Casapini also recruits local high school students to help the families with their English skills. That is where Carbondale Community High School students like Kathleen Kendrick and April Roberts come in. Kendrick, a junior at CCHS, said that her love of Spanish was why she began to teach English to migrant families during the summer. It's such a different place than what they're used to. This is part of the Family Migrant Literacy Program, a service that was established eight years ago by Joanna Sullivan, who wanted to take her experiences she gained after working with the Peace Corps and help migrant families in the Southern Illinois area.
Volunteers undergo a three-day training session.
They assist families by delivering books to children, teaching English to parents through picture dictionaries and building vocabulary by learning the English names for items in their homes. The families learn things like how to explain ailments to the doctor, how to obtain citizenship forms and how to read food labels. The positions are unpaid, but students may receive non-academic credit through the Saluki Volunteer Corps. Speck also needs summer help to provide activities to the children of migrant workers during the middle of August when fruit picking and packing is at its prime. Sullivan said that assisting migrant families this summer would be a good experience for students.