Speak_Out

Speak Out ! Speak Up! Sound off! This is the place to
address/confront burning issues affecting our community.
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Por Eso No Avanza el Mexicano

When I was in high school, one of my teachers gave the class a scenario.

There are two deep holes in the ground. One hole is filled with white people, and the other hole is
filled with Mexican-Americans. Which group gets out first? Well, the white people will get out first,
because they will work together to make sure one person reaches the top so that he can go and get
help. The Mexican-Americans, on the other hand, will never get out because they will try to prevent
each other from reaching the top. And they would blame the white people for it.

Such is the case in this small town. With a population consisting of 70 percent Hispanic, you would
think that we would be a majority voice in our community. But many of us are too busy trying to
place the blame on the whites instead of uniting together to .....read MORE

(published April 15,2006)
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A Leaderles Community?

A couple of weeks ago I was discussing with a friend the article “ Por Eso no Avanza el Mexicano.”
After discussing the deep hole concept--the need to let/help those that can get out of the hole do so
with the hope that they will return to help the rest-- he asked, “Who is your leader? Who is the one
person that can not only galvanize your community, but also motivate it into action? I was basically
blind sided; No one came to mind. I could not name a single person.

We discussed a few leaders of a decade or so ago, but due to one reason or another these individuals
never became great leaders; some actually “goofed up” when it came to their personal lives.

We discussed the massive demonstrations for immigration reform support. Sure they were
impressive, and it took great effort and skill to organize the marches. But no one emerged at a
national level that will push the cause through.

That day I left work a little perplexed and somewhat disappointed. The question “ Who is your
leader?” remained.....read MORE

(published April 22, 2006)

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Do you speak English, Spanish, both, or Neither?

“I don’t want to hear any of you teachers speaking to these kids in Spanish.” STOP! Wait a minute.
What year are we in? As I took a few seconds to process what had just come out of our school
district’s superintendent’s mouth, all I could do was just sit there and listen in disbelief.

It was the first day at my new elementary school. I had been teaching in San Antonio, Texas for six
years in both a Bilingual and Dual Language Elementary school where the importance of knowing
two languages was stressed on a daily basis. Parents would even request that their children attend
these schools even if they lived twenty miles away. So, why at a border town only two hours away
from San Antonio was speaking Spanish to these students not allowed?

I sat there and continued listening to this so called “Welcome to a new school year” speech. He went
on to say that students at our district had low SAT scores and how high school teachers were
complaining about their English language inadequacies in the classroom. So, the solution to this
problem was to completely immerse these predominantly Spanish speaking students in English and
abolish the Spanish language entirely as soon as possible.

This was the complete opposite of what I had researched and studied in college and had implemented
at my previous district. Children need to learn how to speak, read, and write in their 1st language in
order to succeed in a 2nd language. That’s when I realized what the problem was. These students in
Jr. High and High School had never been taught their 1st language, Spanish, academically.
Therefore, they did not learn English correctly, either. This means that their parents were also a part
of that strange population in our city that cannot speak English or Spanish correctly. They are those
few but many that are not proficient in any language.

Now, as I try to help my 4th grade “Bilingual” students succeed when taking state academic tests
(TAKS) that are written in a language that seems foreign to many of them, I realize that being truly
bilingual is rare and very special. It is a unique quality that needs to be learned and acquired
correctly. Just because you live in a border town where the menu at Wendy’s is in Spanish doesn’t
mean that you are a true bilingual individual.

contributed by a concerned teacher