The Latino Outreach Program provides support to our Latino community through workshops on a variety of topics, including parenting skills, healthy living, higher education opportunities and immigration and tax issues.

Resources for Parents & Community

The Latino Outreach Program provides many opportunities for the Latino community to become engaged in their children’s education.

Parenting Classes run February through October on Wednesday evenings and are held in the schools on a rotating basis. The program also offers special Health Services events such as Dental Education, Asthma in Children, Expecting a Baby?, Breast Health Education, Diabetes Screening and Cholesterol Screening.

Resources for Students

The Union County Public Schools Latino Outreach Program works to provide many opportunities for our Latino students.

The Latino Outreach Program, partnered with the College Foundation of North Carolina provides a workshop for Latino parents and students to learn how to plan, apply and pay for college. For more information on this workshop, click here.

The Latino Outreach Program also works with our English speaking students by helping them to become more familiar with and to interact with the Latino community. English speaking students are given the opportunity to participate in different cultural activities, including Cultural Simulation workshops.

Resources for Staff

The Latino Outreach Program provides workshops for Union County Public Schools staff to learn more about the Latino community and techniques on how to provide the best education. Some of the workshops provided include:

• Insight to the Latino Community - The workshop provides staff with the latest demographic information from Census 2010. Staff are taught how mainstream U.S. culture differs from Latino culture. Staff are also made aware of the challenges faced by immigrant parents and their children.
• Cultural Shock - This workshop helps staff to understand the meaning of culture and cultural shock. The difference between U.S. culture and Latino culture is defined during the workshop. Staff are given tools for helping students facing cultural shock and how to best handle the problems that can occur when children acculturate faster than their parents.
• Poverty Simulation - Over 34 million Americans, 12 million of whom are children under the age of 18, live in poverty every day. Scenarios are created based on real poverty statistics, cost of living, average rent, etc. The Poverty Simulation allows staff to experience the everyday decisions that many families have to make and the fears and frustrations they feel. This allows staff to better understand what it might be like to live in a typical low-income household trying to survive from week to week, month to month.