Running head: EVALUATION REPORT 1

Evaluation Report: Sterling Meadows

Victoria Eastman, Sarah Halford, Brenda Ortega-Mendez, Nicole Proctor

Western Washington University

HSP 485

EVALUATION REPORT

Introduction

Sterling Meadows is a branch of Mercy Housing that targets low-income

agricultural workers who make less than 45% of the median income in Whatcom

County.  Sterling Meadows helps over 250 individuals in 50 different homes.

Many residents have lived within the Sterling Meadows community for the entire

11 years it has been open, although there is still a high rate of turnover due to type

of employment.  The majority of the residents of Sterling Meadows are families,

in which at least one adult works in agriculture, and are primarily Latino/a.

Sterling Meadows provides affordable housing and support the community by

providing educational classes.  Some of the offerings include parenting classes,

health classes, financial literacy classes, law advising classes, and English classes

as seen in Appendix A.  Residents were polled on the various courses they would

be interested in seeing brought to Sterling Meadows however attendance of the

classes requested seems to remain low.  The staff have tried several tactics to

increase attendance but have only seen fluctuations.  It is hoped that this

evaluation can bring about new information as to why residents continue to not

attend the courses offered.

Background

According to the 2011 Census Bureau information on languages spoken in

the United States, over half of the households that spoke a second language at

home other than English spoke Spanish. Of those Spanish-speaking households, of

which there are about 37.5 million, 26% of those families said they spoke English

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“not well” or “not at all” (Ryan, 2013). In the 1960’s, the United States

government began to recognize the need to provide funding for English language

programs for migrant workers and their families because of the rapid growth of the

immigrant population (McLaughlin, Rodriguez & Madden, 2008). This movement

brought about the development of Teaching English to Speakers of Other

Languages (TESOL) certification and the Migrant Education Program. Language

is not the only barrier that migrant workers face; many migrant agriculture

workers face issues of citizenship and accessing services. Organizations, like

Sterling Meadows, provide classes teaching about English, citizenship, health, and

various other topics that are relevant to their residents needs. Through these

programs, agricultural workers are able to better access services and have the

opportunity to overcome cultural boundaries.

Looking at the existing literature, there are several concerns that arise when

working with this specific population.  One program that is relatively new at

Sterling Meadows is the health program.  Sterling Meadows now organizes classes

that teach about healthy eating, genetically modified food and organic foods, and

fitness.  It allows residents to come to the community center and learn how to cook

healthy meal for their families and themselves.  At the same time the hope is to

instill better eating habits from the residents overall.  Kilanowski (2010)

completed a study looking at migrant farm workers and it “showed that 83% of

participants’ family incomes were less than $1,000 per month and most families

had at least two children.  With low family income, food choices are limited and

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cheaper, energy-dense foods are purchased to feed a hungry family” (p. 411).

When shopping on a budget, the quality of the food is sometimes overlooked to

just have enough to feed everyone.  The study showed that compared to their

peers, these children displayed higher rates of overweight and obesity.  “Lack of

health insurance and English language skills, transient lifestyle, dawn to dusk

workdays, and low education levels have been identified as barriers to adequate

health” (Anthony, Williams & Avery, 2008, p. 154).  This applies to migrant

workers that are primary Hispanic, Spanish speaking and minimally educated.

There are also work related problems that have an affect on the health of the

workers.  “It is estimated that 300,000 farmworkers are poisoned by pesticides

every year” (Anthony, Williams & Avery, 2008, p. 154).  As healthcare and

wellbeing continue to be a big issue for migrant workers, the need for education on

pesticide safety, body mechanics, and prevention of heat-related illness is critical.  

Another major concern is language.  For most migrant workers, English is

not their first language and sometimes nor is it their second.  As it was stated

earlier, 26% of 37.5 million are families who said they spoke English “not well” or

“not at all”  (Ryan, 2013).  It is hard to improve the lives of this population when

education and information is often given in English.

Roughly three years are required for the average migrant student in some

states to advance one grade level.  Research implies that migrant students

who deal with this academic lag need more than a basic, fundamental

delivery of designated curricular components to meet grade-level content

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expectations.  Attention must be focused on the capabilities, personal

biases, opinions, and abilities of teachers to deliver the curriculum (Irizarry

& Williams, 2013, p. 171)

Learning English is hard for children.  Often children are not given enough

support to truly grasps all the concepts and information they are handed.  This

process is even tougher for adults.  After a long day at work, it takes a lot of effort

to want to continue working on their education.  There needs to be emphasis

placed on the program design to allow all learners to succeed.  This would include

the speed at which the material is given and also starts with the most basics of

fundamental (Irizarry & Williams, 2013).  Continuing to be an underserved

population, migrant workers and their families see language as a barrier to

understanding and sometimes need to translate material into their language to have

a complete grasp.  In Irizarry & Williams’ study, the participants shared that they

do not have a teacher that looked “like them” and have a desire to have teacher

that speak their language and are of the same ethnicity (Irizarry & Williams, 2013,

pp. 182).  Learning another language is hard no matter how old the student is but

there are several barriers for migrant families.  

Evaluation

Methodology

This evaluation strived to answer how Sterling Meadows could better

improve its outreach to the community.  We looked at which classes were being

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utilized and what hinders attendance to other classes. This was a process

evaluation.  

During this process we had to adapt to the population we were evaluating.

For this reason we decided to create a survey containing six open ended question

that we could ask when interviewing participants.  There would be many

limitations for written surveys and focus groups, such as transcription of

discussions from Spanish to English, and the time limitations put on this

evaluation, etc.  Which is why short, personal interviews were chosen as our

instrument for collecting data as seen in Appendix B.  This provided flexibility

when actually conducting the qualitative interviews.  If there was a need to go

deeper into conversation to reach the optimum amount of data the researchers had

the opportunity and flexibility to do so.  Before conducting the door-to-do

interviews, we had to gain approval from the community stakeholder Lindsey

Karas and our professor Hope Corbin.

After the questions and method of obtaining information was approved, we

began setting up the interviews with participants within the community with the

help of Lindsey Karas.  Brenda, one of the group members, is fluent in Spanish,

made the interview process possible due the rest of the evaluation group and

language barrier within the community.  Before Brenda and Nicole commenced

conducting the interviews, they obtained verbal consent to audio record the

conversations.  Having an audio recording allowed us to go back to the interviews,

and take specific quotes out to exemplify specific details that were deemed

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important. The interviews were projected to last about ten to fifteen minutes but

most ended within five minutes due to the concise nature of the questions.

Participants had the option of coming to the interviewers at the complex’s

community center or having the interviewers meet them in their homes.  Lindsey

assisted the process by selecting relevant persons for us to interview, asking if they

would participate, and assigning specific times to meet with Brenda and Nicole.

Along with delivering a list of the participants and times that they were free to

talk, Lindsey provided information on which participants came to classes often,

occasionally, and never.  That allowed for the data we collected to be less biased

and more well rounded.  Having people with varying degrees of participation gave

us a wider perspective on why some liked the classes, and more of what was

hindering them from coming, which was one of the main goals for this evaluation.

When we got to Sterling Meadows for the evaluation process Lindsay had

made a list of times and locations we will be meeting with each participant.  As

previously mentioned, this list was made up of residents that never, sometimes,

and are always participating in the services provided at the Sterling Meadows

residential complex.  We had a total of five participants that have never attended

or do not seek services:  one participant that would be considered an occasional

participant and two that are considered frequent or “always” participants.  We

conducted a total of eight interviews with two of the eight interviews being

conducted in English.  

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While analyzing the data, Brenda translated the key verbal information she

received from participants from Spanish to English.  She then revisited the audio

recordings of the interviews and compiled the data, while noting outliers into

bullet points and separating them by interview. The audio recordings allowed her

to quote the participants to the best of her knowledge, since the Spanish speakers

we interviewed often-combined Spanish words with English and other indigenous

dialects.

A common response we received was participants being aware of the

classes held by the organization and that the current mode of notification, the

newsletters, was effective in alerting them to upcoming classes. Every participant

concluded that they would not change the way newsletters are currently being

distributed.

Results

As a result of the interviews, we found that work schedules or other life

schedules have had a big impact on the attendance for certain classes.  A common

theme that exists for all the participants was the awareness of the classes.  They all

understood where the classes were and when the classes took place. It appears that

even though some of the adults are not taking advantage of the adult service, their

children are taking advantage of the youth programs.  For example a young adult

participant who recently turned eighteen, has not accessed the adult programs but

stated, “ I was involved in homework club when I was in high school.”  Another

participant that was not interested in the adult class provided stated, “I do not

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attend class, but my children go to homework club when I will be home late from

work and Lindsay got one of my daughters a tutor.”

A class that a majority of participants stated they would like to attend was

the English class.  Most participants stated how important it is and how they desire

to learn English.  As one resident stated, “ It’s important for me to learn English

especially where I work, I understand simple phrases but it would be good to

communicate with them.” It seems that scheduling prevented several participants

from attending these “important” classes.  

Almost all participants had a different answer to what time and day they

would prefer classes to be held.  Some participants stated that the current time and

days work for them, but they had other factors that influence their attendance such

as childcare and not being interested in the class but the biggest factor was work

schedule.   Many participants stated that in order to attend they needed childcare to

be provided.   Others stated that morning classes would work better for them rather

than the typical evening schedule.   Two of the participants stated that

Wednesdays would work best for their schedule.  

We found in the interviews with the participants that they are receiving the

monthly newsletter, which was considered a possible barrier to current attendance

counts.  What stood out during the interviews was how every person repeated the

fact that “Lindsay comes to the door, knocks and if you are not home will tape the

monthly newsletter to the door.”  One participant, who has only attended one adult

class, had the calendar hanging in their living room.  Participants disclosed that if

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a flyer was taped to their door it was likely that children or wind will take the flyer

away, then they would not receive that month’s newsletter.  Otherwise, all

participants stated that they liked the way they are being notified about upcoming

classes, and they cannot think of a better way that would work.

Outliers

Some of the participants have very specific experiences with the classes

Sterling Meadows puts on.  One participant stated that they would prefer a

different teacher to teach the class because they feel that the instructors move too

quickly and are difficult to understand because of the different levels of Spanish

proficiency. They appeared to be deterred by the level at which English was being

taught.  Another participant had no interest in attending classes because he would

prefer to spend his extra time with his children.  

Limitations

While we believe the interviews and results were successful, there are

several limitations that exist in this evaluation we need to address.  The biggest

obstacle for this group was time and scheduling.   The entire process of planning

and coordinating with our community partners to complete a thorough evaluation

was restricted to five weeks.  This means that we had a short time to decide the

evaluation goal, pilot possible questions, and conduct the interviews.  We had to

think on our feet to problem solve quickly, but the time constraint did motivate

communication between all stakeholders and researchers.  Even with the five

weeks, as students we also had to work around our always-busy schedules. This

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limited available times to meet as a group.  However, we were able to overcome

this difficulty by dividing into smaller groups that would attend meetings that

would better fit our community member’s schedules and then report back to the

whole team.  Having a short amount of time also hampered our ability to conduct

in-depth interviews with participants and required our group to create a list of only

six concise questions to use during the interviews.  We had to limit ourselves for it

to be manageable enough that we could analysis the data and then report it back to

Sterling Meadows in two weeks.     

    An additional limitation for this evaluation was language.  Most of the

participants had Spanish as the first language while only one researcher in our

group spoke fluent Spanish, while another researcher had some Spanish

background but two had very little or none.  To overcome this barrier the ones to

complete the interviews were the two who were more familiar with the language.

We recorded the conversations to have the ability to listen to the participant's

answers and translate them into quotes later.  This ensures that we correctly

translated their answers into English for our report and presentation.  Being that

we had to translate the conversation and answers, we had to consider what we lose

in translation.  Some words and meanings may have been lost in translation and

our interpretations of their feelings through our interpersonal communications can

create biases. At least one participant used a combination of Spanish, English, and

an additional indigenous language of Mexico. By having these combinations of

multiple languages and creation of slang terms, some translations cannot be

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verbatim.  However, we recognize that the casual nature of our interviews and

interactions with the participants from Sterling Meadows can cause us to interpret

their meaning during interviews in different ways than someone who was not

present for the interviews.

     Working around the schedules of our participants added another level of

limitations to our research.  We attempted to accommodate all the participants we

wanted to include in our research by coming to their homes in the early evening.

Lindsay Karas helped mediate this limitation by scheduling participants to come to

the community center.  However, by having the interviews in the community

center, additional distractions, like children running in and out of the building and

people coming to speak with Lindsay, could have impacted the responses of our

participants.  On several occasions, we arrived at the home of a participant to

conduct an interview and the participant was not yet home or was just walking up

to the home from their car.  The distraction of just arriving home could have also

impacted participant’s responses in a positive and negative way.  It allowed for

participants to answer questions more candidly, but may have shortened them due

to distractions around the house.  Such distractions like children and family

obligations apparent when interviewing the participants home.   

    As researchers, we tried to conduct a viable evaluation that provided helpful

information to Sterling Meadows for them to better their programs.  By identifying

these limitations, our hope is that future researchers can work to lessen these

limitations and produce more data as to how the classes can be improved.

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Conclusion and Recommendation

Overall, during the interview process we heard good things about the adult

classes from participants that are attending.  One participant stated they attend the

Healthy eating and GMO foods adult class, and found information provided to be

very interesting.  This topic appeared to be very important to this participant.  The

few participants that were not interested or only attended a few of the adult classes

still encouraged their children to attended the youth programs, which would imply

they found some of the classes important.  It was stated by one of the participants

that they would like childcare to be provided during the classes. This could be

looked into more and see how other residents feel about childcare being provided.

A recommendation we would encourage the stakeholders to consider is the

times and days that classes, especially the English classes, are being held.

Participants that do not attend classes had conflicting issues with the times that are

currently available.  Having the classes several days a week will allow more

availability for the community members.  If you are able to create another time

slot for the English class, look into creating it in the morning.  That time would

allow those who cannot attend the afternoon/evening classes a chance to go.

Finding a common day and time that encourages more people to attend classes

would require further research and interviews with a larger population of residents

at Sterling Meadows.

We would also recommend looking into the material that is being taught to

see if adaptations can be made.  One of the residents stated that they feel like the

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English classes were too advanced and this is why they do not attend the classes.

We recommend more research being done on the current English class participants

to have a better understanding of the people attending the classes, while also

researching the curriculum and pacing.  There needs to be more consideration in

the speed to which they are teaching, and assumptions that are being made towards

what level the community members are starting at.  This would allow students of

different levels to attend without being intimidated by the strenuous material.

Regardless, participants would like to attend more English classes.  They

recognize the importance of knowing English and, therefore, English classes. With

these changes and considerations, we think Sterling Meadows will be able to

better meet the needs of its residents and in return the residents will be able to take

advantage of the opportunities provided by the organization.  

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Reference

Anthony, M., Williams, J. M., & Avery, A. M. (2008). Health Needs of Migrant

and Seasonal Farmworkers. Journal Of Community Health Nursing, 25(3),

153-160. doi:10.1080/07370010802221768

Irizarry, S., & Williams, S. (2013). Lending Student Voice to Latino ELL Migrant

Children's Perspectives on Learning. Journal Of Latinos & Education,

12(3), 171-185. doi:10.1080/15348431.2013.765801

Kilanowski, J. F. (2012). Patterns and Correlates of Nutrition Among Migrant

Farm-Worker Children. Western Journal Of Nursing Research, 34(3), 396-

416. doi:10.1177/0193945910381597

Ryan, C. US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration.

(2013). Language use in the united states: 2011 (ACS-22). Retrieved from

US Census Bureau website: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf

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Appendix A

INPUTS/RESOURCES Staff/

interns·

Volunteer Center of WC

·   Printer·   Grant

Money·   Trainees·   Space·

Materials

·   Food·   Time

ACTIVITIES· Research similar programs·       Plan curriculum·       Plan day of event· Conduct training· Evaluate effectiveness

OUTPUTS· Trained volunteers who feel empowered and prepared to lead community service projects.

SHORT-TERM OUTCOMES     Participants will learn how to become leaders and identify needs·       Meet community leadership needs·       Learn how to be an asset to organizations

MEDIUM-TERM OUTCOMES    Participants will engage in taking on leadership positions in community projects·       Will seek out volunteer leadership opportunities at the Volunteer Center and partner agencies·       Use leadership training to engage and lead volunteers effectively

LONG-TERM OUTCOMESIncrease in service projects lead by volunteers at the Volunteer Center and partner agencies· Decrease in staff time being spent on running service projects

IMPACT      Mobilize volunteer leaders to meet community needs· Build capacities of partner organizations to effectively utilize volunteer leaders· Inspire leadership for community service projects

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Appendix B

Evaluation Interview

Start by introducing yourselves and explaining the purpose of your visit in relation

to Lindsey:

·      Students from Western Washington University

·      Collecting data about the success of the adult classes offered at Sterling

Meadows

·      Interviewing residents about their experiences with the adult programs and

gaining their perspective on how they can be improved

·      Time limit: 10-15 minutes

·      Go over informed consent procedures: confidentiality, right of refusal,

voluntary response, audio recording consent

1.     Have you or do you attend any of the classes? If so, which one(s)?

2.     What classes do you find important?

3.     What prevents you from attending classes?

4.     What days and times work best for you to attend a class?

5.     How do you know what class is being held and when? Do you notice the

flyers about the classes?

6.     How do you want to be notified about the upcoming classes?

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