On Immigration:

The Suárez-Orozco team presents a well-balanced view on immigration. Immigration is a huge buzz-word in politics and dinner tables. Some are vehemently against it, or are for strictly and harshly controlling it. They believe that immigrants are illegally living in the U.S., and are responsible for the decline (socially and economically) of our nation. The Suárez-Orozco’s battle these negative stigmas not by glorifying immigration, but representing it honestly. For the other 150 pages of research and insight, they share with us the plights that the families, particularly the children, must endure when immigration is a factor in their lives.
I am thankful for the representation of immigrants from many different countries (and to many different countries), as well as the many modes they employ to accomplish this feat. Too often, immigration is looked at as the illegal act of Mexicans sneaking across, over, around and under the southern border. Immigration is almost a four-letter word in some circles. It was refreshing to read that immigration today consists of so much more than getting past a guard tower. It is the year 2012, and these characterizations of the immigrant’s journey are barely scratching the surface of what is a global phenomenon that employs the resources of its time.
Even still, the immigrant’s story is no where near over when they “cross the border.” Once they’re in their new location, an onslaught of trials and difficulties are waiting for them. I found the situations regarding reunification to be the most compelling. I haven’t had much experience regarding the process by which one does immigrate, but I’ve always assumed that when a family’s goal was to immigrate, they did it all together. While I recognize that assuredly some must deviate from this, and depart separately, I didn’t realize this to be the norm. In different forms of (mostly fictitious) media, we see the character of the immigrant worker sending money to the family left behind; rarely do we see him/her trying to lay down a means for the family to reunite in the new country.

More so, while time spent away from family members must be stressful and taxing, it seems as the the trials are hardly over once the family has reunified. The struggle to reestablish (or initially establish) a rhythm of authority, behavior, and other protocols seems overwhelming to me. I imagine that foster children face the same adversity in adjusting to a new household. Once the family dynamic is recovered, the battle becomes maintaining it. The children begin to adopt the culture of their new home, their new school, their new neighborhood, and it typically does not fit with the values of their family’s culture. Everyone (immigrants and natives) and wants to preserve their culture, and immigration threatens that. However, as new values, styles, and views are introduced, a new culture (a stronger, better culture, in my opinion) is born.

In the schools, we have the opportunity to expose not just our culture(s) to an immigrant, but also theirs to our students and from there, our communities. Last year, a student at my school had moved to Tewksbury from China. She spoke hardly any English, and that set up a huge barrier between her and the faculty, as well as other students. However, it was also an amazing vehicle for her to make friends, as a group of outgoing and kind girls sought her out, and made her eat lunch with them and checked in on her between classes. Together, they joined an after-school club that promotes decent character in middle and high school students. Her English is much better now, much in part to her cohorts. More importantly, however, do to her friends and supporters, this quiet, shy, reserved girl from China has found her place in Tewksbury, Massachusetts

The teachers had taken some steps to help her adjust to her new settings. Under frequently used terms like homework, essay, and book, they would have 作業, 文章, and 書 to help her understand the teacher’s request. The teachers each carried a sheet of other terms that might be useful, including both characterization and pronunciation. Eventually, I witnessed the new student writing 作業 on the board, on top of the students’ weekly assignments.

A trying (and strangely rewarding) experience for me was when I had to proctor a math test for her. The test contained a lot of word problems, and it didn’t matter how slowly or clearly I read them, the girl did not know English and that test was not going to show off her abilities to do math. Per her teacher’s instruction, I modeled how to setup some of the problems on the board. She not only understood what to do, and how to interpret the word problems, but in some cases was actually feeding me the information on the board before I could write it. What could have been a positively miserable experience took a turn for the better, and allowed the student to have some confidence in her abilities and excel.

I expect that more often than not, our classes’ ethnic diversities won’t have the same language barrier presented above, but rather a cultural barrier. Geneva Gay presents some teaching strategies to promote a multicultural education. I particularly took a shine to her suggestion of employing ethnobibliotheraphy. As a prospective English teacher, this idea really appealed to me, in terms of breaking away from the “Big Book of Everyone Reads the Same Stories.” It would be interesting to have a class read from a variety of ethnic perspectives to see how we each relate to familiar texts, and equally as important, how we’d relate to the unfamiliar. I’d love to be able to present the literatures of ethnicities represented within my class, coupled with ethnicities that we may only encounter through the news or other media. I want my students to experience topics that are vital to both their individual cultures, and the culture of their collective society.