A similar trip earlier this year for at-risk students at Eisenhower saw students visit the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus where they participated in a class and toured the college. Paul Burke photos
Helping some of the most underprivileged students in the county, Eisenhower Middle School needs just $1,000 to send children of migrant workers on a day trip to a local college.
Hoping to plant the seed of higher education in youngsters who sometimes are too embarrassed to attend school because they don’t have shoes, planners set the trip for September.
The Gibsonton school is hoping the local community will help support the effort by raising $1,000.
“For many of these children, the challenges are incredible,” said Paul Burke, Eisenhower’s dropout-prevention specialist who came up with the idea for the college trip. “Many are bounced around from various schools as their families move where the work is available.”
The trip is one of several college day trips for at-risk students pioneered by Burke at the school he joined in 2010.
“We have a large Latino population here at Eisenhower,” he said, “and the English Language Learner teachers at our school work very hard combating a belief many of these children have that college is not an option.”
The college trip, the first exposure to education after high school for the young students, will be a part of encouraging a new outlook where college is possible, Burke said.
The planned September trip will see 30 students, all children of migrant workers locked in a cycle of poverty, board a bus at the school and head off to a college where they will hear Latino presenters from similar backgrounds tell their own success stories. The students will learn what steps they need to take to make college a reality and participate in a college class.
“The presenters will talk to the students about the struggles and obstacles they had to overcome to succeed, and programs that are available — so it will be 100 percent focused on the students,” Burke said.
Drawing an analogy between the full-court press that occurs when the Internet goes down at a school or office, Burke said the same focus and commitment needs to be shown when a child is underachieving.
“People immediately call in the IT [information technology] guys and all these other agencies to get it fixed. But when a student is struggling, we don’t always respond with that same kind of passion.
“If we respond that way when our Internet is down, we need to respond the same way when a kid is ‘down.’ If they are being removed from class because of behavior issues or struggling academically, we have to be able to activate things at the same rate we would respond if our cable or Internet was down,” Burke said.
Burke is now looking for companies and organizations that can sponsor the visit to college. Possible destinations include the University of South Florida in Tampa or St. Petersburg, Eckerd College or Stetson University. “Going to St. Pete is like you or I going to New York City for these kids,” said Burke, stressing that this is much more than a field trip.
“This is an opportunity for us to provide a possibility where previously possibilities seemed unlikely,” he said. “It could be a game-changer for some of these young students.”
The school needs the funding by Aug. 1 to have all the paperwork processed for the trip.
For more information or to help, call Paul Burke at 813-671-5121 ext. 224 or on his cellphone at 727-504-6798.
The trip, one of three sponsored by the school’s local business partners, also took students to Tropicana Field for a VIP tour. The entire trip was funded by Eisenhower business partnerships: American Momentum Bank, Zipperer’s Funeral Home, South Shore Advisory Council, Publix and the SouthShore Chamber of Commerce.
