You Hear the Stories Over and Over
Told by Migdalia Garcia
Written by Laurie Grobman
After graduating from college in 2003, Migdalia Garcia moved to Reading to become a part time mentor at the Police Athletic League’s “Mentoring in the Arts” program, supported by juvenile probation. Soon she was running the program. She remembers one of the kids asking her, “Why do you do this? It doesn’t do anything for us. I’m only here because of probation.” Migdalia replied, “Well, at least out of the entire week, every time I see you, I know you’re safe for two hours that you’re with me every week. And every time you come back, I know that you’re okay.” That brief conversation pushed Migdalia to stay in the field. She’s been working with children and teens ever since in both justice-involved and preventative fields.
Migdalia, who still lives in Reading, is also a mother to two teenagers. When gunshots were fired during the Blacktop Basketball League in City Park in 2015, Migdalia’s husband instinctively grabbed their two children and ran. They got picked up by a friend and were safe.
It was her children’s first real experience with violence, not just mom always telling them to be careful and aware of their surroundings when they’re out walking. This was the first time they heard shots. They felt the terror.
Migdalia was not at the park with her family because she was at work: “I hold something to that, right, because mom couldn’t protect her kids. And you want to so badly protect your kids from that kind of experience, that fear that they literally had to just run away from the scene.”
After several years at the PAL and as a Club Director at the Olivet Boys and Girls Club 13th and Perkiomen building, Migdalia worked for an Alternative program in the city as an intervention specialist. Working one-on-one with justice-involved children led her to obtain a master’s degree in human services. After the Alternative program closed down, she became a Case Manager at a privately owned secure residential youth treatment facility and “started understanding a little bit more about not just the trauma kids were going through in front of me, but also their deep-rooted backstories. There are functions behind the behaviors. These are the psychological reasons for the behavior, which typically mean escape, attention-seeking, tangible items, and sensory stimulation.”
Migdalia also knew that the students at this secure treatment facility needed more than they were getting in their environment. They needed “more understanding, patience, empathy, love.” Migdalia took on leadership positions in the organization to “ensure that that dynamic was just as important.”
Some students were habitual offenders. As a counselor, she “got very wrapped up in their lives and their stories.’ And at the end of each day, she’d go home to her two young children. It was hard: “I want to protect them from the things I’m learning about the backstories of these kids and the violence that they’ve seen day-to-day.”
Migdalia’s children were walking after school to the Olivet Boys and Girls Club for their after-school programs. It was a short two-block walk, but they had to walk through Pendora Park, which worried her: “There were always adults. There tends to be smoking. There are sometimes fights that break out. That’s scary for a parent when I’m dealing with kids that have committed crimes in my job. I couldn’t always be there.”
Migdalia felt strongly she should be more involved in the Reading community with her career, so she transitioned at the secure residential facility from the secure units to detention and shelter where the kids were from Reading: “I felt if I worked with those kids, I have more impact on what’s happening in my community.”
She created more of a home environment in the shelter so the rooms would not look like cylinder block prison cells. She brought in specialized blankets and cute rugs and things to put their items under their bed. She let the kids hang pictures and other wall hangings.
It was important to Migdalia to create a “shelter family” environment. Some of the kids in the shelter are there for their own behaviors, but for others, it’s a family issue, such as homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence, and neglect. Either way, she felt strongly that a family environment could help all these kids. Many of the shelter staff were from Reading and felt similarly: “If we can change the kids, they might have a better path outside.”
But still, “the outside comes in.” The kids all knew each other. They were from neighborhoods all over the city, and that meant “different gangs in Reading, or groups of if they didn’t want to claim a gang, there were different crews that they hung out with, those kinds of things.” In such a small space, it was impossible to keep them separated at all times. Migdalia and the staff did all they could to emphasize that inside those walls, each
kid was going through the same things, regardless of what’s happening outside. They did their best to keep the peace in-house but sometimes had to break up fights due to those outside conflicts.
Once the kids left the shelter, staff no longer had any control. Two young men who were involved in street life came back and forth to the shelter. The last time they left, they were shot and killed. Migdalia doesn’t know the specific details. But she does know what many kids often say: “I had no choice but to start dealing drugs. I had no choice. I had to join the gang. What else was I going to do?” These kids need a sense of belonging or their basic needs met. They need somewhere to stay. They need protection. They need food: “You hear the stories over and over.”
While experiencing the challenges of her work at this secure shelter and the emotional toll it took–her sadness, anger, and vicarious trauma from hearing about and witnessing these kids’ circumstances–Migdalia had her own kids to consider. “Do I move my kids? Do we leave Reading?” Her husband grew up in Reading, graduated from Reading High and Alvernia University, and Migdalia thinks there’s no evidence that the trauma affected him negatively: “He was just a person that was born and raised in this environment where he made it the best he could and utilize the resources that were put in front of him. He’s a club kid. The environment with baseball and being in sports. He also had a loving home.” But was it luck, she wonders, that kept him away from the streets and violence? She and her family stayed in Reading.
Migdalia worked for ten years with the most traumatic scenarios, loss after loss of kids in the city. It was heartbreaking but also a deep commitment she made to these kids: “It was a hard job, but I loved my job. I had a shelter family. I knew what my goals were. I was always teaching and learning and how to run a group and be helpful to the kids and welcome the families. I had to focus on the impact and change that I really wanted. And so I loved it.” Migdalia planned to stay at this privately owned secure residential youth treatment facility until retirement. Then in 2018 the layoffs started. Five one day, then 15 the next, including Migdalia and four others in administration or management.
Migdalia now views the layoff as a blessing. Undergoing the job search led her to realize “she needed to be on the other side of it. If I wanted to prevent further loss of life, if I wanted to be more impactful, it’s got to be something to prevent kids from getting there in the first place, to prevent the incarceration of our kids.” She sought to work with students and remove every barrier to help them succeed in “an environment where we know that there are stray bullets, that we know there are gang members recruiting, that we know all of these negative things are happening.” Finally, she found out about Communities in Schools (CIS), where she is currently the Director of Operations of Eastern Pennsylvania. But she wonders, “Did Communities in Schools find me?”
Migdalia was hired in January 2019 to work for Communities in Schools of Eastern PA. She was assigned to several schools in Allentown and noticed the difference between students in different learning environments: “School climate is a huge factor because kids
sometimes leave a really harsh home environment to go to school, and that is their sense of relief.”
CIS’s primary mission is to “surround students with community support, empowering them to stay in school to achieve in life.”
CIS removes barriers so children can succeed not only in schools but in life: “A kid who can’t function in class may be hungry because they’re not being fed at home – so we get them food. If we’re feeding them and they’re in school and they’re happy, they’re less likely to go look for food themselves or take someone’s money.” Sometimes there’s child abuse in a family and that’s often where the violence starts. Other times there is pressure a parent feels from feeding their family to having a safe place to live. They become overwhelmed and aggravated, and they take it out and lash out on a child. Some parents work two or three jobs and can’t be home after school. CIS can provide parenting support, such as alternative programs to keep the kid in school longer so that the parent has more time to work. Some kids come from homes of addicts, “but if that adult can get the help that they need, that child’s life’s going to be better.” Migdalia and the staff at CIS continue to learn about the barriers kids and families face that underlie kids’ behaviors, including becoming involved in violence. CIS partners with other agencies that work to remove some of these barriers for children and their families.
Her work in CIS has also changed Migdalia’s perspective about her own children’s safety: “My kids aren’t unsafe necessarily. My kids just have to be cautious, and I have to help wherever I can.” They’re involved in sports, clubs, and theater. If they hear something, they don’t get involved, they go in the opposite direction. They know what the possibilities are. They’ve dealt with seeing mom go through the loss of children in a way. They understand how to be mindful of their environment, but they don’t fear it anymore.”
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Both her career and raising her own family have led Migdalia to understand something very simple: “There is always a function behind a child or teen’s behavior. There is always that basic need of love and support, food and shelter.” CIS and other agencies need to find out what kids and their families need, and then make sure those needs are met.
Migdalia believes change is possible in any scenario: “So-called ‘bad kids’ might have a bad behavior. But they’re not bad kids.” Rather, they’re kids who have been deprived of what all kids need. After more than two decades working with both youth who have been placed in secure treatment facilities and youth in violence prevention organizations, Migdalia remains committed to providing what all youth need to thrive:
“Our youth need a caring adult and a safe place to learn and grow. When children have their most basic needs met, they can focus on their own well-being and education. Providing resources and support can change their lives. We have to give them opportunities to learn to be resilient rather than resort to violence, to be accepting instead of distrustful, and to be hopeful when there is so much doubt.”
Migdalia knows meeting these needs will make our or youth and our communities safer: “I have witnessed youth thrive in an ever-changing environment when they know someone cares about them and they can have hope for the future.”