Bridging ‘opportunity gap,’ migrant ed students go to STEM camp

Brothers Jesus and Oscar Silva, seated at a table, closely eyed a computer program displayed on a laptop as Omena Mushale explained how their LEGO Mindstorms robot was meant to work.

Migrant Education students in Fairfield-Suisun Unified were in a classroom for high schoolers Monday at Anna Kyle Elementary in Fairfield where they participated in a two-week STEM camp specifically for students like them, sons and daughters of migrant workers who either follow seasonal plantings and harvests or move frequently within a certain geographic area, including a city or town, as they seek work.

A federally funded program, Migrant Education tries to meet the academic and health needs of migrant children, nearly all of them poor and Hispanic, English language learners and prone to dropping out. The program’s goal is to make sure all migrant students, up to age 21, reach the same standards as traditional students and graduate with a high school diploma (or complete a GED).

Two of 18 students, TK-12, in the summer camp, the Silvas listened as Mushale, a 2106 Vanden High graduate and former member of the school’s award-winning RoboVikes robotics team, helped them understand the science that propelled their ’bot, a largely gray plastic device not much larger than a softball.

The brothers, an incoming Armijo High sophomore and freshman, respectively, were among some half-dozen high school students participating in the camp, four-hour morning and early afternoon sessions that end Friday. They are classes funded not only with federal money but also, in part, by a grant from the Solano County Office of Education. The county grant pays for some adult facilitators and for five former or current RoboVikes mentors, including Mushale, led by club adviser Doug Green, an SCOE employee and longtime physics teacher.

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Richard Bammer — The Reporter Ademar Reyes Rivas (left), an incoming eighth-grader at Sheldon Academy of Innovative Learning in Fairfield, and Daniela Miranda, an incoming senior at Armijo High in Fairfield, listen to Omena Mushale, a 2016 Vanden High graduate and incoming student at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs, Colo., explain robot-programming details during Fairfield-Suisun Unified’s Migrant Education STEM Camp Monday at Anna Kyle Elementary in Fairfield, as an adult facilitator, Ruby Mora, looks on.

Incoming Vanden senior Connor Thrasher, president-designate of the 2016-17 RoboVikes, said the ’bots are programmed — “Precoded,” he said — for beginners, as an introduction to all things STEM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Thrasher said the migrant students assembled the ’bots from a kit, then learned to set the operating program into motion, with an eventual goal for the ’bot to navigate a simple “obstacle course” on the classroom floor.

The facilitator and adult leader in the classroom, Ruby Mora, agreed that the school district’s STEM camp for migrant students bridges “the opportunity gap” that is often a fact of life for poorer students compared with experiences for their middle-class and rich peers, whose parents can afford valuable summertime academic or athletic activities for their children.

Thrasher said the two-week camp not only gives the migrant students a vocabulary to understand scientific terms but also encourages them “to use their imaginations, to let them think” about possibilities.

“Anything is possible,” if the migrant students have opportunities and encouragement, Mora said.

At another table, Ademar Reyes Rivas, an incoming eighth-grader at Sheldon Academy of Innovative Learning in Fairfield, and Daniela Miranda, who will be a senior at Armijo, also pored over the programming instructions for their ’bot, which looked exactly like the Silvas’ but could be re-configured in other ways, according to their imaginations and inclinations later in the week. At one point, Mushale helped them navigate the fine points of the programming.

Noting most of the instruction is done in English, Mora said interest and excitement about STEM subjects appeared to be rubbing off on some of the migrant students, who, during the day, rotate between several credentialed teachers at the Kidder Avenue campus, off East Travis Boulevard.

“Daniela was talking to me last week” about pursuing additional STEM studies, she said, smiling.

Other Vanden grads or continuing Vanden students included Nick Fisher, who will attend the University of California, Merced, in the fall and was in his third year helping out at the Migrant Education STEM Camp; Devina Velasquez, who will be a sophomore; and Cynthia Ojeda, a senior.

Velasquez, who eventually wants to study biomedical engineering in college, became interested in the camp after hearing about the students’ personal, challenged-filled backgrounds.

“Robotics is not a major subject at other schools,” as it is at Vanden, and, she suggested, the instruction can make a difference in the students’ lives.

Of her reasons to join the camp’s student-teaching cadre, Ojeda, who wants to study aeronautics in college, said, “My being a girl ... I was hoping to see more girls” at the camp.

Another adult facilitator at the camp, Karen Quintanilla, a retired annuitant who spent 40 years working in Migrant Education, said the district’s STEM camp, with its emphasis on robotics, “was a way to make learning concrete and hands-on.”

Even with language fluency as issue for some students, “They observe and replicate” what the student mentors show them, she said.

“The (English) language is embedded in the instruction,” noted Quintanilla. “They’re looking at a concrete device and they’re looking at a (student) role model showing them how to make it function.”

[This story was originally published by The Reporter.]

Photos by Richard Bammer/The Reporter.