Hispanic Parental Involvement: Ten Competencies Schools Need to Teach Hispanic Parents
Growing up in a disadvantaged family in Puerto Rico, Lourdes soon learned that education was the way out of the poverty cycle. This understanding led her to complete her undergraduate degree in mathematics and begin teaching. She left Puerto Rico in 1979 to do community development work in Guatemala.  She established and directed schools, an orphanage, feeding centers, and clinics. She procured resources for these entities through interaction with non-profit organizations and by obtaining assistance from Guatemalan government officials. Her community education work consisted of educational radio programs and parent education in various venues. Her experience in community development was a catalyst that led Lourdes to choose Research, Evaluation, and Measurement as the focus of her Master's degree.  When she moved to the United States in 1990, she had to overcome enormous financial, linguistic, and cultural barriers to pursue the American Dream.  She first worked as a Middle School Bilingual Curriculum Content (BCC) mathematics teacher in Dade County and then as Regular High School mathematics teacher in Palm Beach County.  She went on to complete her Ed.D in Leadership and took a position as a School Improvement and Assessment Specialist for the School District of Palm Beach County.  Her responsibilities included leading NCLB staff development opportunities for teachers and school administrators, as well as speaking at community forums regarding the same issues.  Dr. Lourdes is an Education Consultant, Public Speaker and Researcher who assists districts and schools. She utilizes programs, methods, and strategies to train teachers, administrators, district personnel, students, parents and the communities at large, to help minority students achieve academic proficiency.  She provides consulting services, staff development opportunities, and motivational speaking.In order to have a better understanding of the lack of achievement among minority students Dr. Lourdes has been interviewing hundreds of English Language Learner (ELL), Hispanic, African- American and Native American middle and high school students to find out, from their perspective, what are the underlying reasons for their lack of achievement and what can the school do to help them improve. These findings are used to customize strategic plans at the school level to help the target population.