“La Vista de Largo Plazo” Parent Engagement Kit & DVD

This is a new offering for school districts educating English Language Learners around the nation. The Parent Engagement Kit is titled La Vista de Largo Plazo  and includes:

25-minute DVD – Graciela interviews her parents in Spanish. Together they address cultural obstacles, fears and traditions that have contributed for decades to an under-educated Hispanic community, so that today’s immigrant parents of school-age children, and their educators, can see decades forward to a brighter future filled with highly-educated, bilingual American adults.

Complete transcript translation of the conversation on the DVD (in Spanish) into English. This transcript will help non-Spanish speaking educators understand the conversation between Graciela and her parents seen on the DVD, as they prepare to use the parent engagement kit within local parent communities.

Worksheet for parents to use at the workshop – helps parents ponder their lives and their children’s lives decades into the future, an intentional opportunity to dream, write down goals and raise expectations, BEFORE they view the DVD and hear Arturo and Tina’s story

Workshop facilitator guide – quick guidance on how to use the DVD and worksheets for parents

Description from the DVD back cover follows:

This is a unique parent-engagement experience for Spanish-speaking parents with school-age children. It provides a long-term view of the benefits of higher education for their children and for themselves. It asks and answers these questions:

Have you imagined your child as an adult? Is he/she a college graduate in that future time? Have you thought about what the separation will feel like when he/she moves out? Have you thought about the wonderful life that will become possible for him/her (and for yourself) if you let your child go? What if you don’t? What if they stay where they are for the next three decades or more?

In this unique chat between the adult daughter of Mexican immigrants and her parents, you peek into a possible future that can come true for the immigrant families you serve.

Graciela Tiscareno-Sato, daughter of Spanish-speaking immigrants who arrived in the late 1960s, left her family home in Colorado on a military scholarship to the prestigious University of California in Berkeley, 1200 miles from her parents. The first in her family to graduate from college, she went on to earn her master degree while serving as a U.S. Air Force aviator and traveling the world.

In this DVD, you’ll hear her mother and father reflect on their lives as immigrants and parents. Hear their fears when she left the house to study. Listen to the lifetime of rewards that come from having a highly-educated daughter now that they’re in their 70s and 80s.

The parents of ELL students in your communities will get a long-term view of a life filled with accomplishments, pride, travel and joy that is possible for the parents of immigrants who let their children go discover who they can become as educated, bilingual Latino Americans.