Week Two Response

As I read through Children of Immigration I marked pages that I wanted to revisit, so my response may jump around a bit as, like some of the others in class, I won't be focusing on just one chapter.

One of the first parts that caught my interest was an excerpt from a Human Rights Watch report that noted that "each year thousands of children enter the United States illegally... most come alone" (32). It's hard to imagine having to leave my own country on my own as a child to go somewhere where I don't know the language and culture. The report goes onto to say that many of these children who arrive in the country by themselves are arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and detained. Of course the book notes that the majority of immigrants enter the country legally. However, this part started to make me think about the pressure, stress and burdens children of immigration feel. For the children who enter the US illegally, whether they come with a family member or not, they have to carry the fear and worry that they will be apprehended and detained and deported. As an American citizen this is not something I ever had to worry about. Yet for these kids it is probably constantly on their mind and it is a worry they bring into the classroom.

The next part I wanted to comment on is in the "Rethinking Immigration" chapter. There is a section here where the Suarez-Orozco's write about assimilation and the challenges children of immigration face when trying to assimilate into the culture of the US. They talk about how the immigrant children typically become more Americanized than their parents and the struggles the children face because of this. Then the Suarez-Orozco's talks about the comfort immigrants find in being around their own culture. This was something I found I could relate to. For most of the aspects discussed in the book I had a tough time relating, because as I said I am a white American and I have not had to face these kinds of struggle. Is that white privilege? Maybe. Yet, I could relate to this feeling. When I studied abroad in Spain it was a lot easier to hang out with the other American students and to speak English with them. We knew how to interact with each other and it was more comfortable to be with the familiar than to go out and speak Spanish with natives when you knew that your language abilities were not quite up to par. My grandmother always complain that immigrants are unwilling to speak English. I don't agree with this. Working in retail I have come across many ELLs and they do put an effort into speaking English. Having my experience living in Spain though, I can understand not wanting to speak the native language because you are self conscious about your abilities.

In all what I took away from the book was that as teachers we have to be mindful of the baggage children of immigration carry with them into the classroom. Immigration is a stressful experience and these students bring with them that stress, emotional issues, in some cases PTSD, high expectations and a lot of other things. Going to school and trying to learn can be tough for any student at times and its a teacher's job to understand that there are all kinds of stressors for students and be mindful of them.