Roughly 20% of all United States undergraduate students are parenting or caretaking a minor dependent. At Santa Fe Community College, about 30% of SFCC’s degree-seeking students are parenting or caretaking. It’s imperative for these students, their families, and the communities that surround them that colleges work with their needs and leverage their talents for their academic success. Engaging and supporting student parents is an investment with multi-generational benefits for all of us.
Mother Tongue Project at Santa Fe Community College (MTP@SFCC) offers parenting students a highly supported, topic-centered English-course that links foundational college academic skills with family literacy awareness.
Adapted from Mother Tongue Project’s high-school curriculum for pregnant and parenting teens, MTP@SFCC launched in fall 2023 as a specially designed section of English Composition I, which is a gateway class for most certificate and degree pathways and focuses on college-level reading, writing, revision, discussion, and critical thinking skills.
MTP@SFCC English Composition I: ENGL 1110—specifically for parenting students.
The MTP section’s coursework is topically focused around parenthood, actively draws on student parents’ lived experiences, and relates academic literacy to family literacy throughout the semester.
MTP supplies relevant school supplies, class materials, and a stipend for student parents who successfully complete the course.
Next steps for interested student parents:
SFCC’s ENGL 1110 overview description is here (note: this description is not specific to the MTP@SFCC section): General SFCC ENGL 1110 Course Description
To register for the MTP Section of ENGL 1110, start by searching for English offerings at the upcoming semester’s class schedule here: https://www.sfcc.edu/look-for-a-credit-class/
Note ENGL 1110 section identified as “Mother Tongue Project Course for Student Parents”
Contact Academic Advising at 505-428-1275 or advisor@sfcc.edu to make sure you enroll in the MTP section for student parents.
Related MTP programming and SFCC’s Parenting Student Support Services
Supporting student parents beyond the English classroom reinforces the value and potential of these motivated students at SFCC and in our broader communities. MTP works with SFCC’s Parenting Student Support Services and Student Parent Leadership Team, facilitates student-parent information series and small-group skills workshops, and participates in campus events for parenting students.
SFCC has been recognized as providing excellent support for its student parents! Learn more about the many resources they offer through SFCC’s Parenting Student Resources web pages here: https://www.sfcc.edu/parenting-students/
MTP@SFCC English sequence: The starting vision
MTP@SFCC English was originally envisioned as two consecutive semesters of introductory college-level coursework topically focused around parenthood. Parenting students would move through their first English classes as a highly supported cohort. The course focus and population would invite students to leverage their lived experience and skillsets as parents into successful academic and professional careers. You can learn more about our starting MTP@SFCC vision in the presentation below.
Why post-secondary?
One-fifth of U.S. undergraduates are parenting or caring for dependent children—the majority, 2.1 million, are single women (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). This is a critical area for MTP investment, especially because these learners can decrease their chances of living in poverty by 32% for each additional level of education they receive.**
Through our relevant, relationship-based acceleration of English fundamentals, MTP@SFCC hopes to prepare more parenting students for certificate and degree achievement. Research shows that “[c]ontextualized instruction, or basic skills taught in the context of real-world problems and major course content, has been related to earning more college credits and an increased likelihood of persistence.”*** Framing an accelerated English sequence within examinations and discussions of parenting issues follows this tenet, guiding students through personal and academic reflection as well as through foundational academic and family literacy skills. We anticipate this combination will improve student-parents’ chances for school retention and degree completion. Ultimately, we hope the combined benefits will lead to opportunities for higher-level employment, more stable family economics, greater child wellbeing, and a strong support network of parenting students and alumni.
*Graham, Matthew, et al. Women Employed and Ascend Aspen Institute, 2012, Low-Income Single Mothers at Community College: Recommendations for Practices to Improve Completion.
**Single Moms Success, Education Design Lab, 9 Feb. 2021, eddesignlab.org/project/singlemomssuccess/.
***Chenoa S. Woods, Toby Park, Shouping Hu & Tamara Bertrand Jones (2019) Reading, Writing, and English Course Pathways when Developmental Education is Optional: Course Enrollment and Success for Underprepared First-time-in-College Students, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 43:1, 5-25, DOI: 10.1080/10668926.2017.1391144. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10668926.2017.1391144