Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations will take many different shapes across Florida’s schools. Some students will participate in the art and essay contests offered by the Florida Department of Education. Other students will get to hear from special guests while others might participate in a parade or partake in special meals. For the students at the A-rated Fellsmere Elementary, events like these extend beyond one month. It’s a place where Hispanic heritage is honored during the entire school year.
If you were just to look at the demographics, Fellsmere Elementary would not look like the typical A-rated school in Florida. The school is in a migrant community located in northwest Indian River County. The student population is greater than 80% Hispanic. Many of the students are English Language Learners, and a full 100% of the student population is economically disadvantaged. One of the keys to the school’s success is how they embrace the heritage of their students and families. As found on their website, part of the school’s mission is to “empower globally competent learners, while bridging cultures, languages, and academics.”
Carla Cundiff has taught kindergarten and first grade at Fellsmere Elementary for 27 years, so she has great insight on what makes the school so special. “It’s the family atmosphere…both the families in the community and the family atmosphere of the teachers.” The positive, family environment is so pervasive that Cundiff knew from the beginning that Fellsmere was the place for her. She recalls thinking, “My first week of school when I taught kindergarten, I could feel myself being here and retiring here.”
Of course, a strong family environment at a school doesn’t just happen on its own; it has to be cultivated. One way Cundiff makes her students feel welcome is by ensuring sure they have diverse books. “I am not afraid of the books,” she says, “I make sure my kids can see themselves (in the books they read).” She also emphasizes the importance of not losing their first language, “I try to stress to all of my kids how important it is they keep using Spanish at home, that they speak Spanish to their parents.”
The connections made and the family built in Ms. Cundiff’s classroom extend well beyond when her students graduate from fifth grade and even beyond when they graduate high school. Just last week, one of her former students who is now in the U.S Air Force was back home for a brief visit between Air Force bases, and he stopped by Fellsmere Elementary to pay a visit to his first-grade teacher.
Family also means being there for one another in tough times. One of Cundiff’s students, Lorena, was diagnosed with cancer while in seventh grade and underwent chemotherapy treatment at Arnold Palmer Children’s hospital for three years. Lorena and Cundiff reconnected at Relay for Life, a fundraiser to improve the lives of people with cancer and their families. Cundiff and many of the Fellsmere faculty and staff regularly participate in Relay for Life as yet another way to build community and connect with the families they serve.
Lorena went on to graduate with honors from Sebastian River High School, maintaining a 4.0 grade point average, and she has been cancer free for more than a decade now. Her time at Arnold Palmer inspired Lorena to pursue a career in healthcare and when it was time to start applying for scholarships, she reached out to Cundiff to write her a letter of recommendation. Cundiff, of course, proudly and eagerly wrote the letter.
Cundiff still feels the way she did on her very first week; there is no place she’d rather teach and no community she’d rather support. After twenty-seven years of teaching at Fellsmere, the biggest change is that her family has grown a whole lot bigger.
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