New Haven Independent

Her name is Erica Aponte.

After school on Tuesday, Aponte and 39 other Wilbur Cross High School students climbed onto buses and headed to another school, John S. Martinez School in Fair Haven, to sit and listen to more than a dozen Latino business owners, educators and other role models tell them they have a bright future, if they follow their dreams and work hard. Perhaps surprisingly at the end of a long day, they did sit and listen — maybe because these Latino students were told over and over that they have something special to offer the work world.

Fluency in Spanish and English is a big advantage in the south-central Connecticut labor market, said Bill Villano, executive director of the regional Workforce Alliance. He said he welcomed the opportunity presented by the forum — sponsored by the state’s Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission — to talk to students about what types of jobs are available and what types of skills they’ll need to qualify for those jobs.

Villano said Latinos account for the region’s largest percentage of population growth in the past decade. “The composition of the workforce is changing dramatically, and the ability to speak the language of the fastest-growing element of our population will be a distinct advantage.”

Case in point: Optician Angel Sierra told the students that just 20 of the state’s 900 licensed opticians are Hispanic. He said the field is wide open, and the salary for an established optician is around $40,000. He’s about to open an office in Fair Haven. “We need you,” he said. “All you need is dedication, punctuality, and good math skills.”

Forum moderator Norma Rodriguez Reyes told a story that seemed to resonate with the audience, of a niece who is half Puerto Rican, half African American. “She applied for a job with the phone company,” Reyes said, “but she didn’t speak Spanish, so she didn’t get the job.” Reyes is publisher of New Haven’s La Voz newspaper, and secretary of the Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs Commission — another role model.

As much as speakers emphasized the importance of students taking pride in their Latino heritage and of holding on to their Spanish language ability, they also drove home the importance of achieving fluency in English in order to get a good job. Villano presented a graph showing those with the highest levels of education make the most money and are least likely to be unemployed. He had the students repeat the phrase, “Learn more to earn more.”

The last part of the forum focused on encouraging Latino students to become teachers, since African Americans and Latinos make up 80 percent of the New Haven student body, but only 30 percent of the teachers.

When the forum was over, Erica Aponte said the speakers had helped her make a decision she had been mulling over earlier.

“I learned a lot. I learned how much teachers make, what they go through, how long they have to be in college, and that’s what I want to do. I was thinking about it before, but this definitely convinced me.”