Saturday, June 21, 1997

Dogs infielder a hit in Migrant Mentoring Program

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Donna Mollere works for the Louisiana Department of Education's Bureau of Migrant Education. She wrote this story for the Reporter-News about the volunteer work of Jeff Motes, a utility player for the Abilene Prairie Dogs. She said her office keeps up with Motes' progress through Reporter Online on the internet. Motes is currently batting .282 with one home run and nine RBI. But he's obviously batting 1.000 with a group of children of migrant farmworkers in Louisiana.)

By DONNA MOLLERE / Special Writer

BATON ROUGE - Our society has become increasingly complex and success in the world of work, and life in general, takes much more than an education.

The future can be scary to children who have lived and grown up in one place. But the children of migrant farmworkers and fishermen face the future with tremendous uncertainty in who they are and what they want to accomplish. They are among the most underprivileged and at-risk youngsters in the nation.

Their enormous dropout rate is readily attributed to their migrant mobility and lack of stability in their living and working environments, by frequent transition from school to school, their typically low socio-economic status, language limitations, and the students' distinct lack of confidence in themselves and in their ability to succeed in school. They are not aware of the possibility of career options within their frame of reference, and beyond that, they lack the skills to engage in those goal-oriented behaviors which are necessary to the achievement of success.

During the 1996-1997 school year, the Tangipahoa Parish Migrant Education Program in Hammond, La., took on the task of giving migrant adolescents a sense of what it takes to succeed by beginning a program in which a sports figure acts as a mentor to migrants of junior-high and high-school age. And current Abilene Prairie Dog infielder Jeff Motes, when asked, was enthusiastic about the possibility of helping youngsters learn to set goals for themselves and to develop an awareness of their own individual abilities.

The Migrant Mentoring Program works on the premise that success in life is similar to success in sports in that each requires setting realistic short-term goals and practicing discipline to achieve those goals. The director and migrant outreach advocate for the program put Motes in touch with nearly 20 young men whom they felt would benefit from the influence Motes could provide.

Shy at first, the group quickly warmed up to Motes. They set short-term goals, and when they achieved those goals, Motes would reward them. Rewards included trips to college basketball and baseball games, trips to New Orleans Saints games, crawfish boils or dinner. The outings provided the students a sense of being part of their community which they had never experienced.

Students began to express their fears and ask for help with their problems. Motes encouraged them to call him at home whenever they needed to talk. When one student was failing a class, Motes sat in the classroom with him and helped him with his studies.

When Motes found out some of the students were not dressing out for physical education class, he stressed to them the importance of working hard in every class. Each of them dressed out each day, thereafter.

Motes talked with the teachers, principals, coaches and school counselors in an attempt to help them better understand the students.

Billie Jean Smith, director of the program, said the program was a success. In evaluating the program, she talked with school personnel who were vocal about the changes they had observed in the migrant students - better grades, a more positive attitude, a newly awakened sense of cooperation and feelings of inclusion instead of isolation.

Motes' "you can do it" method touched and changed the lives of the migrant students who had to have someone believe in them before they could believe in themselves.