Navigating the American Dream

August 12, 2024
Luis Hernández

Category: Online Course, Parental Involvement

As an immigrant to the U.S. myself, I know firsthand how hard it can be to start a new life in a foreign country. When I first arrived in the United States, I was fortunate to have a family member in Boston, Massachusetts, who helped me get on my feet. Thanks to her support and guidance, I found a way to sustain myself. Over time, I discovered better opportunities as a professional, eventually leading me to Texas, where I took on a new role as a bilingual teacher in a fifth-grade classroom. Although I was already an educator in Venezuela, this new position opened up a world of opportunities and ignited a deep passion for language education and learning, particularly in how we can harness technology to enhance the learning process of multilingual students. This passion has shaped my work as an educational technology consultant, through which I remain closely connected with school districts and higher education institutions today.

Challenges and Triumphs of Immigrant Families

In my years of experience, I’ve encountered countless stories of immigrants striving to build a better life for their families. I vividly remember the many parents I met during Meet the Teacher events in the school district where I worked. They came with a strong desire to be involved in their children’s education and provide them with opportunities for a brighter future, but they often didn’t know how to do so. When I offered them support materials, like a bi-weekly newsletter I wrote in Spanish, they were so grateful and eager to follow my recommendations. These parents were deeply committed to ensuring their children received the best education possible but often struggled due to language barriers and unfamiliarity with the educational system.

The Impact of Parental Involvement on Student Success

Most recently, in my work as a lecturer and visiting professor at various higher education institutions, I’ve also witnessed the incredible success stories of the sons and daughters of immigrant families. I’ve seen these students thrive in universities and colleges, where they often express profound gratitude for their parents’ sacrifices and support. They understand that their achievements are a direct result of their parents’ unwavering dedication and hard work.

Every day, we see new waves of immigrants arriving in this country. Without delving into the political aspects, it’s clear that people will continue to come to the United States, seeking better opportunities and a better life for themselves and their children. Recently, I’ve seen many of my fellow Venezuelans making the arduous journey across half a continent to reach the U.S. Once here, they face the same challenges many of us have faced: navigating a new system, learning a new language, and finding their place in a foreign land.

But it’s not just Venezuelans. People from all over the world will continue to come to this country because it remains a beacon of opportunity. I firmly believe that the best way we can repay this country is by striving to reach our full potential and helping our children do the same, all while working hard to make this nation even stronger. Additionally, I was raised to believe that we have a duty to give back and to pay forward the blessings we’ve received.

Announcing “Navegando hacia el éxito escolar”: A Free Online Course for Parents

With this in mind, I am excited to announce the launch of a new online course for parents, Navegando hacia el éxito escolar, created entirely in Spanish and available for free on our website. This course is designed to equip parents coming to this country with the tools, knowledge, and strategies necessary to effectively support their children on their educational journey in the U.S. We’ve made every effort to cover the most important aspects, creating an online course that is easy to navigate, including videos, audios, and links to recommended websites.

The course is based on the information provided in the Kit de Herramientas para las Familias de Estudiantes de Inglés (English Learner Family Toolkit), a comprehensive resource created by the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition & Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) for the Office of English Language Acquisition in the U.S. Department of Education. Participants in the course will receive this document as part of the materials provided. Our goal with this new online course has been to simplify and summarize the key ideas that we believe parents need most, ensuring they can easily access and understand the essential information. Additionally, since we are located in Texas, we have included a lesson with specific information on the processes in Texas school districts, including the identification and placement of emergent bilingual students, as well as the various models of bilingual and ESL education.

We’ve included Verónica, our AI-powered virtual tutor, to further support parents taking the course. In each lesson, users will find a small photo of Verónica in the bottom right corner of the screen, providing direct access to this chatbot. Verónica is equipped to answer questions related to the course content and has been carefully trained using the English Learner Family Toolkit, along with material from our parent training sessions. Her purpose is to help users quickly and efficiently clarify any questions that arise during the course (learn more about Verónica here). We are confident that this resource will be of great help to parents.

During this time of year when everyone is talking about going back to school, I often think back to those Meet the Teacher nights, where I saw so many parents searching for the right information to support their children, driven by the same hopes and dreams that brought me here. It’s this shared experience that fuels our commitment to providing the guidance and resources they need to help their children thrive in the American educational system. At Enabling Learning, we are deeply honored to accompany immigrant parents on their journey to success in this country. We are here to walk alongside them every step of the way, empowering them to turn their aspirations into reality and ensuring that their children have the opportunities they deserve to succeed and flourish.

Please share this information and the link to our course with anyone who may be in contact with parents who could benefit from these resources. Thank you for helping us pay it forward

2 thoughts on “Navigating the American Dream”

Betsy Sabogal
September 12, 2024 at 11:06 am

This is amazing! Thank you.
Reply
1. Luis Hernández
  October 9, 2024 at 11:35 am
  
  Thank you so much!!!!
  Reply

Four Years of Building Verónica

Verónica, the AI tutor inside our courses and apps, has four roles: study buddy, evaluator, smart tutor, and a source of insight for the people who teach. Four years after we started building her, we spent October mapping every place she runs and rereading the research on tutoring, feedback, retrieval, and model-based scoring. This post takes each role in turn: what other researchers’ work asks of it, how we built it, and where we draw the line between what they have shown about AI tutors and what we have measured about ours, which is not yet a systematic study.

An educator and an adult learner smile as they review work together at a table, with a friendly AI tutor glowing on the laptop beside them.

How We Use AI, and Why Our Digital Credentials Require Evidence

When we talk about our work with educators, at conferences and with universities, two questions come up: how do we use AI, and what does our digital credential actually prove? We answered both in writing, in two new pages on our website. The first is a note from our founder, Luis J. Hernández, on how an educator came to build with AI and where we draw the line. The second explains why our digital credentials are issued only when a learner shows the skill, and why that matters for learners and the institutions that prepare them.

A single objectives card pinned on an elementary classroom wall, with a stack of cards for the rest of the week on the teacher's desk.

One Objective on the Wall. Five Levels in the Room.

Principals want the ELPS posted, but one classroom holds students at five proficiency levels. How do you post one objective for all of them? We answered with something teachers can print and use, the Objectives Card in the ELPS Online Helper: one content objective, one language objective, and a strip showing what meeting it looks like at each level. Here is what it does, what we added after seeing how teachers used it, including a week planner and cards for lessons taught in Spanish, and why it matters in a dual-language classroom.

Layered translucent glass panes suspended in dark blue space, each etched with glowing abstract letterforms from a different writing system, overlapping and interlocking where the panes cross.

Verónica Speaks Twelve Languages. The Hard Part Was the Rules.

Verónica, the AI tutor inside our courses and apps, now responds in twelve languages. Arabic, Telugu, Tamil, and Korean joined because districts and teacher preparation faculty kept describing the families they serve. Adding the languages was never the hard part, since these models were multilingual from the start. The hard part was the rules: which characters even count as letters, whether the page or the person gets to decide, and when a tutor should hold the target language instead of following a student into English. Here is what broke, what we changed, and why it matters.