Listening First
A Community-Led Effort to Uplift Latino Students Across Washington State.
Listening First:
A Community-Led Effort to Uplift Latino Students Across Washington
It starts with a conversation.
Not a formal one—just a warm, honest exchange. Over creamy lattes in a campus coffee shop, one person listens, another shares their story: the dreams they hold, the barriers they’ve faced, the things that keep them going.
“I don’t really have anyone supporting me,” one young person shares. “My family never went to college, so they don’t know how to navigate the application process or help me register for classes.”
Another recalls sitting across from her high school counselor, hopeful and uncertain. “My counselor didn’t talk to me about applying for college even though I had good grades,” she said. “It was almost like she assumed I wouldn’t want to go. I wish I had been told what my choices were earlier.”
These aren’t isolated stories. Data shows that Latino populations lag behind other communities when it comes to degree attainment beyond high school. In an effort to close the gap, the state awarded a grant to Cascadia College, El Centro Cultural Mexicano, Mi Centro, and the Latino Educational Training Institute (LETI) to conduct and in-depth study to better understand the barriers. The first phase of the project is to conduct one-on-one interviews with Latino-identifying individuals ages 18 and older. These conversations, conducted in English or Spanish, ask participants to reflect on their educational experiences: what helped, what got in the way, and what still needs to change.
“I thought to go to college you have to be super smart and know you want to be a doctor or lawyer or something,” one participant says. “I’m in trade school now and I wish I would have known it was a good option for me, that I could get a professional job that doesn’t require so much time and money.”
Data collected from these interviews will be combined with existing state data to shape an actionable, community-informed strategy to increase enrollment at higher education institutions for Latinos in the state.