TOLEDO, Ohio -- A growing number of northwest Ohio school districts with migrant education now offer a program that allows teachers to put their classrooms on wheels to help students at nights and on weekends.
They're teaching preschoolers whose parents pick vegetables, children who watch younger siblings during the day and teens working full days picking crops in the fields.
Districts hope the program will stress the importance of education among older children who too often would rather work than continue their schooling, said Jose Salinas, director of the Ohio
Migrant Education Center in Fremont.
The program began sending teachers to migrant camps a few years ago, and most migrant education programs in the area are participating, Salinas said.
"If the children can't come to us, we can come to them," he said.
Migrant children are allowed to work full days in the fields once they turn 12 and so they stop going to summer migrant school, he said.
"Once they turn 12 and we don't see them anymore, it's hard to keep that momentum," Salinas said.
Ken Green, a sixth-grade science teacher in the Woodmore school district, drives to the camps in a van stuffed with alphabet magnets, books, flashcards, markers, crayons, tables and chairs.
Older children who spend all day picking crops come for help with schoolwork or to learn English as a second language. He usually visits camps with a bilingual aide.
Margarita Lopez of Plant City, Fla., a native of Mexico, said migrant families appreciate the teachers.
"It's important because it's their education," she said, speaking through her 12-year-old son, Rigoberto Ramirez.
Rigoberto hopes to go to college, but he also wants to earn money in the fields this summer. So instead of going to a school program for migrant children in prekindergarten through sixth
grade, he is picking cucumbers.
The evening and weekend programs help fill in the gaps for children who are away from their home schools in late spring and early fall, said Tom Adams, director of Woodmore's migrant program.
"They miss a lot of school when they're traveling from Texas or Florida to get here," Adams said. "Most of it is getting them caught up."
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