Avance-Dallas Celebrates 1,137 Graduates!
As we bring our
fourteenth program year to a close, we’re pleased to announce that 627 children
and 510 parents graduated from our program this year. We’re proud of our
families for achieving this milestone—the first of many graduations to come!
Avance-Dallas held six graduation ceremonies this past
weekend. On Friday, June 4, our Baby University sites gathered for graduation
at Francisco “Pancho” Medrano Middle School. Helen Holman of the Zero to
Five Funders’ Collaborative (which funds our Baby University Program) delivered
the address to our families.
On Saturday, June 5, we held five consecutive
ceremonies for the rest of our program sites at John F. Kennedy Learning Center,
which featured the following speakers:
- Dr. Jon Rice, Principal at the John F. Kennedy
Learning Center (for our East Dallas sites)
- Ms. Melissa Iris Gonzalez, Bank of America
Hispanic Leadership Association (for our Vickery Meadow sites)
- Sra. Ofelia Audry, author, trainer, chef, mother
of one of our community liaisons, and representative for the Mexican Consulate
(for our Oak Cliff sites)
- Ms. Janis Casteñeda, Engineer at Texas Instrument (for
our Bachman Lake sites)
- Ms. Marta Hinojosa Nadler, retired AT&T CEO and
sister of Dr. Michael Hinojosa, Superintendant of the Dallas Independent School
District (for our Pleasant Grove sites)
During the ceremony, Executive Director Lisa
Oglesby Rocha also inspired the children to achieve great heights by reading
from Dr. Seuss’s book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! We’re
including a selection below:
“Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.…
“Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.…
“And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
“Kid, you’ll move mountains!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So … get on your way!”
Victor Inspires Fellow Graduates
At our East Dallas graduation ceremony, Victor, one
of our graduating parents, made a speech to his fellow graduates. Victor was a
dedicated student: he took off work on Mondays to attend the Avance-Dallas class and only missed one
class for an out-of-state training. On Saturday, June 5, he ascended the
platform, called everyone to stand, and led the whole group in the pledge of
allegiance to the American flag. He then gave the following address:
“My name is
Victor. I’m a proud family father, student, and worker. I’m going to school to
become a mechanical engineer, and I work as a helicopter mechanic for the Texas
Army National Guard.
“I’m here to
represent my classmates from James Bowie, James Fannin, John F. Kennedy, and
O.M. Roberts Elementary Schools, as well as our children. I am here before you
family members, teachers, and friends to express the great honor and privilege
of being part of a group like Avance.
“While I was
serving in Iraq last year, my sister-in-law was a very important person to my
wife and me. Not only did she care for our daughter in my absence, she took my
child to this program called Avance.
In the end, it wasn’t enough for me just to know what my daughter was learning
every day. I wanted to live and educate myself the same way she had experienced.
I waited with anticipation of coming back home to join this group. During the
past year I’ve learned so much about what’s necessary to guide my family to
success.
“The team at Avance not only guided us, they left us
a legacy, an inheritance that has no monetary value. They left us with a gift
that illustrates the children’s basic needs and how important those needs are
for them. We’re here today because we have grasped what these needs mean. With the
help of our instructors we’ve completed our parenting education, but our
journey and responsibility as our children’s educators and role models has just
begun.
“We’ve been
given the tools and information to make the difference with our children. We’ve
been taught that they are the future of this planet. Now the kind of future
they will have is up to us.
“We have
heard of famous people that made history throughout the years. We will make
history as well because our children are living messages we send to a time that
we might not see.
“I want to
kindly thank the Avance team, the
founders and associations that have supported us, but especially Homer and
Berta’s teaching team. Thanks to them this school year was a very memorable
experience to the participating families. They have already made history with
us; now let us make history with our children.”
Avance-Dallas
Graduates Excelling in School
The 2010 report of our graduates’ academic
achievement in school shows that, as a group, they are attending school more
frequently than their Dallas Independent School District (ISD) and Texas state
peers and are largely outperforming them on standardized TAKS (Texas Assessment
of Knowledge and Skills) tests.
In the
2008–2009 school year. Avance-Dallas
child graduates in the Dallas ISD school system averaged a higher attendance
rate (97%) than the Dallas ISD (96%) and the state (95%)—a significant
difference for the numbers each percentage point represents.
According to
Romero and Lee (2007), low-income families (like those in Avance-Dallas) are especially at-risk for excessive absenteeism,
and “early absenteeism negatively impact[s] academic achievement in reading,
math, and general knowledge in the early school years” (3). Keeping children in
school increases their likelihood of succeeding academically.
And that’s
just what our child graduates are doing. Our tracking
results showed that a higher percentage of Avance-Dallas
graduates (89%) met the 2009 state standardized TAKS passing rates in math than
their Dallas ISD peers (74%) and Texas state peers (82%). Similarly, on 2009
TAKS reading tests, a higher percentage of Avance-Dallas
graduates (90%) met the state standard than their Dallas ISD peers (85%), and
they passed at a comparably high rate as their Texas peers (91%).
The report
tracked 846 children who graduated from Avance-Dallas
between the years 1997 and 2008, and the grade levels represented ranged from
pre-kindergarten to eleventh grade. The results provide the evidence that
demonstrates our program’s effectiveness in helping low-income, at-risk
students succeed in school.
AHOrA Hosts Successful Beneficiary for Avance-Dallas
On April 30, 2010, 150 women gathered for a tennis
tournament and Mother’s Day Luncheon to raise funds for the Avance-Dallas program. AHOrA hosted the
event, which yielded over $11,000 for our agency!
AHOrA stands for “Hispanic Friends Organized to
Help” (the acronym follows the Spanish name, “Amigas Hispanas Organizadas para
Ayudar”), and it is a growing group of Latin American women who live in the
North Texas area and are also moms. They have “adopted” Avance-Dallas and made our mission their own.
The Mother’s Day Luncheon took place on the
occasion of AHOrA’s annual gathering, which turned out to be a great time for
successful Latin American women both to enjoy sharing time together and to
champion a children’s cause in the community. The event committee led a very
successful raffle and auction that, combined with additional sponsors and
luncheon ticket sales, raised over $11,000 to benefit our programs.
This event is not the first time AHOrA has actively
supported Avance-Dallas. Already
they conducted a book drive that generated dozens of books for our families,
and several women from the association are also volunteering at Avance-Dallas and working directly with
the mothers in our program, pulling on their own experience as mothers to
encourage our young moms.
Special thanks to the whole group at AHOrA! We
think we’re a wonderful team together, and we look forward to many years ahead of
partnership to see you reaching out as moms to moms!
United Way Awards
Avance-Dallas One-Half Million
Dollars
We’re pleased to announce that the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas has allocated
over one-half million dollars to Avance-Dallas
for the 2010–2011 program year—the largest grant amount awarded to our agency
from the United Way to date!
The United Way award will specifically fund several
program initiatives here at Avance-Dallas.
The largest single amount—over $160,000—is devoted to fully funding our two
Born Learning sites in Pleasant Grove. Two additional sub-awards support our
Early Childhood Development Program and Parent Education Program. Together
these three programs deliver our evidence-based program proven to advance young
children and train their parents to actively support their children’s learning
throughout the school years.
United Way also funds our Adult Literacy Program,
which provides ESL and GED classes to our low-income parents who need further
education to advance their economic station. And finally, the United Way award supports
our HOPE (Hispanic Outreach to Parents in their Environment) Program, which delivers
social service support to the families in our educational programs to help them
overcome crises so they can complete their educational goals.
The United Way of Metropolitan Dallas has proven to
be a strong partner to Avance-Dallas
during the past thirteen years, and we’re proud to stand with them as we “live
united” and together transform the Dallas community through our effective
programs in the 2010–2011 program year!
Partner Spotlight: M. R.
and Evelyn Hudson Foundation
The M. R. and
Evelyn Hudson Foundation is dedicated to furthering children’s causes,
education, and arts and culture in the North Texas region. For children, they
emphasize “discovery experiences” that positively impact
children long after the experience happens. By funding the Avance-Dallas program, they provide
discovery experiences directly to young children in our Early Childhood Program
and indirectly through their parents, who learn in our Parent Education Program
how to make a stimulating environment for children in the home.
Oak Cliff (75211) is a high-need, high-priority region of Dallas. The community is
a young population with low earnings and low educational attainment—over half
the population has less than a high school education. But programs like Avance-Dallas intervene while children
are young to spur a course change in the community.
A big thank you to the M. R. and Evelyn Hudson
Foundation for being a strong pillar of support for Avance-Dallas over the years. This most recent grant is certain
to advance young at-risk children in Dallas and strengthen our city.