Workforce Language Services

Motivos, a bilingual Latino youth magazine (by and for youth) out of Philadelphia, is more that just a publication. On a Friday night, when the last thing on most teens’ minds is work, a half a dozen of them are huddled around a table in a basement room of Benjamin Franklin High School, talking about fonts.

The magazine is a for-profit enterprise that has been operating out of the high school since 2008. Virtually all of it is written, edited and illustrated by 14- to 24-year-olds under the direction of founder Jenée Alicia Chizick. Chizick is passionate about educating and motivating the often under-served teens.

“When you’re not educated it’s harder to get into decision-making rooms,” Chizick told an audience during an author series at the community workshop Taller Puertorriqueño in North Kensington in November. “I wanted to make sure from the get-go that the students that the magazine employs were in the decision-making rooms, so part of the model is that those schools that subscribe in bulk to the magazine then can choose one or two students to serve on the advisory board.”

Schools see the magazine as a way to boost enrollment of underrepresented students. Amid the student-penned poems, cultural columns and relationship advice, readers encounter occasional articles supplied by a university admissions department.

Chizick has already inspired many students who now go to college and are seeing opportunities abound. “‘Everything that she does, she has a reason for it and she explains it,’ said Keisha Frazier, a Motivos contributor studying broadcast journalism at Temple. Frazier said traveling to the National Council of La Raza annual conference with Chizick a few years ago was a life-changing experience.”

Read the full profile here.

Great news for parents of bilingual kids: the first entirely bilingual brand of children’s toys has hit the market. Atlanta-based Smart Play, LLC launched Ingenio(TM) which features “10 portable, affordable toys and games that teach a comprehensive range of early learning skills in English and Spanish – fine motor, reading, writing, math, vocabulary, geography and problem solving.”

The news is refreshing to teachers and parents who have long desired Spanish language toys for their children, especially as nearly 25% of the country’s children between ages 3-6 are of Hispanic origin (a number that is rising). Bilingualism at a young age has proven benefits, such as “greater cognitive flexibility, improved powers of concept formation and enhanced creativity.”

Read the full press release here.

An estimated 850,000 adults in the Greater Chicago area have limited English competency skills, according to Literacy Chicago. With many of their children in English-speaking public schools, this creates a huge problem for Chicago schools.

Parents may not need the English communication skills on the job, but without the ability to speak in English, they are unable to communicate with teachers and other parents, as well as their children. One example:

Although Maximina Esteban’s work as a house cleaner does not require her to speak English, her duty as a single mother of two sons does.

Born and raised in Chicago, Esteban’s children, 11 and 7, spend most of their days at school speaking English rather than Spanish.

Despite her attempts to get them to speak Spanish at home, they reply in English, especially her younger son. He understands very little Spanish and rarely uses it with his mother.

Literacy Chicago, which provides free English language training to adults, had their federal funding reduced by 13% for the 2010 fiscal year. They anticipate greater cuts in 2011. Other organizations with English literacy programs are facing similar cuts.

Explains Medill Reports of Northwestern University, “This threat of budget cutbacks makes immigrant parents particularly vulnerable. With fewer opportunities for free English instruction, they will continue to struggle to communicate with their children and their teachers.”

Read the full story here.