Community
Since December 2000, I have been
the Nell Soto Home Visit coordinator for my school. This is a voluntary
program which involves teachers, clerical staff, and school support
personnel to conduct home visits. Our goal is to help parents and
students in need of educational materials, and sometimes for personal needs
like housing, food and health issues. We have to work with limited funding
which does run out quickly, but we work with spirited professionals whose
dedication and hard work continues far after the funds are gone! I have logged
well over 150 hours in home visits and still have a way to
go!
The above photo's were taken at a dictionary give-a-way that was
sponsored by the National Visiting Teachers Association. Parent's were notified
that free dictionaries were to be given away if they were able to attend a
brief course on how to help their children use them. I was there to help and to
document the event with photo's.
On March 31, 2001 our school held its first annual Cesar Chavez day. The
goal this day was to beautify the school with loads of donated flowers (and
trees too). All of the classrooms were given a large flowerpot that would
soon be filled with colorful flowers
and vegetables. Those teachers who were lucky enough to have a garden
plot by their door (like me) also received more flowers and bulbs
for the spring. Songs (in Spanish) were sung by second grader
Eric, who was a real crowd
pleaser! Many of the school's parents turned out for this event and brought
lots of good things to eat. The final part of this journey was a tree
dedicated to Cesar Chavez that was planted in our courtyard by the children
at the school.
During the 1999-2000 school year,
I was the school/police liaison for my school. My job was to
attend early morning meetings with the Sacramento City Police to help build
relations between the local schools and the local police leaders. I
was the only non-administrator attending, but I was allowed a voice for the
concerns at my schools.
