Building a Path to Literacy
There's more at stake in Dove Springs than test scores
By Sam Anderson-Ramos, Fri., April 8, 2016
Like most complex subjects, no single label will ever suffice to describe Dove Springs, the Southeast Austin neighborhood where I grew up, but here are a few: Mexican-American, working-class, poor, overlooked, humble, proud, violent, peaceful, ugly, beautiful. Among the labels that are least likely to come up: affluent, privileged.
One of the challenges facing the neighborhood is literacy. Dove Springs' Consuelo Mendez Middle School is on the Texas Education Agency's 2015 list of schools where "improvement is required." The number of AISD students who performed at "Satisfactory Standard or Above" in State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) testing for reading was 79%. The number of Mendez students who met that standard was 62%. In writing, the AISD number was 71%, while Mendez's was 44%. The number of AISD students who tested at the "Advanced Standard" was 22%. The number for Mendez students was 4%.
I put little to no store in standardized testing. If not for corroboration by residents and local educators, I would be skeptical at how much these results really tell us. It may make more sense to see STAAR scores as demographic indicators, rather than measures of teaching success or failure, much less student potential. In this case, the test results appear to shore up what student population numbers would suggest: A little more than 40% of students are English language learners, and 93.5% are "economically disadvantaged." Dove Springs is largely an immigrant population; it is also largely impoverished. Mendez reflects these realities.
Literacy as Peace of Mind
The school itself looks much like any other in Austin: meandering, blue and white, behind chain-link fences over a broad swath of real estate between Pleasant Valley and Nuckols Crossing roads. Many neighborhood children, like myself, went from Widén Elementary across the street to Mendez, and on into high school. Where I had the luck of being raised by two highly literate, English-speaking parents who read to me at a very early age (and who forced me out of Mendez and into Kealing Junior High's magnet program when I entered seventh grade), many others have not had that advantage, in which case their progress has relied to a greater degree on what happens inside their schools. In my experience, Mendez was a place of violence, but like any school, it was also a place of love. It is an essential hub for the community that depends on it.
Mendez librarian Ivan Cervantes comes across as gentle, caring, thoughtful, and passionate about the students who visit him. He emphasizes critical thinking, even when it comes to something as simple as recommending a book. "They would come in all the time and ask me, 'Where's the scary books?'" Cervantes says. "I used to point them to generic scary, but then I got to thinking about it and said, well, let me force these children to think. I'll ask them, 'What're you scared of? Are you scared of snakes, are you scared of police brutality, are you scared of ghosts or zombies or aliens? When you tell me what scares you, then I'll help you find a scary book.'" "What are you scared of?" could be a mind-blowing question for an 11-year-old. No doubt it would, as Cervantes suggests, force the child to think.
Cervantes is adamant about the importance of mental health, and sees the library as a kind of wellness space. In a school and neighborhood suffering under the various strains of poverty, the notion of wellness through literacy is striking. I must admit, as a former student at Mendez, that my memory of the place is one of chaos. When I visited recently, I half-expected an eighth grader to dare me into a fight, the way they did almost every day when I was in sixth grade. Of course, childhood memories loom large. One refrain I have heard in conversations with residents is that the neighborhood has changed.
This may be so, but according to Ofelia Zapata, a resident and representative of Austin Interfaith, teachers at Mendez are still leaving in droves. The Austin American-Statesman reports that 52% of the school's teachers left in 2012 alone. The first years of teaching in a troubled public school can be a wake-up call for bright-eyed young teachers who learn that, rather than engaging with the content they love, they are instead spending most of their time breaking up fights or desperately trying to hold their students' focus. Even as I left the school after my visit with Cervantes, a security officer was rushing up the steps in the opposite direction, a sight that took me back about 20 years. In this environment, literacy as peace of mind can be a valuable perspective, if only that perspective can be taught.
A Two-Generation Program
There are programs that provide literacy outreach in the area, though Zapata worries that they vary in quality. There are too many variables, she says, that lead to malfunctions, including a lack of coordination with residents, minimal one-on-one mentoring, and the inherent drawbacks of a transient volunteer force made up of people from outside the neighborhood. "It's not working," she says.
However, Play to Learn, a part of United Way for Greater Austin's "Success by 6" program, avoids some of these shortcomings by including parents; it is, as a 2013 University of Texas report put it, a "two-generation program." Parents take a free, two-hour/week, eight-week course with their 2- and 3-year-olds that teaches the parents how to play with their kids in a way that helps them improve their language skills, which in turn will give those children an advantage when it's time for them to start school.
Play to Learn serves low-income families, the vast majority of whom (95%; all numbers are from 2013) are Spanish-speaking. Most of the parents participating (63%) did not graduate high school. But using a variety of activities, parents learn strategies for reading and talking with their children, as well as methods for accessing community resources such as local libraries. Tips on how to "extend the conversation by asking questions related to your child's interests" encourage what Success by 6 Vice President Sue Carpenter calls "reflective" language, as opposed to "directive" ("Why are you doing that?" vs. "Stop that!"). At the end of each session, families get a children's book and some art supplies to take home. Families that attend all eight sessions are given a free Samsung Galaxy tablet equipped with educational apps and linked to useful resources like the city of Austin website. (The program received a $1 million grant from Samsung Austin Semiconductor in 2012.)
The UT study commissioned to evaluate Play to Learn found that parents reported spending more time reading together and playing games with their children after completing the course, and that they felt more confident about helping their children succeed, and more engaged. Zapata, who helped recruit some of the earliest residents into the program, says, "It was a great success. ... [The families] were committed to going to the library on a weekly basis." This encouraged continued visits after the sessions were over. Additionally, she lauds the program's inclusion of fathers, so that "it wasn't just the moms."
"It works," says Zapata.
Carpenter points out that there are "roughly 28,000 low-income children" up to 4 years of age in Travis County, only 5,000 of whom are receiving any kind of outreach service at all. Seeking to address this shortfall, Play to Learn is serving 275 families this year, including, in particular, children between the ages of 2.5 and 3.5 years. The numbers are daunting, but significant, as the lessons shared during Play to Learn sessions will presumably have a positive impact on participating families for a lifetime. (Carpenter makes a point of noting that coordination with schools in the area has "been great.")
A Power Gap
If the efforts of programs like Play to Learn, as well as those of dedicated educators such as Cervantes, continue to bear fruit, the future in Dove Springs is bright. But as the city continues along its current course, I can't help but wonder if the neighborhood's literacy stats will improve before the gentrification tide sweeps through. In other words, will today's Dove Springs residents enjoy the benefits of neighborhood renewal before they are priced out, as so many others in the city have been?
In his 1965 autobiography, Malcolm X described his years in prison, during which he began to read seriously for the first time in his life. "I suppose it was inevitable," he said, "that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened." For Malcolm X, his experience with literacy became a passage to empowerment.
And it is power we are talking about. Literacy incites confidence. It bestows a refined capacity for self-preservation. Without power, Dove Springs can't be free. Upward mobility stagnates. Limited opportunity breeds desperation on all fronts. Access to awareness will be crippled, so that when a speculator offers to buy a home for less than its value, the homeowner might not only misunderstand the fine print, they will lack sufficient regard for the value and scope of their own rights. In a city where the claim to "home" is defined by dollar amounts, literacy is more important than ever. There is much more at stake here than test scores.
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