Hispanic outreach beings with Maria Aguilar

By Katy Young

An endless field of beet tops and three people bending over hoes. Maria Aguilar took this photo home to show her son what her life was like when she was his age.

He was learning about migrant workers in sixth grade but didn’t realize how closely he was connected to the lives of migrant workers.

“I was a migrant with my family for many years,” Aguilar says. “We started coming up to North Dakota when I was 10 years old to hoe sugar beets. Most of the rows were half mile to a mile long and we got paid by the acre. We did the fields twice, once to do the thinning and once to hoe the weeds.”

Her family also came from their Texas home to work on potatoes, helping in March to empty out the huge warehouses of the last year’s crop.

Since her childhood, most of her extended family has settled in southern Minnesota and she has been in Le Sueur for 15 years.

As the new Hispanic outreach coordinator for the Le Sueur-Henderson School District, she helps migrant families not only get adjusted to the educational system but also helps them find medical services and housing. All factors contribute to the children’s ability to settle into school and learn.

Her own motivation is pure compassion. “I was there ... I know what these kids are going through.”

Park Elementary Principal Bill Bjorndahl said that Aguilar’s experience makes her the ideal person for the job she holds. “We are thrilled to have her on board,” he said. “She has fabulous stories of growing up as a migrant.”

Because she has lived for years in the community and has her own kids in the school system, he is looking forward to her staying for a long time.

Aguilar works closely with the English as a Second Language program and has personal experience with that as well. She helped her own five kids make the transition from Spanish language at home to speaking English when they started school.

She helps families by sharing her general knowledge of the area as a one-woman chamber of commerce. “I hear a lot from the families, that they are glad to know they can call me for any little thing. . . where to and how to in Le Sueur. I have lived here a long time, so I know.

“My priority is to find the new migrant families and make sure they have what they need,” Aguilar said.

Migrant families come up from Texas in April or May to find housing and jobs and work for the summer. Some families return to the area year after year, and that makes it easier on the kids in school. New families will come and some will have luck and find work and others won’t, she says.

“A lot of these kids get up and go after the corn pack is done. I make sure their school records follow them to their next school.”

The area corn pack ends around the beginning of October, so eight students that started the year in Le Sueur have already moved back South.

Sometimes the housing they find and the jobs aren’t ideally matched. Children she has worked with in school have family members working all around the area, right in Le Sueur, but also in Le Center, Montgomery, Waterville and Arlington.

“For the kids in school, it is hard,” she said, “If the parents found a night shift, they can’t help and maybe who’s watching can’t help with school work because of the language.

“It’s sad to see ... They lose so much learning because of the moving, the picking up and the getting used to a new school.”

Some act uninterested in school work, and when that happens, she said, “We have to push. They can be very smart, but to get them motivated when they won’t be here long is another struggle.”

Aguilar said students don’t realize how much they are missing until it comes closer to graduation. Aguilar had to stay home to the very end of her senior year, missing work with her family, taking a full load of classes and two additional classes by correspondence course to graduate on time.

The parents of Park Elementary migrant students almost all come to conferences, but fewer parents attend high school conferences.

Aguilar said the teenagers are afraid of getting in trouble and, with parents who don’t speak and read English, teenagers can easily keep them in the dark.

But Aguilar cheerfully gets in anyway to shed light all around.

“I’ll call home and go round and round with high school kids and 101 questions before I get to mom or dad. I have to let them know they’re not in trouble.

“It really helps the families to know they can help their kids.”

Although there are 146 Hispanic students in the three Le Sueur schools and more from blended families, there is no cohesive community.

Aguilar would like to change that. She arranged a potluck in September and more than 50 people attended.

“We just want to tell them — we know you’re there and you are wanted and needed, and without your support, things can’t happen.”

For a fall harvest celebration she got the help of seven or eight mothers who made nearly 600 tortillas and brought them to school, warm and homemade and served them to all the students with refried beans and Aguilar’s own salsa.

She thought it would be too hot for the audience at Park Elementary, but she had to call her father to bring another jar.

“I would like my next step to be getting the migrant families to interact with the non-Hispanic people.”