San Antonio is the nation's seventh-largest city, a dynamic modern powerhouse steeped in Latino culture and history. Yet more than 100,000 adults here haven't passed ninth grade. An in-depth article by Lily Casura of HuffPost recently took a deep dive into the state of education in the city, which noted "exceptionally low" high-school graduation rates in certain parts of the city. Casura's article notes that 300,000 San Antonio adults overall (20% of the city's population) are not high-school graduates. Four San Antonio ZIP Codes (two on its east side and two on its west side) have emerged as “the highest-hardship areas of the city,” she wrote. About 110,000 people live in these four ZIP Codes (78202, 78203, 78207, and 78237) and more than half have not completed ninth ...
Oriana Perez strives to make others feel welcome and supported. Perez, who grew up along the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, hopes to improve Latino health and provide mentorship for others, just like her mother always did. She puts this outlook into practice as a research coordinator at the Children’s Nutrition and Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, with an interest in adapting healthy lifestyle programs for use among Latinos. She also has served as a consultant for the Pan American Health Organization, a health educator and screener at Interactive Health, Inc., a health educator at Methodist Health System, and a research coordinator for tobacco prevention projects for youth at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. A few years after completing ...
Luis Baez learned about true compassion from his Puerto Rican grandfather, who fought for Latino social justice all the way to the White House. He also got interested in science and math at an early age. So it’s no surprise that Baez, a native of Glendale, Wisc., is putting both his childhood interests and his compassionate nature together to study how to improve public health. He is currently a master’s-degree student in public health, specializing in epidemiology, at Loyola University Chicago. He is studying biostatistics in hopes of finding new ways to reduce cancer and HIV and improve the health of Latino and all people. To further his training and education, Baez applied for the Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program. The program, led by Dr. ...
You can apply now for the 2018 Éxito! Latino Cancer Research Leadership Training program and optional $3,250 internships at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the UT Health San Antonio. Éxito! (English: Success!) recruits trainees annually for a culturally tailored curriculum to promote pursuit of a doctoral degree and cancer research career. This year, program leaders will select 25 master’s level students and professionals from across the country to take part in a five-day Éxito! summer institute June 4-8, 2017, in San Antonio. The summer institute features Latino researchers, mentors, and doctoral candidacy experts to inform about the latest in Latino cancer, enhance career development, and provide motivation to take the next step in education and ...
Imagine you're 4 years old. How would you feel going to preschool with crocodiles, elephants, and butterflies? What about learning letters while on nature walks? That childhood fantasy is reality for kids at the Will Smith Zoo School in San Antonio (68% Latino). The Zoo School, which opened in 2004 and became licensed in 2014 at the San Antonio Zoo, will expand its capacity from about 50 to more than 200 students in 2018 and become the largest nature-based preschool in the nation, SA Current reports. Zoo officials believe that learning can be as much of a serious hands-on experience as it is messy fun. "Children will spend time in nature exploring and discovering the wonders of nature," according to the Zoo School Parent Handbook. "Basic preschool concepts will be ...
Growing up in Texas, Cameron Allen knew he wanted to be a teacher. How could Allen be the best teacher possible in Texas? Where could he make the most impact? He got a higher education in both English and Spanish—an effort that planted a “seed” for his desire to help Spanish-speakers of all ages gain a path to better, healthier lives.
Growing the seeds of knowledge
Allen began his collegiate career studying early childhood education at UT Austin in 2002. He also minored in Spanish, and did student teaching and studying in Mexico and in Ecuador. This strongly influenced his life and career. “It exposed me to another part of the world, to another culture, to another way of life,” Allen said. “It opened my eyes to other possibilities and to what could really be ...
Florida (24% Latino) is home to the nation's largest free preschool program. How did they get it? The long and winding story started 70 years ago and called for epic action—like enabling people to tax themselves for the sake of children, and local residents bypassing state legislators and petitioning for a public vote for universal Pre-K as a Florida Constitutional amendment. By the end, Florida had a model that other states can follow to get free Pre-K in their state.
The Need for Greater Access to Preschool
Latino and all children who attend high-quality early childhood programs are better prepared for kindergarten and overall school success than children who do not attend such programs. However, Latino kids and families across the country face many barriers to access ...
Nap clubs. Quiet rooms. Wellness centers with cozy couches and tea. Schools are trying new ways to give rest to sleepy students, including Latinos who are more sleep-deprived than their peers. That includes high-tech "nap pods" for students in two high schools in Las Cruces (59.6% Latino) and two in Sunland Park (95.2% Latino), N.M. Students sit in the pods, available in the nurse's office, under a sensory-reduction dome that plays relaxing music and soothing lights for 20 minutes before gently vibrating to wake the students.
"[It is] great for kids who weren’t getting enough sleep at night—which teenagers don’t, for a variety of reasons," Sandy Peugh, health services director for the Las Cruces school district, told Las Cruces Sun-News.
"They were coming to school ...
The U.S. Latino population has grown 243% since 1980. But the number of Latino doctors dropped 22%, a study found. That's why we need programs like Roots to Wings. The innovative Roots to Wings program teams up Latino and Native American middle- and high-schoolers in Washington schools with medical students at Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences. The teams then "co-mentor" each other. How? The kids teach the medical students about their Mexican-American or Yakama Nation heritage. The medical students teach the kids about medicine and pursuing higher education. “Roots to Wings is actually an educational pathway for underrepresented youth to enter the health sciences,” Dr. Mirna Ramos-Diaz, who leads the program, recently told the Yakima Herald. ...