Two join Family School Partners program

A local non-profit recently hired two new partner educators who will provide free home-based educational lessons for at-risk children 5 years old and younger.

Family School Partners is a home-based BCSC program and United Way Agency that began in 1988. The program’s partner educators visit families twice a month and teach lessons in the children’s native language. They involve parents as well, teaching them how to be effective teachers for their own children.

“The idea is to have them ready for kindergarten,” Family School Partners Director Karen Garcia Nunez said.

Educators will often leave a packet of educational materials behind for parents to continue working with their children. They also connect them with agencies and resources around the community according to their individual needs and create links between families, according to Garcia Nunez.

Students are eligible for the program if they meet two of the following factors:

• Single-parent family
• Teen parent
• Homeless
• Family history of substance abuse
• Parent needs parenting help information
• The child’s siblings have issues in school
• Language barrier
• Cultural barrier
• Family in crisis
• Grandparents raising grandchildren

The two hires — Macarena de la Vega and Laura Carmer will each focus on different parts of the community.

Macarena de la Vega was hired four months ago and serves 16 families in the Hispanic community.

“I love the idea of working closely with families to support their children,” de la Vega said.

She previously worked as an occupational therapist in her native Argentina and is a proud mother of three. The biggest reward for her is seeing how the families she serves grow in real time.

“I think this program is really important for the community because it helps a family and kids to prepare them for school, so they are going to ready to be a part of the community,” de la Vega said. “It’s like a tool that you do step by step, and afterwards, you have the prize at the end.”

Laura Carmer is the first partner educator that’ll focus on serving the Black and Black-Biracial community. Garcia Nunez expects Carmer will work with 27 families.

Carmer is from Chicago where she worked for By the Hand Club for Kids and Ravenswood Childcare Center. She said the type of work she’ll do with Family School Partners aligns with her lifelong passion of helping kids.

“I work with kids a lot and their parents, and so when there’s a program that helps parents become that teacher for their kids, that just sounded really exciting,” Carmer said.

Carmer’s first day was Feb. 19 and has spent her time so far familiarizing herself with the curriculum and going on visits with others on staff to learn more about how the program works.

Not only do the lessons the partner educators teach provide the kids a foundation for success as they enter school, they can also serve to strength the relationship between a child and their parent, Carmer said.

“It grows and connects the bond between the child (and parent) because now the child also sees them as a teacher to help them learn things, which sets them up for a better relationship going forward.”

“I’m just really excited, I’m really looking forward to being able to serve the community in this way.”

The eight educators, who are all bilingual except for Carmer, use crafts, worksheets and games to teach.

“We have a curriculum of 16 lessons, so what the primary educators do is they read a book, and then they plan lessons related to that book, and in accordance to the individual needs of the children,” Garcia Nunez said.

The hires were made possible after Heritage Fund — the Community Foundation of Bartholomew County was awarded $245,000 in September from the Early Learning Indiana’s Early Learning Initiative, which provides funding to organizations “to help infants and toddlers develop foundational knowledge and skills that support their future learning and development,” according to the initiative’s website.

Some of the funding went toward the Bartholomew County Public Library’s Growing Readers program and the rest went towards Family School Partners, with a goal of serving 50 more children.

Garcia Nunez said right now they serve around 160 families.

The partner educators believe the work the program does helps uplift those who may need it most, Carmer said.

“This is the minority section that often comes into the schools not already being set up for success, and so to be able to provide that for them, so that that’s one less hurdle they have to deal with, (is) clearly very important.”