This article was in the NEA's homepage. The NEA is the all-powerful teacher's union. I think this article is worth reading given the current debate about English as a Second Language.
The link to the article is
http://www.nea.org/neatodayextra/huerta.html


Respect, Spanish, and Unemployment Insurance
Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. At 76, she’s still fighting for social justice, running a foundation that recruits and trains community organizers.


Former teacher and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta spoke with NEA Today about educating the children of Latino farm workers.
Huerta taught elementary school in Stockton, California in the 1950s. Her daughter teaches third grade in Los Angeles.

Huerta talked recently with NEA Today’s Alain Jehlen.

NEA Today:
What do educators need to understand to help farm workers’ children learn?

Huerta:
They need to understand that these children are very intelligent even though they don’t speak English. If you don’t speak Spanish, you need to get an assistant who does.

It’s very difficult now for Latino children who don’t speak English in California and other states that have eliminated bilingual education. The children will learn English eventually, but if they are made to feel guilty for speaking Spanish, that leaves a terrible mark that’s very hard to get over.

NEA Today:
How can we help them gain confidence and learn?

Huerta:
They shouldn’t be made to feel inferior. They should be proud of their parents. Farm workers do the most important work in the world: they feed the nation. I often ask people, if you had to be on a deserted island—like on Survivor—who would you take with you, a farm worker or a lawyer?

And the second person I would take would be a teacher.


Huerta explains to NEA Today writer Alain Jehlen how important education is to farm workers' children.
NEA Today:
When students move so often, how can a teacher connect?

Huerta:
In states like California where farm workers can get unemployment insurance, the family can stay after the harvest is over and the children can go to school.

Education is so important. You know, Cesar Chavez only went as far as the eighth grade, but he always had a book under his arm. He was always learning and always promoting education.

A farm worker’s daughter told me that when she was a girl, her father went to a Farm Workers rally and heard Cesar say, "Your children need to go to school. They don’t belong in the fields, take them out." The next day, her father sent all his children to school. Today, that daughter is a community college president.

Related Links:

For teaching materials on the United Farm Workers organizing drives among migrant workers, visit http://cesarechavezfoundation.org/.