Latino Students Find New Pathways to Success

Pathways for Success coordinator Victor Clark



VIVE student Fermín Jiménez

Last year, twenty-two-year-old Yessica Cruz had no idea that one year later she would be completing her General Education Development (GED) and working toward a possible career goal using her newly learned computer skills. A year ago, Edgar Sierra’s poor language proficiency led to unsatisfactory school performance which escalated into feelings of discouragement and low self-esteem, prompting him to drop out of high school. But after discovering a passion for the communications field, he is now pursing a career path in music. “Nothing can stop me now,” he says.

Cruz and Sierra found what they needed to thrive within the same neighborhood that failed them. Leaving high school, they became students at The VIVE School/ Yonkers Pathways to Success. Implemented in 2008, VIVE is a dynamic, full service intergenerational community school housed in the high-poverty, high-crime neighborhood of southwest Yonkers, the fourth largest city in the state of New York.

According to a report issued by the Yonkers school district, the city is home to the largest concentration of Latinos in the state outside of New York City, a significant portion of whom live near or below the poverty level. The district also cites 48.5% of its overall student population as Latino, and classifies literary support within this population as a documented need.  Cultural and language barriers combine with economic hardship in hard-to-reach, hard-to-serve urban areas such as southwest Yonkers to put Latino youth at risk for illiteracy, poverty, gang involvement, incarceration, and isolation.

Latino youth with physical and developmental disabilities within these areas are disproportionately marginalized, not only by these same risks, but by the shame and stigma associated with disability which often prevent them from seeking appropriate support and transition services. In some cases, youth with developmental disabilities have been discouraged by the low expectations placed on them within public school environments.

"Complex needs and circumstances in life can prevent many youngsters from continuing [on a straight path] to a high school diploma,” says Joan O’Gorman, director of VIVE and the Pathways to Success program where both Cruz and Sierra are enrolled. O’Gorman explains that courses are offered in the evenings and after school so that students can pursue their GED and other VIVE programs while still keeping their jobs to assist their families.  

Fermin Jimenez is one such student and a VIVE success story. Jimenez left his native Mexico in 2001 and moved to New York to find employment. When he enrolled in classes at VIVE in 2008, he didn’t speak a work of English and “was afraid of everything.” His lack of self-esteem and fears precluded him from finding meaningful employment and “a place for himself” until, after completing several educational programs offered by Pathways this past year, he was honored as a New York Association for Continuing/Community Education Student of the Year.  He is currently having his resume prepared and hopes to open his own restaurant. “I am confident now,” says Jimenez.

VIVE’s Drop-in/GED Counselor Carol Gray understands the unique challenges most of the school’s students face and finds ways to accommodate them. “Edgar [Sierra] was reading below the level needed to qualify for the GED program,” Gray explains, yet she “saw something in him that told me he would succeed” and admitted him. Cruz points out that it is this “extra attention” that motivates students to strive toward their goals. “They want you to get ahead and they will work hard to help you succeed,” she says.

“Latino youth with learning and physical disabilities are the untold story,” says VIVE teacher Victor Clark. Clark is the coordinator of the Partners for Success (PFS) vocational rehabilitation program at Westchester Independent Living center (WILC) in White Plains, which is part of VIVE’s newest program component. WILC, a consumer-directed advocacy and resource center for persons with disabilities, opened an outreach office at VIVE this past winter to bring its services to southwest Yonkers’s minority community of individuals with disabilities and their families.  

Clark notes that the students in his PFS program at VIVE “come with deep issues” resulting from psychiatric and learning disabilities, economically disadvantaged households, and substance abuse, while others transition from the criminal justice system. Most are Latino and many have issues that stem from some form of disability that is unrecognized by their families due in some cases to cultural stigma and/or an overall lack of awareness. WILC distributes a checklist to Latino families to help them identify disabilities that may qualify their children for various governmental benefits.  Items on the list which may signal psychiatric or learning disabilities include “tendency to feel sad,” “difficulty retaining information,” and “tendency to become overwhelmed.”  

Christina Eisenberg, who has spina bifida, says that for Latino families, identifying disability in a child is one thing but accepting that child as a “full individual” is quite another. Christina’s parents homeschooled her until she was thirteen, protecting her from facing the world they thought would reject her as a Latina with a disability.  “You are seen as the condition – the disability – rather than an individual,” she says. “My parents didn’t have any expectations of me succeeding on my own…they didn’t allow me the opportunity to try and fail at life.”

After enrolling in the Henry Viscardi School, a New York State supported teaching community for students with disabilities on Long Island, Christina had her “first view of people with all types of disabilities engaged in life.” Empowered by the school’s challenging and supportive learning environments, she went on to receive her certification as a special education teacher from New York University, and presently works full time as an advocate for students with disabilities at WILC and VIVE.

The PFS program at VIVE is grounded in three fundamental tenets: personal awareness, personal responsibility, and personal empowerment. It is this last point, Clark emphasizes, that best defines what connects his students to, not only his program, but to the entire environment at VIVE and similar learning environments that outreach to minority communities.

“Play up that spark that others can’t see,” Clark tells his students. “Do not allow someone to make a conclusion about you,” he advises. Suggesting that potential employers, teachers or vocational counselors may have limited expectations about someone they might see as having a physical “deformity,” Clark challenges his students to rebuke the labels others may place on them. “I tell my students that they need to believe in themselves; there are enough people in life who don’t believe in them.”

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