Natalie Skowlund

On a rainy Friday in Denver, Esmeralda Cuevas-Lara stands in a classroom at Metropolitan State University holding a water bottle to her lips in place of a microphone. As a few other students sit in desks watching, Cuevas-Lara belts out lyrics from the Mexican mariachi ballad “El Herradero.”“Ay, qué linda, qué rechula las fiestas de mi rancho…,” she sings in Spanish.Cuevas-Lara moved to Longmont from Guanajuato, Mexico when she was 15 years old. The song, she said, brings her back there.“This is...

Conor Hall takes pride in his knowledge of food. Each workday, he answers customers’ questions about which cheeses to pair with a particular salami, or what it means for a ham to be “uncured.”Hall is an assistant deli manager at a King Soopers grocery story in Boulder. His shifts vary, sometimes forcing him to be up as early as 3 a.m. while other times he closes out the evening. Hall makes around $23 per hour now, well above the local minimum wage, but it hasn’t always been that way. When he sta...

On a sunny Monday in March, Grace Marx unpacks gear from the back of a car at the remote South Platte River trailhead outside of Conifer, Colorado. She’s preparing for a three-day backpacking trip with her husband and two young kids. The trailhead where Marx and her family will embark serves as one of many starting points for the Colorado Trail, a 567-mile high-altitude wilderness path that traverses eight mountain ranges between Denver and Durango.Marx’s family isn’t new to the Colorado Trail....

TAPACHULA, Mexico – Of the thousands of migrants who pass through Mexican shelters each year, at least 1 in 3 are children.
Children and teenagers are fleeing north in droves, from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala and a host of other countries. Some come with extended families or older siblings. Others travel with friends, but at least half attempt the journey alone, according to UNICEF.
Young migrants live in stark conditions, often sleeping in the open air or next to strangers in crowd...

TEMPE – Leah Goldmann lounges on a sofa with her legs crisscrossed and a pillow cradled on her lap. She listens as Latisa Ratliff goes over birth plans, prenatal dietary considerations and how to know when it’s time to head to the hospital for labor.
Goldmann is pregnant with a girl, with an expected due date in January. It’s an exciting – and anxious – time for Goldmann, who at 33 years old will become a first-time mom.

But for Ratliff, the work is her bread and butter. As a birth doula, Rat...

María Guadalupe Aguirre, a mother of three school-age daughters in the Grants Pass School District, lost her job during the
pandemic. Since then, she has stayed home with her daughters as they continue to take classes online.
The 41-year-old said in Spanish that distance learning has not been easy for her family, especially at the beginning. She said that
at first, her daughters had trouble connecting to the internet at their home, making it hard to attend online classes.
Over time, Aguirre's family adjusted to the new technologies, but she said that there are still times when the internet connection
at home is weak.
Aguirre also said that her two younger daughters, Isabela, 12, and Kendra, 7, don't always understand how to complete their
online assignments. Since she's not personally well-versed on computers, she said she is often unable to help her daughters.
Consequently, some of their assignments never get submitted.

In response to a threatened lawsuit, the Grants Pass School District announced a new policy Wednesday that allows teachers to display a
Black Lives Matter poster in classrooms.
The announcement by Superintendent Kirk Kolb is part of a policy change by the Grants Pass School Board last month. The local teachers
union was involved behind the scenes, as was the Oregon Education Association, the parent union of the Grants Pass Education Association.
The revised "Staff Participation in Political Activities" policy shifts the way in which the district approaches what staff are permitted to
display on classroom walls. The revised policy clarifies how District 7 will determine whether a "civil issue" is controversial and that the
district will take into account "whether speech is consistent with district policy and resolutions."
The policy change and subsequent announcement comes after the local teachers union accused the district of violating free speech rights
and threatened to sue after the district in August told a teacher at Highland Elementary to take an OEA-sponsored Black Lives Matters poster
down from a classroom wall.