In 2018, families in Arizona had the opportunity to participate in the Waterford UPSTART program to help close learning gaps with their young children. The program provided Chromebooks and internet to students and set each family up with a Family Education Liaison to support and assist with the program.
Serving the large Hispanic population in Arizona means that for many children, Waterford UPSTART is a way to improve their English language skills even before starting kindergarten.
One Waterford parent, Brenda Cervantes, explains that Waterford UPSTART helped her daughter learn skills that she needed for school. Living in the border town of Yuma, she explains that “most of the Spanish here is slang and sometimes the English is as well,” but that the reading skills taught in Waterford UPSTART helped to teach her daughter more formal language skills.
In this video, we sat down with parents in Yuma and Tucson to hear about their experiences with Waterford UPSTART and the results that they have seen in their own children.
