“For years, I thought, ‘How can I help them? What can I really do that is relevant to them?” Cordero said of her students.
Fortunately, the idea occurred to Cordero that granting college students the responsibility as mentors to help school children with basic reading and writing skills might in turn stimulate the collegians to improve their classroom performance. She reasoned that if her college students had “mentoring roles where they’re actually [working with lesser-skilled students to] guide them and interact with them while demonstrating the reading skills that I’m teaching …That [mentoring experience] might get the results that I want” from them.
Cordero’s epiphany led her to launch the Pages for All Ages literacy project in spring 2012 not long after she began teaching full-time at Miami-Dade College (MDC) Homestead. Working initially with homeless elementary school children, she developed a mentor’s curriculum that drew some 15 students into helping children improve their reading skills and write personalized books about their lives and interests.
The project so enthralled MDC officials that in fall 2012 Cordero earned recognition through the MDC Service Learning Awards. Her award-winning efforts inspired MDC psychology professor Jessyca Perez to join Pages for All Ages, and the two professors expanded the project to include students from Perez’s psychology and student life skills classes.
“I was really impressed [especially with her being] a first-year [full-time] faculty member at the time… . When I saw her project ‘Pages for All Ages’ I noticed that it was in a baby stage and I said ‘We can really team up … [and] take this to the next level,” Perez said.
Perez was instrumental in enlisting EnFamilia, a Homestead, Fla.-based nonprofit that coordinates education programs for migrant farm workers and their families in south Dade County, to partner with Pages for All Ages. Since 2013, MDC students have largely worked with elementary children attending the after school program in the Everglades Community Association in Homestead. The children live within a community that houses migrant farm workers and their families.
