Imagine comforting an elderly patient lying in a hospital bed.
See yourself giving technical advice on today’s cutting edge technology products.
Taste the satisfaction of creating menu items to be served to hundreds of diners nightly.

This kind of dreaming for the future is exactly what the Carlos Rosario Workforce Department asked students to do during a recent open house for the School’s healthcare, technology and hospitality career training courses. The open house was held to energize and inform current Carlos Rosario School students as the first step in a larger outreach effort to recruit for Nurse Aide Training courses beginning in February and for Culinary Arts and Computer Support Specialist Training courses beginning fall 2012.

Student and faculty representatives from the three career training courses set up tables in the lower level hallway and morning and evening session students from upper-level ESL and other advance courses such as GED, were invited to gather information and ask questions. The inner workings of a computer lay open on the table in front of sharply dressed computer support specialist students, while the nurse aide training table was covered with student-created health information boards. The culinary arts display of student portfolios and textbooks also included a student-led tour through the School’s kitchen.

The open house gave interested students a chance to hear from current career training students and teachers about what they can expect in class. According to Semira Mohammed, a computer support specialist student who received a job promotion upon completing her first computer support specialist course, the workforce open house was a good chance to expose students to other opportunities at the school. Semira expressed her pride in all she’s accomplished through the CSS class. “It looks easy to take this course once you’re in it, but the people we talked to [during the open house] were impressed with what we’ve learned so far.”

Shortly after morning classes finished on a Friday afternoon, the school auditorium began to fill with students and staff sporting white T-shirts with a child’s colorful drawing of a house. This is the official uniform of this year’s Fannie Mae’s Help the Homeless Walkathon and these are the supporters dedicated to raising money for the cause.

The Carlos Rosario School has been participating in the Walkathon since the fundraiser’s beginnings in 2005. Proceeds from the School’s mini-walk are donated to L’Arche, an organization that serves people with intellectual disabilities. Annually Carlos Rosario School students and staff raise about $15,000 for the organization.

This year’s mini-walk kicked off with a bilingual presentation led by L’Arche representative, Pierre Sanders. Sanders grabbed the audience’s attention with the stomps and claps of a dynamic step performance followed by an audience participation game with student volunteers. Sanders concluded the presentation with an inspirational message reminding students that by participating in the mini-walk they are saying to themselves and to the larger community, “I am beautiful, I am special, I am unique,” and “you are beautiful, you are special, you are unique.”

During the walk, students chatted, cheered, and waved signs like “Hope for the Homeless” and “Carlos Rosario Helps the Homeless Make Someone Smile”. Carlos Rosario GED student, Octavio de la Luz, who has participated in the walk for the past three years, welcomes this chance to give back. “We [the students] are supported by the community and the government,” said Octavio. “We should give that support to someone else.”

On Friday, October 21st Carlos Rosario School welcomed 20 representatives from a wide-range of European countries. The visitors, professionals from both the public and private sectors, are recipients of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, which provides emerging European leaders a chance to explore institutions, politics, and cultures in the U.S.

As part of the fellows’ 24-day, 5-city tour, Washington, D.C. provides a great opportunity to expose award recipients to many viewpoints on both the federal and local level. The goal of the Carlos Rosario School visit was for the fellows to be immersed at the ground level in something very local and tangible while learning more about immigrant education and integration.

After a brief introduction of the school and its model, fellows were given a tour of the classes and spoke with students. Then the visitors took a lunch break with students in the cafeteria where they enjoyed a black forest cake prepared by a team of Carlos Rosario culinary arts students led by German student, Doris Kuehn.

Fellows called Carlos Rosario School a model for how to integrate immigrants into society that European countries could learn from.