A Gold Nugget Within Our Midst

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

Nelson Mandela

I attended an early morning breakfast yesterday at the Salt Palace Convention Center to share Guadalupe School's vision and hope for its students through education. As I listened to the keynote speaker, Salt Lake Mayor, Ralph Becker, the stories of former Guadalupe School students, and the story of a young Hispanic couple participating in Guadalupe's ESL (English As A Second Language) Program, I was reminded how foolish we are to try and reinvent the wheel when we have a success story within our midst to teach us what works---Guadalupe School students continually score in the 90th percentile on state mandated tests.


Guadalupe's Mission is: To teach economically disadvantaged children and non-English speaking adults the vision and skills needed to live productive, rewarding lives-- through learning, literacy, and living.


This mission isn't just a written statement tucked away in a drawer, but it plays a vital role in directing what Guadalupe does to make it a reality through the following:

• Providing door-to door bussing for preschoolers through third grade.


• Providing a continuum of services from birth through third grade some of which are bilingual because the value of first language is recognized.


• Maximizing the support of its volunteers who log over 2,000 hours each school year.


• Providing free breakfast, lunch and healthy snacks to students.


• Offering a community learning center model so that an entire family can find educational services.

This "gold nugget" in our midst began when Our Lady of Guadalupe parish, with leadership from Father Jerald Merrill and Suzanne Weiss, founded The Guadalupe Center on Salt Lake City’s west side in 1966. Four over four decades, disadvantaged children and families, about 95% of whom are Hispanic, have been served by this gold nugget.

In spite of Guadalupe's great success, it doesn't rest on its laurels. It continues to be a vibrant and growing organization by continually learning and adopting new approaches that will help them to be even more effective for the families they serve.

Guadalupe must not only be a shining light for Utah, it must also be an example that is replicated so that even more Utah families can benefit. This will require a willingness on the part of policy makers to step out of comfort zones and be committed to a vision like Guadalupe's and a willingness to do whatever it takes to make that vision a reality.

Thank you, Guadalupe, for charting unknown paths to provide an ideal for others to follow.

Surprises And Lessons

Yesterday while doing a search at BYU's library website for articles for a paper I am writing for my education policy class, I had three surprises.

Surprise #1: Because I appreciate Gary Orfield's work, I was excited to see an article written by him Hispanic Education: Challenge, Research, and Policies that fit perfectly with the topic of my paper. It became even more exciting to read the article because it described so well what we are facing today and I found myself saying, "Yes! Yes! Wow!," more times than I can count. It wasn't until I had finished scanning the article that I noticed when it was written---November, 1986!!!--over 21 years ago, and it could have been written yesterday.

Surprise #2: Because one of the keywords for the search was "Hispanic," some articles came up that weren't related to my particular interest at the moment which was education. Yet, one article caught my eye titled Whither Hispanic Education? Even though it had both Hispanic and education in the title it became apparent while reading that it was talking about the fact that all is not well when it comes to teaching languages. It went onto say that some are even antagonistic towards the idea. As someone who is committed to the importance of teaching and preserving languages and because I am writing on language issues for my education law class, this article intrigued me as it described so perfectly our present day language situation and challenges. Upon finishing the article I checked the date to see when it was written, almost certain it must have been 2007. I literally almost fainted upon discovering that it was a Presidential address read at the 37th Annual Meeting of the AATSP (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese), Chicago, December 29-30, 1955 !

Surprise #3: It was thrilling to find an article entitled Pulling together to close the Hispanic achievement gap and I could hardly wait to open it as the title had all the right words for the topic of my paper...and it was even written October 7, 2006! Then I noticed the author--Barbara Lovejoy! It was an article I had written and that had been published in the Salt Lake Tribune. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I agreed with the author!

I learned some lessons from these surprises: 1) The "fight" for policies, programs, procedures, places, and persons that will benefit our diverse learners is not something new but the "fight" must continue and 2) We never know when or where the work we do may appear and possibly make a difference.