Check out club member Luis Lopez’s senior project video featuring a rap by club member Eber Rivera.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
23 Apr
Cool new video
10 Dec
DreamFields Scholarships 2013
Champions of Diversity 2013
Last week, we awarded $3000 in scholarship money to two of our peers at the annual Champions of Diversity Awards Ceremony. This was the second year in a row that we were able to stand up on that stage and help our friends get to college.
As most of you know, a portion of the proceeds from DreamFields goes toward scholarships for local migrant students. Last week, Lucia and Martha, juniors at MVHS, presented a $1500 scholarship to both Mount Vernon High School student Chayan Sanchez and Burlington-Edison High School student Elizabeth Sanchez.
Last year we awarded $1500 in scholarship money. We’re very proud of the fact that we doubled that amount to $3000 this year. With your help we could add one more scholarship for next year, for a total of $4500. Will you help us? Please buy a book today, and then spread the word!
For more information about Skagit Valley College’s Champions of Diversity, please click here: https://www.skagit.edu/directory.asp_Q_pagenumber_E_321
10 Dec
Kentucky!
Western Kentucky University campus visit
In September, six young women from the high school traveled to Bowling Green, Kentucky, to be the keynote presenters at Kentucky’s State Migrant Conference. What an incredible honor to be invited to a conference of this kind! The trip was a once-in-a-lifetime experience due to the incredible reception we received from the migrant staff and students in Kentucky.
Our first stop was Western Kentucky University where we walked around campus and began to learn a little about Kentucky and its people. Next we checked into our hotel and met the Kentucky migrant students who would join us for the next couple of days. We became fast friends and even learned that one of us was related to one of them, our families coming from the same pueblo in Oaxaca.
Next we prepared for our keynote presentation and two workshops we would do on the healing power of personal stories. Our prep routine is vigorous since we take our presentations very seriously. Imagine a debate team prepping for a debate; that is a bit what we look like when we’re preparing for our presentations. We give our speeches over and over and over again, to each other, to Ms. Blackmore, to ourselves in the mirror, until we get it just right. We spend hours doing this in our hotel rooms the night before our big day.
Our presentations went really, really well. We enjoyed having the Kentucky migrant students with us throughout the process, even helping us with our workshops. One unexpected surprise came when the Kentucky migrant students showed us a documentary that they had made over the summer modeled after our documentary, but spotlighting many of the migrant students in Kentucky. Our book, DreamFields, had been purchased for all of the Kentucky migrant students who attended their state summer conference, as well as for every adult attendee at the State Migrant Conference. It was incredible to see that we had inspired so many people so far away from where we live. Watching their documentary was an emotional moment.
After we were done with the conference and said good bye to our many new friends, we explored Mammoth Cave National Park, visited the National Corvette Museum, and then hit the mall in Nashville, Tennessee. Throughout the trip, we tried new food: southern food at Cracker Barrel, Japanese food at a hibachi restaurant, and meat, meat, meat everywhere we went. People in Kentucky like to eat meat!
We returned to Washington feeling more inspired than ever to tell our stories because we saw firsthand how our stories had changed the lives of our new friends in Kentucky. We would love to find a way to incorporate the migrant students in Kentucky into the work that we are doing. We’re already busy planning our next step – as always we’re planning something BIG!
To see us in action in Kentucky, click this link:
10 Dec
Central Washington University
Ellensburg 2013
In June of 2013, while the middle school students were at Reel Grrls in Seattle, six high school students spent two days in Ellensburg, Washington, about 100 miles east of Seattle. They were invited to be the keynote speakers at the 21st Century Community Learning Center’s Summer Institute held at Central Washington University. The students gave a phenomenal keynote presentation, and then conducted two workshops on the healing power of personal stories. The audience included staff from all over the state who work with students in after-school programs. Many participants talked of being inspired by the students and wanting to have the students as guests at their schools to provide professional development for teachers, as well as inspirational assemblies for their students.
Although the visit was a short one, we still managed to fit in some learning experiences and some FUN! We spent the night in the CWU dorms, we conquered an intense high ropes course, and we toured the campus.
Thanks to the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program for believing in us and allowing us to take part in such a meaningful event!
10 Dec
Reel Grrls 2013
Reel Grrls 2013
We have been so busy this year that we have neglected to update you on what we’ve been doing. We will add a few posts with the highlights.
In June of this year, six middle school students spent a week in Seattle with Reel Grrls learning how to make movies. This was our third year in a row participating in Reel Grrls’ Teen Video Camp. We traveled by train, stayed with host families, and explored the city. We got to know many girls from Seattle and, overall, had an amazing time. You can see the two movies we produced about bullying using the links below. Our movies have been used at our middle schools this year to teach students about alternatives to bullying.
Thanks to Reel Grrls for their continued support of our participation in this program. We hope we can send another group of girls this summer!
17 May
Sharing our Message in Orlando, Florida
National Migrant Conference – Orlando, Florida
We traveled to Orlando, Florida, at the end of April to present a workshop at the National Migrant Education Conference. Our workshop was titled “The Healing Power of Personal Stories.” Six of us from the middle schools shared our stories and talked to the 60 attendees about our Migrant Leaders Club, our book project, and how others can replicate what we’ve done in Mount Vernon. Can you believe that we received all “Excellents” on the 50+ evaluations we received? Many people came up to us afterward and told us that our workshop was their favorite from the whole conference. We sold 87 books in four hours that day and signed many, many autographs. (When we got home, we received orders for 240 more books and an invite to be keynote speakers at the state migrant conference in Kentucky in September!)
Our success at the conference was definitely the highlight of the trip, but we managed to squeeze in some fun too! On our first day we went to the Kennedy Space Center out near Cape Canaveral, where we watched a 3-D IMAX movie about the International Space Station and went on a simulator of what it feels like to take off in a space shuttle. Then we headed to Cocoa Beach on the Atlantic Ocean and body surfed until one of us tried to pick up a giant jellyfish – ouch! We finished our day at the University of Central Florida where we met several new graduates still in their caps and gowns.
We spent our second day at Univeral Orlando riding roller coasters and enjoying the water rides. We took a short break to have a BIG lunch and a really special VIP tour at Hard Rock Cafe thanks to Ms. Blackmore’s college friend who is a lawyer there. The third day we spent at the conference. At our workshop, we met up with one of our Mount Vernon parents who was attending the conference as a resprestative of our state’s migrant parent advisory committee. He accompanied us to the home of another friend where we swam in her pool and watched an impressive rain and lightening storm from her screened back porch. We did so much during our four days in Florida, and still managed to find time to swim in our hotel pools and try several kinds of new food – Cuban, Thai, Friendly’s, and some really bad Florida Tex-Mex.
Overall the trip was amazing. Back in March, when one of us had the idea to raise money to attend the conference, we never really imagined that it would happen, but we are realizing more and more every day that many doors will open for us if we just dream it is possible.
Check the photo gallery for pictures coming soon!
6 Apr
Congresswoman DelBene Asks Our Opinion on Immigration Reform
In late February, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene invited us to share with her our opinions on immigration reform. We shared with her the pain of our personal experiences with immigration and our ideas on what changes would most help us and our families. She seemed very receptive and we are hopeful that our words made a difference!
16 Feb
Speaking Engagement on the Olympic Peninsula
Students speaking at Peninsula College
Last week we headed to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to do four paid speaking engagements, tour Peninsula College in Port Angeles, and visit high school students and community members in Forks.We met so many interesting people and we feel energized to begin work on several new project ideas. This trip taught us that we need to do more research to educate ourselves better about current immigration issues.
Our public speaking skills continue to improve and we’re looking forward to doing more trips of this kind in the future. If you know of a group, school, or community that would like to engage in a discussion about the themes discussed in our book and documentary, please let us know!
28 Jan
DreamFields Awards First Scholarship
Rosa and Jacob Paz Perez and Ana Mendoza.
Rosa and Ana presented the scholarship to Jacob (Rosa’s older brother).
In November, we awarded a Mount Vernon migrant student with a $1500 college scholarship using a portion of the money we have earned from the sales of DreamFields. Two of us who worked on the book stood up in front of hundreds of people at MacIntyre Hall at Skagit Valley College and presented the Champions of Diversity scholarship on behalf of the Migrant Leaders Club to Jacob Paz Perez, a current senior at Mount Vernon High School. Jacob plans to attend Skagit Valley College next year and study criminal justice.
It was so exciting to see our project helping a member of our own community!
We hope to keep selling books and be able to give even more scholarship money through Champions of Diversity next year!
Thanks to everyone who has purchased a book for helping us achieve our dream of giving a scholarship. It feels pretty amazing to realize in our first years of high school that we can change the lives of migrant students right here in our community. We hope to do even more!
31 Dec
2012 in review
We just received our 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2012.
DreamFields: A Peek into the World of Migrant Youth 