The Huntington Beach father of three thought he was doing all the right things: He worked two jobs, saved his money, kept a roof over his family's head and always made sure that, no matter what, family came first.
But like other immigrants Florentino had only one thing on his mind when he settled down in Orange County: survival.
"We didn't have a clearly defined path. We worked, we spent our money and made sure that the kids were safe, that the family was safe," he tells me in Spanish as we sit in his tidy two-bedroom apartment.
He didn't see the big picture beyond his doorstep, beyond his neighborhood, a cul-de-sac of tightly squeezed apartments.
Like Florentino, the cul-de-sac is in constant motion. Children play on the sidewalk. A street vendor hawks fruit from a produce truck. The throaty voice of Mexican singer Alejandro Fernandez floats in from a nearby apartment.
Florentino's children most likely would have continued down the same path as their father, working minimum wage jobs and simply surviving.
But a program at Huntington Beach High School changed all that. Called the Parent Leadership Institute, the program — created by the Orange County Human Relations Commission — helps low-income immigrant parents navigate and understand the educational system
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/florentino-232505-family-jose.html
Posted by (Julio Navarro)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment