 High School Student
Hispanic + White Female Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: Although the Rio Grande Valley has a population of 1.5 Million people, the world I grew up in was pretty small. From ages 6 to 11, the one thing I had in common with my teachers was my gender. Having strong female role models during some of the most formative years of my life has shaped who I am today. They understood the stigma surrounding “bossy girls” before I even knew what connotation the word “bossy” held. They nurtured my leadership and drive instead of shutting down my “bossiness”. I never saw this as anything of importance until I got to middle school where the first male teacher I ever had pointed to me as I was planning our group's next step and said, “Well, you’re quite the bossy one. Aren’t you?” I could tell by his voice that it was not a compliment. My whole life, my leadership had always been accepted if not encouraged, but this man who did not understand why young girls should be encouraged in this way, discouraged my initiative and drive for the rest of the year. Throughout my early school years, I was exposed to a lot of diversity. If my teachers were not Hispanic, they were Colombian or Irish or even African American. This allowed me to grow up in a world that was accepting of differences and taught me how to deal with people who didn't always look like me. Although this was a great skill to develop, it could never match what I learned when I finally had a teacher that looked like me. In my first year of High School, I really struggled finding my “Latinx Identity”. I wanted to embrace my culture but I didn't speak Spanish and along with the fact that I looked white, it made it hard to feel like I could really check that Hispanic box. Sophomore year was when I finally had a teacher who was like me--dark haired, had a lighter complexion, and didn't speak Spanish, but still EMBRACED a Latin Identity. For so long, I felt rejected by a world I didn't even know and this gave me hope of one day belonging. She taught me that when we exist in two worlds, we must find a way to make our own and even when you feel like you do not belong entirely to one culture, it is still yours to claim. Growing up around teachers who shared my race, identity and gender made me not only feel represented in the world, but it made me feel understood and as a young girl, that was all I could ask for. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: One of my favorite quotes from Gloria Anzaldúa says, “The US Mexican Border es una herida abierta where the third world grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture.” This border culture is a mix of English and Spanish. It is Mexican ancestry with the American mainstream. It is existing in two different worlds, but never belonging to either. It wasn't until my freshman year that I had the first teacher who introduced to a new concept : Pride of Place. This man, Mr.Ozuna, walked into our class on the first day of school and said “I went to Yale for college and a lot of people ask me, ‘if you went to Yale, why would you come back and teach at Memorial High School?’ The question I ask you is why don’t you all deserve to have a teacher that was educated at Yale?”. This was a very defining moment in my life. I realized that the problem in our community wasnt that we didn't want opportunities, but that we felt we didn't deserve them. This mentorship was based on more than the fact that he looked like me with his dark hair and hispanic features (which I shared with most of my teachers all my life), but that he understood our “border culture” and taught me how I could use my voice to help people understand our community better. When you look up the Rio Grande Valley, 9 times out of 10 you will find some negative stereotype or false narrative perpetuated by people who do not know our community like we do. We, as a community, are constantly underestimated and misunderstood which is a hard concept to grasp for a young girl growing up here. Growing up, I constantly had to listen to people say things like “there’s no opportunities here” or, “I can’t wait to leave the Valley”. For the first 14 years of my life, I had never been exposed to any teacher or anyone who really loved this place. Being so young, it was hard living in a world that taught me to not be proud of where I come from. Simply having this culture in common made me not only want more for my community, but made me feel like we deserve more. It allowed me to break out of the stigma that I couldn't be successful here and start making my own success. For me, having things in common with my teachers is important because I no longer feel like I am alone. And once you feel like you have a community of people supporting you, you are unstoppable. Sydney is the founder of @thergvmatters. Her #successwithoutborders interview series (podcast coming soon!) encourages youth involvement in her community and aims to inspires people to be proud of their Rio Grande Valley roots. Join in her activism and connect with her on Twitter @sydramon. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong
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 University Student
High School History Teacher-in-Training Mexican DREAMer Heterosexual Male First in Family to Attend College Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: Growing up in the southmost part of the country, I believe that I have had a unique experience. The majority of my teachers have been Mexican Americans. I sometimes see myself reflected in their stories about their childhood. We share the same culture and traditions. In Christmas time we all look forward to eating tamales and sharing time with our large, extended families. Although most of my grade school teachers looked similar to me, in college at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley things changed. Suddenly I was surrounded with Anglo and Asian professors. Sometimes it was difficult to communicate and relate with them. They would tend not to understand the culture of the students. However, I always felt I had home field advantage because they were the outsiders. Recently the University has doubled their efforts to hire Latino professors. Although we do share a common language and Hispanic heritage we are very different. Currently I have a Cuban, a Cuban American, and a Puerto Rican professor. Our customs are very different but it is always interesting to learn about their traditions. I usually find myself making connections between their traditions and mine. I’ve also had Mexican and Mexican-American professors. I can relate more with these professors but even then, they are usually not native to the valley. They come from California, Chicago, and different parts of Mexico. Ultimately, I have always looked up to the few professors who are from the area and are teaching in the area. They usually share the same stories and “have been there done that”. Disclaimer: This is not to say that teachers from other backgrounds and cultures are bad teachers. At the end of the day they have all been great teachers. A teacher’s role is to teach, and I have learned… A LOT! Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: I think it is very important to have that connection between student and teacher. As a future teacher, I want to build that rapport with my students. I know that in the question above I focused on ethnicity a lot because that is what came to mind at first. But thinking about it we do not have to be from the same ethnic background, race, religion, sex or socioeconomic status to have things in common. The key is to respect and celebrate each other’s differences rather than point them out or try to hide them. My whole teaching philosophy is centered around the ability to celebrate diversity and be proud of the differences in the classroom and in our community. We live in a great country that even with all its flaws, it still remains the land of opportunity for all, although some have more opportunities than others. But that is what education is for and that is why I want to be an educator. I want to give all students the tools necessary to have an opportunity to succeed and close the achievement gap. Once again this is where having something in common comes to play. I am part of that achievement gap and have lacked opportunity so I can relate. I believe that the only thing that a student and teacher should have in common is acceptance. If the teacher and the student have acceptance of each other’s differences then they will forget about pint pointing differences and focus more on finding things in common. Similarities are not always dependent on racial factors. Wilbert is currently a university student preparing to become high school history teacher. He is a DREAMer--born in Mexico and raised in the Rio Grande Valley since he was 3 years old. He plans to stay in The Valley to teach with the hopes of giving back to the community that supported him. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong  University Student
Black Male Q: What do you have in common with your teachers? A: One thing that I always thought that was lacking in my ability to relate to teachers is that none of the teachers in my life have been black, which really shows the lack of diversity in education. However, I typically have had a lot of common interests with my teachers in high school. I remember frequently nerding out over the newest tech trends with my computer programming teacher and talking about the future of Artificial Intelligence with the head of my high school department. In both high school and college, I have found that my teachers and I both strive to make the world a better place. Many times when I asked some of them why they decided to teach despite the growing wage gap they would say that they love what they do and they feel it is their responsibility to create passionate and engaged students. Q: Does it matter that students and teachers have things in common? A: Yes, I wholeheartedly believe that it does matter that teachers and students can relate to each other. Because of the common interests I shared with the teachers and administrators in my life, I have always felt much better about being able to express myself in academia. Instead of feeling like classes where a prison where I had to purely learn everything in the same way as others, it became apparent that everything that I was learning could be applied to areas of interest. For instance, I found chemistry really challenging at times. So my chemistry teachers, knowing that I loved neuroscience suggested that I try to relate chemistry to the brain by looking into the way neurotransmitters work. After that, I had a whole new outlook on not only the properties of chemistry, but also on the way external stimuli can affect the ever growing and shaping neurological pathways in our own minds. Because of how cool I found the subject of Neurochemistry I got the opportunity to do my high school chemistry final on the effects of THC on the brain and because of how much I enjoyed doing that project I even decided to pursue a degree in Neuroscience. This is to show you that when you are able to relate to a teacher and when they have a genuine interest in you and your passions, education can be taken from something one dreads to something to be loved and passionate about to no end. Education has the potential to change the lives of children and be something that they will treasure forever, but that depends on how much the teacher and the student are able to work together. It also may depend on how much the teacher is able to inspire that student. Even now in college, I am still able to connect with my teachers about different parts of the subject they teach that I find interesting. In general, I have found that they really appreciate it because it shows passion about the subject they teach and they too enjoy relating to their students. Cameron is a freshman at Connecticut College where he is a TED-Ed club leader. Connect with him on Twitter @Cameronaaron4. Photo (c) 2017 Kristin Leong |
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