MTP looks beyond high school

Click image to open PDF overview of MTP at the Community College level proposal

Mother Tongue Project has been working to develop a concept for MTP at the community college level in an effort to support more young families' academic and family literacy. With 1/5 of U.S. undergraduates parenting or caring for dependent children—the majority, 2.1 million, single women—we believe MTP belongs in post-secondary education (Institute for Women's Policy Research).

Parenting students are tight on time and money, and they disproportionately require academic remediation before they can take college-level classes toward a degree or credential. Research indicates these factors bear on the fact that "[o]nly 28% of single mother learners earn a degree or credential within six years" (IWPR).

Mother Tongue Project's community-college proposal addresses growing accommodation needs for underprepared, parenting, post-secondary students: a highly supported, two-semester, topic-centered English sequence. It will offer parenting students a strong foundation in academic literacy skills, an accelerated sequence from developmental to college-level coursework, and improved chances for school retention and degree completion—all of which stands to set up young parents for higher-level employment, more stable family economics, greater child wellbeing, and a strong network of students and alumni engaging with each other.

READING TOGETHER: How read-alouds support language & love for young parents & their children

Mother Tongue Project, along with several MTP alumnae and their kiddos, created this presentation about the importance of reading aloud with babies. We presented it at the April 2021 New Mexico Public Education Department’s annual Town Hall in Support of Young Parents and their Children—and we are excited to share it with you here!

Poems for Two Voices at the 2019 NM PED Town Hall in Support of Young Parents

Mother Tongue Project students and mentors were honored as featured presenters at the spring 2019 New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) Town Hall event in support of young parents and their children. MTP pairs performed their co-written POEMS FOR TWO VOICES.

  • “Rising” by Ruby & Ariel

  • “Remember” by Elizabeth & Jaime

  • “Becoming a Young Mother” by Melanie & Andrea

  • “A Mother’s Adventure” by Angelikue & Jennifer

See the videos here! (Keep checking back if they’re not all loaded…)

Mother Tongue Project Writers Take SFR Cover

MTP’s class of 2019 publishes insightful essays on timely, important issues. Click on the titles to read more:

Come Out and Play By Angelikue Bolaños Garcia

Unequal Parenting By Melanie Jaime Cervantes

Play's the Thing: Playing and Exploring with Toddlers By Elizabeth Medina Ramirez

The Stressors Of Cohabiting By Andrea Valencia

My Mom got Deported, then I Became a Mom By Ruby Rocha Hernandez

As always, a huge thank you to the Santa Fe Reporter for featuring the voices of our community’s young parents!

Other Mothers' Voices IV

The culminating assignment of the Mother Tongue Project English class is a personal synthesis essay that is published on the Santa Fe Reporter's “Mother Tongue” blog.

Students deliver their work during the spring’s Annual MTP Student Reading + Celebration and then becomes a published writer. Each essay is a powerful reflection of triumph and success—a reminder that its writer is smart, thoughtful and persistent—that she can finish something big, that her voice is important and that people want to hear what she has to say.

Click here to read the work of 2017-2018's mother-writers, whose wisdom is deep and whose voices need to be part of our communities’ conversations.  https://www.sfreporter.com/columns/mothertongue/2018/06/27/other-mothers-voices/

[NOTE: There are no anchor links on SFR’s blog page, so you’ll have to scroll down to reach all the essays. It’s worth it!]