History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
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Itinerant life weighs on farmworkers’ children
- 03-14-2011
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By Patricia Leigh Brown/New York Times
A girl in Oscar Ramos’s third-grade class has trouble doing homework because six relatives have moved into her family’s rusted trailer and she has no private space. A boy has worn his school uniform for two weeks straight because his parents are busy with harvest season. And while Mr. Ramos patiently explains the intricacies of fractions, he is attuned to the student who confides, “Teacher, on Saturday the cops came and took my brother.” I know you still love your brother,” Mr. Ramos gently told him. “But let’s talk about your vision for your future.” In the clattering energy of Room 21 at Sherwood Elementary here, Mr. Ramos, 37, glimpses life beneath the field dust. His students are the sons and daughters of the seasonal farmworkers who toil in the vast fields of the Salinas Valley, cutting spinach and broccoli and packing romaine lettuce from a wet conveyor belt: nearly 13 heads a minute, 768 heads an hour, 10 hours a day. (more...)
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