Francisco Preciado came to California from Mexico as a young child. By the early 1980s, he was raising a young family of his own in the U.S. and working as a groundskeeper at Stanford.On a recent visit to StoryCorps, his son, Frankie, recalls, “Since I was around 9 or 10, I would come sometimes with you to help you on campus.”
“I told you that one day, you were going to go here to Stanford,” answers Francisco.
Andy Goodling, with his father, Scott, on a recent visit with StoryCorps.
StoryCorpsAmid A Lost Love, A Son And Father Finally Speak The Secret Between Them
The cookbook, featuring those handprints left in beet juice.
StoryCorpsAt The Root Of It All, A Little Girl’s ‘Grandmapal’ Left Her Lifelong Love
That stuck with Frankie. He remembered those words, the hard work his father and mother put into their jobs, and set them up as examples for himself. And because of his dad, Frankie applied to Stanford…

“The future depends on what you do today”, that’s the message leaders of the Association of Latin American Students are sending to local Hispanic students. They’re using personal experience to inspire others.
Itzayana Ortega has spent much of her life moving between the United States and Mexico City. She says that made her a very shy student.
“School has been a challenge for me,” said Ortega, now President of ALAS at Rock Valley College. “I never had stayed in a set place or country. So, I always have to move from one country to another and just getting used to all those changes.”…
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Humanities disciplines are seeing growth in the number of degrees awarded to minority students at the undergraduate level, hitting record levels in the largest humanities disciplines, according to an analysis being released today by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
But the analysis — based on various federal databases — shows uneven growth. Most of the gains are attributable to Latino students. The one exception to this trend was religion, where black students are making gains.
And at a time when minority students on many campuses are pushing their institutions to hire more minority faculty members, the analysis finds declines — with the exception of philosophy — in the number of doctoral degrees in the humanities awarded to minority students. These declines could complicate the efforts of colleges…
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Three million school children in the U.S. are identified as gifted. That’s roughly the top 10 percent of the nation’s highest achieving students.
But Rene Islas, head of the National Association for Gifted Children, says tens of thousands of gifted English language learners are never identified. We sat down with Islas and asked him why.
He started out by explaining that there are several different measures for identifying gifted children. The most common in schools is recognizing achievement, above grade level work. But that poses a problem for English language learners, or ELLs, he says…
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