The first full week of May is designated as Licensed Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have at least 20 types of licensed jobs, with many variations in those positions. These are people who have completed higher education and earned licenses to be certified to teach students, lead continuing education training for staff, serve as social skills specialists, and provide speech, physical and occupational therapy within Clackamas ESD programs and the school districts we serve.
This Licensed Employee Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting a few of our approximately 185 licensed staff members and contractors to provide a peek into the diverse ways this large group of employees lives our mission of service. We appreciate our entire licensed team and the meaningful work they do.
Denise Aquino is a graduation and family engagement specialist in Clackamas Education Service District’s migrant education program. The program helps students overcome the challenges that arise from their families’ frequent moves to follow work in agriculture. Denise works directly with middle- and high-school-aged migrant students and their families to support them at school, in their community and at home and help them reach their academic and career goals.
“My role is to support migrant students, to mentor them, to ensure they have all the tools they need to thrive,” Denise explains.
When students move across school districts or state lines as their families follow seasonal work, they need to adjust to a new school, meet new curriculum requirements, get to know their new teachers, learn a new schedule, make new friends, and find out where they can access local services and support. It can be a lot for a teen and their family to take on.
Ideally, credits from a student’s former school will transfer to their new school, but sometimes schools have different requirements and classes that don’t match up. When this happens, Denise works with the school counselors to see if there is a way to give credit for the courses students have completed so they’re not “punished” because their families need to move to make their living in agriculture.
Denise also helps connect students with after-school programs, chances to explore their career interests, leadership opportunities, Spanish-language tours of universities and community colleges, resources for finding scholarship opportunities and assistance writing college application essays — whatever support could help a student to reach their individual goals.
“I act as a bridge between the schools and the families,” Denise says. “Sometimes the parents have never gone through the education system before. They haven’t graduated from high school or gotten a post-secondary degree. I can help the parents with ideas and tools for advocating for their children and motivating them to graduate from high school and develop a plan for whatever they want to do after, whether it’s going to a college, university or community college or getting certification from a trade school.”
Moving to a new community and making all new friends can be difficult. To help students connect with their new communities, Denise organizes meet-ups where the migrant students in a school can get to know each other, connect over their shared experiences, and support one another in a safe space. Denise also connects with migrant students’ teachers to make sure they know the student is from a migrant family and what kind of support or accommodations may help the student be more comfortable and successful in their class.
Denise builds relationships with students and their families to learn what challenges they might be experiencing at home. She helps connect them with local services that can support them, such as connecting survivors of trauma and abuse with women’s services or telling low-income families about the free transportation to medical clinics available.
“We want to make sure students’ basic needs are met so that they can excel in school,” Denise says.
Denise knows firsthand what migrant students and families go through. She was inspired to work with migrant students by her own positive experience in migrant education summer school programming.
“I remember summer school being very engaging, full of laughter, and having fun with my classmates. We focused on math and reading, did science experiments, and took field trips to the zoo and the river,” Denise recalls.
After earning her teaching degree, Denise taught in the Molalla River School District and led the afterschool migrant STEM robotics team. When she learned about an opportunity to work with migrant students, she jumped at the chance to pay forward the support she received and joined Clackamas ESD’s migrant education team in 2022.
“Migrant students can feel isolated and alone. There’s so much pressure. I also went through that, and that personal experience drives me to make sure they know they’re not alone and can always count on me if they need anything,” Denise shares. “It’s really, really rewarding.”
