nothin Students Help Schools Adapt To Change | New Haven Independent

Students Help Schools Adapt To Change

Emily Hays Photo

New Haven Academy seniors Alan Veloz and Jayline Hernandez Gomez: Tackling the schools’ changing demographics.

Alan Veloz saw his parents struggle to understand English at his parent-teacher conference, then saw it happen again with his younger brother. So he decided to take action.

The 17-year-old gathered a group of his friends to provide Spanish-English translation services as part of his senior project at New Haven Academy.

The regional magnet school requires every student to design a project to do something about an issue they are passionate about during their senior year. The goal is to practice the critical thinking and civic participation skills seniors learn in class.

Just like we give them projects that show us that they have the skills for college level work, we want to give them the opportunity to try out those skills,” said school co-founder Meredith Gavrin.

Latino students now make up nearly half of the population of New Haven Public Schools. As adults in the school district wrestle with how to handle the needs of its changing demographics, Alan and classmate Jayline Hernandez Gomez have taken action with their senior projects, tackling gaps in curriculum and parent communication.

A Temporary Solution

The idea for Alan’s project came to him this fall when his mom couldn’t attend his younger brother David’s parent-teacher conference at Church Street Elementary in Hamden. His stepfather, Moises Guerra, attended in her stead.

His stepfather told Alan privately not to translate during the conference. He didn’t want the teachers to think he couldn’t understand English.

During a break well into the conference, Guerra asked Alan what the teachers had said so far. More than 10 minutes had passed. Alan had not been paying close attention.

I thought, This is crazy. Why aren’t they providing this?’” Alan recalled.

He started writing down the teachers’ comments for the rest of the meeting, so he could translate. Then he got to work pulling together fellow students to sit in on other parent-teacher conferences in order to translate there as well.

Alan now calls his organization ASSIST, or Ambitious Spanish-Speaking Student Interpreters Today. He and other members of ASSIST have already helped out 30 families at two parent-teacher conferences this year, which took place at Fair Haven and John S. Martinez Schools.

Despite having a majority Hispanic student body, the school has only two interpreters, Alan noted.

We were jumping from classroom to classroom,” he remembered. Some parents are more comfortable talking about what’s going on at home with someone who understands their background.”

Nina Burns is a fourth-grade teacher at Fair Haven School. Grateful for Alan’s help and impressed by his initiative, she wrote New Haven Academy to thank them.

He would thoughtfully walk [other members of ASSIST] in, introduce them to the teachers and the families and even let them observe one conference before leaving them to try on their own,” Burns wrote in the email. It has been such an effective way to help the families understand their children’s grades!”

Alan said that he doesn’t want his project to be a replacement for interpreters, but rather a stimulus for the New Haven Board of Education to hire more.

I want it to bring awareness and a temporary solution until the district eventually picks up the slack,” he said.

Alan intends to speak to the board about the issue. His classmate Jayline, on the other hand, started her senior project with that step (Alan was in the audience, supporting her).

Teach Us About Ourselves”

Jayline’s focus is on adding Latin American, Spanish and Puerto Rican history into school curricula.

She said that her parents, Leslie Gomez and Alexis Hernandez, not the school system, were the ones who taught her how to be Puerto Rican in Fair Haven. They taught her how to dance and cook traditional food.

At school, I felt like I had to fit a certain standard. I felt like I had to be some type of way,” the 18-year-old said.

Jayline’s epiphany, like Alan’s, was related to her younger sibling, her seventh-grade sister Leilene Hernandez.

After Jayline went to see a Black History Month celebration at her sister’s school, Betsy Ross, she was in the kitchen with Leilene and pointed out that the arts magnet middle school did not also have a Hispanic history month.

OK, and …?” her sister responded.

Jayline called Alan, almost crying that her sister seemed to care so little about her heritage.

Jayline did her research and found that Hispanic students like herself and Alan are 50 percent more likely to graduate late. The dropout rate is improving, she said, but the graduation rate bothered her.

I’m blaming the school system for that. They’re not teaching us about ourselves.”

I’m @ing them,” she added, laughing.

Jayline said she wants to become an elementary school teacher, partially because she feels teachers have a role to play. She said that she would ask the kids how their days and lives are going and what they want her to teach them.

Teachers should take it upon themselves. If no one in the classroom can feel what you’re teaching … most of this stuff we know already,” she said.

She called out her college preparation teacher Fana Hickinson as someone who particularly encourages students to share troubles at home or school and who brings them to events to inspire them.

Hickinson brought Jayline to speak at the YMCA about cultural inclusivity at school.

That pushed me more to fight,” Jayline said.

Fights For The Future

Jayline tells Alan to put his fist in the air like the movie The Breakfast Club.

While the focus of the senior projects is outward toward the community, New Haven Academy tries to incorporate student ideas into its own system as well.

When Jayline has wanted to learn about her history at school, she has taught herself. She used her junior project to research the Ponce Massacre, when police fired on Puerto Rican nationalist protesters in the 1930s.

A new state law requires schools to incorporate African-American and Latin-American history into their curricula as electives. Gavrin said that New Haven Academy intends to be ahead of that rollout. They are considering ways to bring Jayline into that process.

Gavrin said that the first senior action projects at New Haven Academy all focused on change within the school, from forming extracurriculars to teaching a workshop to ninth-graders. After a few years, the school added rules to ease students further out of their comfort zones.

We pushed in this requirement that it have a community component. What that means is if you’re going to lead a workshop, you have to invite outsiders,” Gavrin said. That piece of having to go out and advocate for something was almost too easy when you did it in the building.”

Alan and Jayline have become close friends this year. They are president and vice president of the senior class and led celebrations for Hispanic Heritage Month this fall.

Both Alan and Jayline have college plans. Jayline wants to stay in-state to prepare for her teaching career. She prompted Alan and grinned as he revealed his big news — he has a full ride to attend Tufts University.

Alan is thinking that he wants to become a veterinarian or pediatrician. He wants to keep up his advocacy even within those professions, perhaps by serving on an ethics board. 

Jayline and Alan led underclassmen in a project to paint every Hispanic and Latin-American flag (like those above) for Hispanic Heritage Month.

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