Mardi Gras Dance The Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education is hosting a Mardi Gras Dance from 8 p.m. to midnight Friday at Sokol Hall, 5502 Kostoryz Road. Music by the Eddie Olivares Orchestra. Cost: $35 per couple. For more information, call 698-1424.

OLGA Garcia Herranz has been an educator for 34 years, her teaching experience ranging from second grade to the college level.
   If there is one thing all these years in the classroom have taught her, it is that her responsibility as a teacher extends far from the confines of her own classroom.
   "We must also be there to plant the seed, to tell (students) that if they expect excellence, they will achieve excellence," said Herranz, associate professor of English at Del Mar College and president of the college's chapter of Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education.
   Herranz has parlayed that sense of responsibility into her latest undertaking - spearheading a new mentoring program that targets third-graders.

Paul Iverson/Caller-Times

Olga Garcia Herranz and fellow Del Mar College professors have begun a third-grade mentoring program at Travis Elementary.

   Concerned about dropout rates, especially among minorities, Herranz and fellow Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education members have devised the adopt-a-grade mentoring concept to reach out to students at an age when they begin defining themselves as "smart or dumb" and formulating attitudes toward education.
   The college professors chose Travis Elementary as the site for the pilot program because of its proximity to the campus. If successful, they hope to branch out to other elementary third-graders.
   "Kinder through second grade are considered the more social grades," Herranz said. "There's reading and writing, but it's more prep for third grade. Third is where they begin learning and spelling harder words and when they also are responsible for learning multiplication and division. This is the grade where the dividing starts taking place, the dividing of excellent students from the weak students."
   Group members will reward the class of Travis third-graders that meets any given particular goal for the month. They'll visit Travis and read to third-graders and pay for the ice cream socials, pizza or piñata parties with group funds.
   At the end of the school year, the professors will host a field trip to Del Mar for all Travis third-graders and acquaint them with the college campus and library. The trip, members said, is a chance to begin instilling higher education standards early.
   Extending encouragement at such a critical age can mean the difference, said Rodolfo Duarte, assistant to Del Mar's vice president of instruction and student development and TACHE member.
   "There are some people my age who had negative experiences in school and they are not going to promote schooling at home," he said. "I know that attitude is out there. The dropout problem is a big one, but rather than complaining and wringing our hands, this is an effort to do something about it."
  

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