Woodring College of Education to hold migrant youth conference Nov. 19

Western Washington University’s Woodring College of Education will host sponsor the Migrant Youth Leadership Conference on Friday, Nov. 19 for middle- and high-school students whose families work in Whatcom and Skagit county agricultural jobs.

The purpose of this conference is to help students realize that college is a possibility for them and that they have the internal and external assets to pursue higher education. Advocates from students' schools and communities, as well as faculty and students from Western, will be involved in the conference. The conference program will feature WWU and high school students as workshop presenters and WWU faculty will participate in an informal career fair.

The theme for this year’s conference is “I am the DREAM in action,” reflecting the belief that students’ language and culture are assets in pursuing educational opportunities that benefit them as individuals but also in ways that contribute to their communities.

Last year, 200 middle- to high-school-aged students, nearly 100 WWU students and 30 faculty members participated in activities designed to develop communication, problem solving, and leadership skills. This year, more than 300 students from migrant backgrounds will participate in two conferences and a shadow day on Western’s campus. The Migrant Youth Leadership Conference has been held sporadically over the last 10 years in partnership with the Secondary Education for Migrant Youth (SEMY) Program. This year Woodring’s Maria Timmons Flores and Ameri Corps volunteer Abraham Rodriquez Hernandez created an experimental class, TESL 497: Building Bridges with Migrant Youth, in an effort to institutionalize this effort. Within the context of this course, WWU student leaders are exploring ways to extend the benefits of the conference throughout the school year. This group has established partnerships with migrant student advocates and their teachers to not only bring students to campus but to place WWU students in these programs as mentors.

"Many of these young people have never dreamed that college was an option for them. The Migrant Youth Leadership Conference allows them to learn from other students who have overcome obstacles in their lives to succeed. We are essentially building a pathway to higher education in a model of cascading mentorship,” said Maria Timmons Flores, assistant professor of Bilingual Education /TESOL. “My hope is that at least some of these young people will choose to become bilingual teachers and return to their own communities to teach.” This project is one of several outreach efforts from Woodring College of Education designed to promote access to higher education and recruit a culturally and linguistically diverse teacher corps.

The Conference is supported by the AmeriCorps Retention Project, a college-based mentoring program that utilizes service-learning as a strategy to reduce the dropout rates of the middle, high school and college students, improve the retention and academic advancement of college students, and support college access and success efforts by creating a pipeline to higher education. The AmeriCorps Retention Project is a program of Washington Campus Compact.

Established in 1992 and hosted at Western Washington University, Washington Campus Compact and its membership of 38 two- and four-year colleges and universities are committed to providing meaningful experiences for students to become active, engaged leaders in their communities, furthering the civic and public purposes of higher education and strengthening communities. Washington Campus Compact is an affiliate state office of Campus Compact, a national organization comprised of more than 1,100 higher education institutions committed to the civic and public purposes of higher education.