the child just because of language barriers.
I do not have experience working with a Latino group, reason being because I do not feel comfortable speaking only Spanish. I have worked with other English speaking groups of adults and children so I know my communication skills will help me with my project. Also, leadership skills with organizing the meetings and so on will help too. After completing my senior project I hope to have accomplished all my deliverables and hope to have built a relationship with those parents I was able to reach.
Senior Paper #2
5 guiding questions
1.What is an effective strategy to reach/engage Latino parents at New Tech?
This question is important to answer for my senior project because I am trying to increase the amount of participation from Latino parents here at New tech. Figuring out a strategy to do so is important .
2.What is the best way to contact/advertise to a large audience ?
This is important to answer for my senior project because advertising to parents and contacting them will be very important in helping to increase parent participation.
3. What are the reason why Latino parents are not engaged in their child’s school/education despite being the majority population at New Tech ?
This question is important for my senior project because overall its what I really want to know. I know that there could be a variety of reasons for the lack of engagement but i want to narrow it down.
4. What are some strategies to overcome language barriers?
This question is important to my senior project because I know i am not a great spanish speaker and I am shy talking spanish because I am not that good and i will like to find some ways i could overcome that. It is also important because many Latinos do not communicate to the school because of the language barrier and and I want to learn to overcome those barriers so that I can help be engaged in their child’s school.
5. What cultural practices if any might be interfering with building a relationship with their child’s school?
This question is important to my senior project because I want to increase the amount of participation from parents and it would be useful to know if there's any cultural practices that might be interfering with their engagement here at New Tech.
1.What is an effective strategy to reach/engage Latino parents at New Tech?
This question is important to answer for my senior project because I am trying to increase the amount of participation from Latino parents here at New tech. Figuring out a strategy to do so is important .
2.What is the best way to contact/advertise to a large audience ?
This is important to answer for my senior project because advertising to parents and contacting them will be very important in helping to increase parent participation.
3. What are the reason why Latino parents are not engaged in their child’s school/education despite being the majority population at New Tech ?
This question is important for my senior project because overall its what I really want to know. I know that there could be a variety of reasons for the lack of engagement but i want to narrow it down.
4. What are some strategies to overcome language barriers?
This question is important to my senior project because I know i am not a great spanish speaker and I am shy talking spanish because I am not that good and i will like to find some ways i could overcome that. It is also important because many Latinos do not communicate to the school because of the language barrier and and I want to learn to overcome those barriers so that I can help be engaged in their child’s school.
5. What cultural practices if any might be interfering with building a relationship with their child’s school?
This question is important to my senior project because I want to increase the amount of participation from parents and it would be useful to know if there's any cultural practices that might be interfering with their engagement here at New Tech.
Senior project Paper #3
Annotated bibliography
Senior project Topic: Engaging Latino parents with their child’s school/education
Overarching Question: How can I increase the participation of Latino parents with their child's school here at New Tech?
1. “O'Brien, Anne. "What Parents Want in School Communication." Edutopia. N.p., 11 Aug. 2011. Web. 04 Dec. 2014
This source will help me answer my senior project questions, because this source talks about the ways that parents prefer to receive communication about their children’s school. This information was received through a variety of surveys that went out to parents.
This source is reliable, because it is a .org and not a .com. Also many parents were surveyed by the NSPRA to gather information for this website. It is published by a educational foundation that many parents use. The goal of this source is to inform people on good ways of communication between a parent and the school their child attends.
This source will be useful for my senior project. Although it does not focus directly on my overall topic it does give me an ideas of what parents want from their childs school, communication wise. It also gives me an idea of why parents are not engaged in their childs school.
2. “"How to Reach Out to Parents of ELLs | Colorín Colorado." Colorín Colorado. N.p., 2007. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.
The ELL resources for educators goes over some ways that I could increase the amount of Latino involvement at school. According to the article getting an interpreter, translating documents, and giving tours of our school in spanish are three ways of involving Latino parents. One of the ways to increase participation that did not occur to me was to host a Spanish-language back-to-school night. This source is reliable because it has a lot of information specifically for teachers on some of my sub topics. This website is used by many teachers and people interested in increasing the involvement of Latino people. It is kind of the same as the first source but it focuses only on Latino parents and children.
This source is useful for my senior project because it assures me that I am going in the right direction with my project. Many of the information given in the article I have already thought of or attempted. It is kind of been a to do list and has been helpful.
3. "Parental Involvement in Schools." Child Trends. Data Bank, 30 Sept. 2012. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.
The data from this website demonstrates how likely some races are to attend their child's meetings at school. Latino and Black families with the lowest percentage of parents who attend their child's school meeting. This website has data on a variety of races and the impact of the lack of involvement.
This source is reliable because not only do they use their own data but they show data collected from other researchers. Also data bank cited their sources used and gives you link to more information. The sources they cited are also reliable and are of value to my senior project.
This source has been helping with my project because it has information on what race parents are more engaged in their child’s school. This information fits into my senior project topic because overall i am trying to increase participation from the Latino community at New Tech so it ties back perfectly.
4. Interview for Mentor #2 (Martinez)
1.What do you think are the biggest reasons for the lack of parent participation at New Tech?
2. From being here at New Tech for the time you have been, what have you seen that New Tech’s communications with parents needs to improve on?
3. Do you think the meeting held were helpful to the parents? What could I have done better?
I think Ms.Martinez will be a credible source because she has been in education for a long time. She has studied in Mexico and is fluent in spanish. Ms.Martinez is someone I look up to. She offered to help me with my project. I know she will also be a great mentor.
She is credible because like I said before she has worked in education her whole life and has probably talked to hundreds of parents. She has the experience and has had many events here at school that she does. She is organized and very good and advertising and planning events. I will need her expertise when it comes to my meeting as well as her advice to how to get started with my senior project.
This interview fits into my senior project topic because it is for the person that will and has been helping me since the beginning. Ms.Martinez has experience in what I am trying to accomplish and I know she will help me with completing my goal. She can provide me with advice and ideas for improvement.
5. "Habits of a System Thinker." Http://wwww.watersfoundation.org. Waters Foundation, 2010. Web. 2015.
I think this is a credible source because they are involved with helping schools with understanding systems thinking because "they believe individuals have a better understanding of systems, which then are better able to identify the leverage point somebody to desired outcomes." The habits of a system thinker source I borrowed from Ms.Davis. This resource talks about the questions that we need to ask ourselves sometimes when problem-solving. Not only does it give us new ways of thinking, but this sources can also help me to think in a new way. It provides many different ways a system thinker needs to react to certain things.
This source will be useful to me because if I encounter a problem I can refer back to these cards to know how I can resolve the problem. This source is not completely connected to my project, but I know this source will help me with obstacles that come up throughout my project.
This source will be helpful because it provides questions to ask oneself and they actually relate to my senior project more than I thought they would. This source is like a self assessment exercise, it is 3-D they also have a website www.waters foundation.Org
This source is helpful to my senior project because it helps me understand what a system think you should do and when I think of system think I think of the leader of someone that should be well-rounded in knowledge. The source will also help me because I see it as a checklist anyway because it is a way to check myself if I'm doing the right thing as a leader as a community member as a student as a person.
6. Child, Family,School, Community Socialization and Support by Roberta M. Berns
This source will be useful to my senior project because it talks about the how the interaction of the parent and child at home affect the participation of the parent in school. If the parent is not in good terms with their child then he/she is more likely not to be as engaged in their childs education. If the relationship between the child and parent and the parent is supportive than the parent is more likely to be involved in their childs education.
This source is reliable because it used in a Sacramento City College course and is written by someone educated; Roberta M. Berns. This source is reliable because many have used it before and it was suggested to me by a friend who thought it could help me.
This source has been useful to my senior project because it has helped me in understanding the different reasons why parents are not involved in their child's education. It talks about the different behaviors of kids, parents and teachers. It also goes over culture and how that may also affect the behavior of students and parents in school.
7."Health Care & Public Benefits." DAPA & Expanded DACA. N.p., 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2015.
The main topics of this website are the most frequently asked questions about Dapa. Dapa stands for the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. This site cover the most commonly asked questions and suggestions to the non resident of the U.S. This source is about the new issues that have came about since Obama’s announcement about DAPA. This hot topic has many people hoping and wondering. And many of their questions are answered in this site.
This is a reliable site because I have checked on multiple sites and they all basically say the same. The information is reliable because the questions are answered correctly, are descriptive and are helpful
Although this source does not focus on my overall senior project it does focus on a part of it. In May 1st I will be hosting a meeting at New Tech for the Latino community of New Tech. I will have three lawyers come and answer any question the community has. The lawyers will be present to answer any questions and make personal appointments if necessary. I can use this source when I reflect in my project because like I said before I will be hosting the DAPA meeting and this source will help me come up with fall back questions for the lawyers to answer. I will refer to this source when reflecting on my senior project because this topic is a big part of my project.
8. Federal Appeals Court Hints That It May Reinstate President Obama’s New Immigration Programs." ThinkProgress Federal Appeals Court Hints That It May Reinstate President Obamas New Immigration Programs Comments. Ian Millhiser, 08 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2015.
The main topics of this website is the new issues about DAPA having a hold. Many Latinos have been wishing for something like this to happen and has been granted and now paused. This issue has the attention of many people here in the U.S. In the site it talks about the judge in Texas that paused the process because of time constraints. This site covers a topic I will also bring up in the May 1st meeting.
This site is reliable because it is accurate and helpful.This website answers questions on DAPA and gives you contact information if one needs it. It is very detailed and is easy to read through. The source has been useful to me because it has answered my questions and some of my parents questions. This website has also helped me get started on my PP for DAPA.
This site will help me when I am reflecting on my senior project, because it does focus on part of my project. It will also help me inform my reader about the current status on DAPA. It will also help just be more informed overall and give me the privilege to answer questions on this topic.
9. Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Rev. and Expanded ed. New York: HarperLargePrint, 2006. Print.
In this book it talks about the different ways people use incentives and how human react to incentives. I read this book in class and it made me realize new things about my project. The book is interesting and connects to my focus for my senior project. It covers many topics on the 3 different types of incentives, who uses the incentives and how humans behave after those incentives are given.
This source is a useful source because it made me realize that if I used incentives it could increase the participation in my meetings. This book is reliable because we read it in my political studies class and I have used it as a source before. The book is written by an economist and journalist who are very educated.
This source has been useful to me because I understand how incentives work and it is interesting to see how much they are used in everyday life. I don’t think I was thinking much about incentives when planning my meetings at first. I know that if I would have read this book before my first meeting it would have been more successful. I can use this source when reflecting on my meetings.
10. "Latino Outreach Programs: Why They Need to Be Different." Latino Outreach Programs: Why They Need to Be Different. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2015
This source talks about the ways to outreach to the latino community and how it shouldn’t be any different then when outreaching to any other community. It has information about the different programs that have been successful in outreaching to the Latino community.
This source will be helpful to my project because I can do research on some of these programs that have been successful in outreaching to the Latinos and get some advice and new ideas. This website is also helpful because it kind of shows way that people who play different roles can be successful in outreaching.
I can use this source when reflecting on what I did to outreach to the Laibe community and what methods were the most successful and which ones did not work out. I will use this source when I need more ideas or when I want to check if I am using a correct way of outreaching or communication.
Senior Paper #4
Reflection of my Learning.
People say that students with parents that are involved in their school tend to do better in school”(Anne O’Brien). This is what made something trigger in my head that I need to try to do an outreach to the Latino parents here at New Technology High School. Being that Latinos are over 60% of this high schools population I thought it would be beneficial to try and engage parents in their child's school. Often times people think that planning an event is easy and not much hard work goes into it. I can disagree with that because I soon learned how difficult it was to outreach to the Latino parents at New Tech. My senior project was focused on outreaching to the Latino parents of New Tech. My interest on taking on this issue was that I am Mexican my parents are both Mexican with spanish being their primary language, and I wish my parents would of been more involved in my years in school. I know they would have benefited from it as well as myself. I thought that it was a little to late for me, but not for the rest of the student body. After the process of completing my senior project I learned about the difficulties that come with engaging Latino parents in their child's school as well as the opportunities that came along with my senior project.
Working closely with Ms. Martinez has been a wonderful experience. Martinez has been the one who has been there for me and pushed me and motivated me to keep going with my project even when I thought I should really change it because I saw nothing good coming from it. I sat down many times with my supporters to discuss how and when we were going to put on my meetings for my senior project. We discussed the good things that came from my previous meetings and also the improvements I should make for my next meeting to increase the amount of participation. I appreciate Ms.Martinez’s help, because she has been a great leader, principal, and mentor for me. I have learned a lot from her. From seeing all the meetings she has put on for school and how hard she has worked for site council, school advisory board, and ELAC. Watching her and how much work she does motivated me to finish my project even when I was telling myself it was not going to work.
Ms. Martinez and I worked on planning meetings for parent outreach some of our meetings were not successful which lead to doubtful meetings but others turned out good. After my first parent meeting with Ms.Martinez I was ready to give up because no one showed up to my meeting, and I was very frustrated. I advertised, I called parents personally, there was an automatic call home and still zero participation. I asked myself what I did wrong? Could they have forgotten? Did they just not care? Why did they not show up? I was really upset after I saw the turnout which was not much of a turnout at all . I tried, and I was really disappointed. It was the first time I felt that this project was just not going to work out. I did not want to continue with my project anymore and I was starting not to care. Ms. Martinez told me that it was okay to fail, because we now knew where we went wrong. So right after that meeting we all asked each other why no one showed up right away we started taking down notes of the possible reasons why people did not show up to the first meeting in December. We brainstormed and took notes on improvements for the next meeting. I also referred back to my sources to search for ideas. I used food as an incentive for my meeting. After the talk with Martinez I felt really confident that I was going to do well with the next meeting. I set a goal and I was confident that I was going to get at least 10 people at my meeting I changed the whole agenda and decided to provide food for them. I also decided to change the meeting time to before school rather than the evening when they were busy with family obligations. While school is important to Latinos, culturally evenings are for family time only.
I did keep some of the my prior strategies like calling home personally and having Ms. Martinez also call home. I also referred back to my sources to search for ideas. After reading Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner I was inspired to start trying some new things; incentives. Incentives are basically something that motivate/encourages a human to react and do something. I used food as an incentive for my January 27th parent meeting. By changing the time, my second meeting was successful I had a lot more participation in that parent meeting. Not only was I happy that people showed up, but I was more happy at the fact to see that parents were taking an interest in how their student was doing. I learned a lot throughout my project. I improved my Spanish and my communication skills. I learned how to ask people for help and not be scared to fail. Most importantly I found my true passion, helping people.
During my senior project I also attended ELAC, School site council, Advisory board and PTSA. Being part of these groups has helped me throughout my senior project because the groups have given me advice and ideas for my meetings. My mentor Mr.Cespedes is an active member of advisory board and he is a very smart man, who is also a lawyer. My passion to be a lawyer gave me the incentive to outreach to him and work with him. I decided to plan a DAPA (deferred action for parental accountability) meeting for the New Tech community. My last meeting will be May 1st at 6:00pm. I have been in communication with Mr.Cespedes and Ms. Martinez to plan out the upcoming meeting. I learned that repetitive advertisement is an important component when holding an event. I am confident that this meeting will be good and people will leave well informed on a the three year amnesty process.
My senior project was definitely an eye opener. I learned many things that I know will benefit me in the future and most importantly I got the opportunity to help my race and my community. My biggest goal is to become a lawyer, and make my parents citizens. My family has definitely shaped my aspirations throughout my life and that is why I dedicated my project to reaching out to other Latino parents at New Tech. Parent involvement in school is very important and it is one of the areas parents are not active in and it is very disappointing. There are so many opportunities for parents that go undiscovered and LAtinos should take advantage of the opportunities out there. I want to continue helping my Latino community. I enjoyed all that came with the role of my senior project so I decided to keep having meetings throughout the year even after the project is technically over. Overall, I tried to base my senior project on a topic I felt passionate about and was going to be involved with in the long run. I am most proud of my accomplishment because I became a leader to my Latino community and I contributed to making my school a better place for the Latino community. I did this by coordinating and speaking at the parent welcome orientation and supporting parents in concerns they had about their students. I was willing to serve the parents of New Tech and was successful with increasing the amount of Latino parent involvement. I would like to pass my role to an underclassman so that ELAC can stay active and the amount of involvement can keep increasing.
Works Cited.
1. “O'Brien, Anne. "What Parents Want in School Communication." Edutopia. N.p., 11 Aug.
2011. Web. 04 Dec. 2014
2.Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the
Hidden Side of Everything. Rev. and Expanded ed. New York: HarperLargePrint, 2006.
Print.