Most teenagers don’t usually communicate with their parents or want them around all the time. However, at the Pan-American International High School parents and students actually hang out together.
Located along the Long Island Rail Road tracks in Elmhurst, the Pan-American International High School (PAIHS) is a new international high school, of mostly Latino students, that bridges the teenager’s Latin American culture with their new lifestyle in the United States. To facilitate this transition, school administrators invited parents to leadership development courses and now the parents lead most of the school’s activities.
“We are very fortunate to have a high degree of parent participation,” said Yolanda Gómez, president of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), who, along with other parents, planned the school’s second annual “Festival de Padres” or “Parent’s Festival,” which took place on Saturday, May 16. “And to bring an immigrant community into the school environment is important because they are usually marginalized.”
For the parent festival, the PTA planned a day filled with games, contests, food, music, cash prices, and folklore music. Blanca Gonzalez, the mother of a 10th grade girl – both who arrived from Colombia 10 months ago – ran the Colombian food stand. Gonzalez said that every mom and dad contributed something, whether it was food, money or labor, to make the festival happen.
“I’m happy that I found a school that my child adapted to quickly,” Gonzalez said, as she served champus, a typical Colombian drink. “The school has many benefits and I can communicate with the school because we speak the same language.”
According to PTA President Gómez, the first year the 432-student school opened – PAIHS has been opened for two years and only has a 9th and 10th grade at the moment – the staff and administration focused on creating a parent program. The parent program, in addition to leadership development, offered information about the school system, orientation about parenting to teenagers, and even English and citizenship classes. These workshops are facilitated by PAIHS community partner, the social organization in Jackson Heights Make The Road New York.
Principal Marcella Barros, who attended the festival with her young daughter, said Make The Road was instrumental in advocating for the school. Now the partnership with PAIHS has become “organic” and they are a normal participant in planning.
“They are involved in the key decision-making with the school but they do not run things,” said Barros. “They sit on the school’s leadership team, but it’s another thing for a community-based organization to come and run things.”
Barros added that one great aspect of parental involvement, as demonstrated in the festival, is the diversity within Latin American culture. “There is a lot to learn from each other.”
“Students need a level of support and it works for them to see the school working [with] their parents,” said Gómez, who added that many of these parent’s had been active members in their kid’s schools back in their homelands. “The parent’s are always here and they even have their own office.”
As the master of ceremonies, a parent, used the microphone to organize the students and parents that would march with the various flags of the countries, Gómez, shuffled back and forth between the schoolyard and the third floor of the building that PAIHS shares with three other high schools.
“This was all organized by the parents. They asked us ‘what do you need and how can we support it’,” said Gómez between conversations on her walkie-talkie. “It’s not the school only, but the school standing shoulder to shoulder with them.”
