Tasks, Themes & Items

LEAD Present Tasks

Among the action items that came out of the 2010 LEAD Summit, the LEAD organization enacts the following steps in order to immediately address the critical educational issues among Latinos: 

• Apply existing technological networks to bring educational and community leaders together at the local, regional, and national levels.
• With input from educational and community leaders, create action items to address these critical issues.
• Engage educational and community leaders in discussions focused on the critical education issues affecting Latinos.
• Publicize success/achievement of action items by participating educational institutions and community organizations.

The proposed steps toward solutions include:

• Hold preliminary meetings with local, regional educational and community leaders to plan for regional/national conference.
• Publicize Latino Education & Advocacy Days. 
• Announce results of LEAD Summit.
• Hold follow up meetings with local, regional educational and community leaders to assess implementation of action items. 
• Report on success of action items. 

LEAD Future Tasks

In line with building upon the inaugural LEAD summit's goals, many participants at our second annual Summit, via online social media and our global virtual classroom, had ample opportunity to exchange and forge future action items. This process, which makes the LEAD Summit NOT a conference BUT an Action-Planning Forum, is one which will helps focus ideas and to decide what steps needed to take to achieve particular goals.

Of course there was disagreement, but overall there was some general agreement on certain items. Some agreement was achieved not only among educators but among the larger forum that included businesses, parents, and community organizations. Below listed are the re-occurring themes (not in order of importance or priority), offered by participants at the 2011 Latino Education & Advocacy Days Summit, on the action items we collectively must engage:

1. Learn the traits, backgrounds, cultural histories, and diversity of- and among Latino groups.
2. Build teacher and counselor education programs which have an explicit student-home culture component so educators be not only sympathetic but appreciative and sensitive of students' backgrounds; and willing to structure the schooling experiences to be compatible with students.
3. Create qualified teachers that have specialized knowledge and skills in language acquisition, biliteracy, and cross-cultural learning. Build "grow your own" teacher recruitment and education programs, with candidates who have organic linkages to the communities in which they intend to serve.
4. Research the social reception received by Latino families and the impact of this on the learning of children. 
5. Combat the deficit views of Latinos; incorporate students' language, culture, and experiential knowledge into schools; acknowldege that an educator's responsibility for providing students with particular academic content knowledge and learning skills should not conflict.
6. Create meaningful, trusting, horizontal and reciprocal relationships with Latino parents and extended family.
7. Short of a constitutional mandate for schooling at the Federal level, acknowledge that fundamentally, significant educational action is historically conducted at the level of States and our localities; thus, where much of our attentions should remain.
8. Draw together many diverse constituencies of vested interest and facilitate the growth or cluster of collaboratives or action zones that work together to meet educational targets for improvement. These include engagement among parents, students, and other concerned citizens into a movement of transnational proportions that will enable our voices to be heard in the public policy arena. These in turn foster creative learning and collaborative leadership projects among and within the action zones.
9. Maintain a basic ethos motivated by research, policy analysis and advocacy, education and community action. Foster the practice of research-based teaching and learning, and resist cooptation by political rhetoric, political parties, or unfunded governmental mandates.
10. Acknowledge that partnership-building is an action-based strategy, and that no responsible change comes without the public pressure that requires it.
11. Help empower Latino families with information and resources to succeed in the education system, thus fostering a strong culture in academic achievement and college aspiration.

Lastly, - on LEAD action, let us share a closing quote from a Summit participant, who wrote: 

"With nothing more than organizing this event itself, we are already paving the road for our future students to never lose hope for a better future, a future that frees us of the chains of ignorance. That road is Education. Thank you for your actions"