Parenting students raise their children and their grades
Elena Carvajal stands with her infant daughter outside the East Dining Room on El Camino College Campus after the Presidential Scholar and Academic Achievement Awards Presentation on May 25. Carvajal received an Academic Achievement Award in Architecture under the Industry and Technology division. (Elizabeth Basile | The Union)
Some students at El Camino College are raising children as well as their grades.
Child Development major Anna Pulido, 26, was seven months pregnant when she started the Spring 2022 semester.
Pulido knew that this semester would be a challenge. During the courses, she went to explain her anticipated due date to her professors.
Pulido expected pressure to drop her classes, but instead received support and negotiable deadlines.
El Camino College has support programs and resources that are meant to aid parenting students.
The Warrior Pantry provides free food for infants as well as children and adults. One of the items they have in stock is baby formula, which has recently been scarce on store shelves.
Norene Clark, Warrior Pantry assistant, said that workers will add to the food bags they give out when they see students with children.
“So when they come to the drive-through and the walk through and they have the little ones, we normally go and give them a little squeezy … they’re like apple sauce squeeze stuff and we also do, like for example the teething stuff … if it’s available,” Clark said.
Clark said that diapers from size two through five are also distributed.
The Warrior Closet is also a program that can prove helpful for parenting students, offering clothes for children as well as adults at no cost.
Sharonda Barksdale, the creator of the Warrior Closet, said the kids’ clothing was something that CalWORKs, a public family assistance program, had as part of their plans to aid single moms.
“When we first started the closet … [CalWORKs’ CARE Program] kind of felt ‘Let’s put everything in one place’ and so they kinda gave me two boxes of clothes that were kids clothes, from there we begin to take the donations to be able to help and support our parenting students here on campus,” Barksdale said.
El Camino also accommodates the needs of parents on campus through facilities that set aside space for childcare needs.
On the second floor of the Student Services Building is a room called the “Mothering Room,” equipped for a woman to nurse or pump breast milk in privacy and even store it in a refrigerator. This building is also equipped with changing stations in the women’s and men’s restrooms.
Within the academic programs at El Camino College, the Child Development Program offers several opportunities for parenting students to talk about their experiences and to engage their children through play and learning.
Associate professor of Childhood Development and Child Development Club supervisor Cynthia Cervantes said that the Child Development Club facilitates several opportunities to help parenting students and their children.
“We also have the ‘You and Me Playgroup’ and this playgroup is for children ages two to five and their parents,” Cervantes said.
Events that the Child Development Club hosts for parenting students and their children include the playgroup and “Parenting Cafe.”
Cervantes explained that the original age group was zero to five, but changed to ages three to five when the pandemic hit events moved online.
“We don’t promote screen time for children under the age of two,” Cervantes said.
Pulido said that resources from both the Student Health Services and the Child Development Club aided her parenting and academic experience.
“Recently I did do the [You and Me Playgroup] and that was … really good, it felt so good … for my son to interact with other kids over Zoom,” Pulido said.
The Child Development Club has had to change their functions to online because of the pandemic.
Pulido said that her son participated a lot, something she did not expect, and that she was happy to see him, “not being shy.”
Pulido says that the counseling offered by the Student Health Services aided her with mental health after losing her father, which eased the pressure as a mom and grieving daughter.
“I have been thinking about speaking to somebody like a therapist or something again, but when I did use it was … last year when my dad passed,” Pulido said. “ I … used that and I found that very helpful speaking to someone over the phone and you know just expressing how I felt.”
