Week 4; Jonathan Hilton

Week 4: Psychosocial Experience of Immigration
Jonathan Hilton

Children in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, eating oranges.
I worked at a school/orphange in 2008 & 2009; now, I have
 noted that several children at AMIS are from Honduras.
The children pictured have experienced significant shifts
in most of the levels of Bronfenbrenner's model.

How is a child’s world turned upside down through the process of immigration? Every time I see my mentee, Jadier, I stop and ask myself how this 8-year-old has found the courage to face the everyday struggles that come with living in an entirely new world. When I was talking with Jadier this week, it occurred to me that all four layers of Jadier’s “‘layers’ of environment” (Vaughn, page 46) in the Bronfenbrenner model have been shifted in some significant way. Obviously, his macrosystem has changed dramatically with his move to the continental U.S. The change in language is one major change in Jadier’s macrosystem that affects all three other layers. Jadier’s exosystem has shifted because of the change in workplace environment his parents have undergone. Notions that would be far too abstract for Jadier to understand, like changes in social status due to having immigrated, are now a part of his everyday reality. The mesosystem has gone from one of the traditional Puerto Rican barrio to a Cincinnati apartment complex, complete with a new mix of peoples, races, religions, and customs. And finally, at the microsystem level, Jadier may eventually experience that role reversals mentioned in Chapter 4 of Suarez-Orozco.

What is it like to have so many layers of one’s existence peeled away and replaced with new ones? I suppose that I have had a few experiences in which all four of Bronfenbrenner’s layers underwent a significant change, but none of them were ever as challenging as Jadier’s experience. For instance, although all of my “layers” shifted when my family moved from South Carolina to Ohio when I was six, not all of the layer shifts were detrimental. My family moved because my father was leaving academia for a good job at Procter & Gamble here in Cincinnati, so at the microsystem and exosystem levels, I experienced increased familial resources coupled with a rise in socioeconomic status, whereas many immigrants experience some sort of social demotion.

Even with the changes, I managed to make
friends quickly in the Cincinnati area and
I learned to fit in. Integration for me
was easier than it will be for Jadier.

Meanwhile, although there was no language barrier for me per se, I suddenly had an “accent” and my new friends sometimes questioned me about it or poked fun at it. I soon learned how to emulate “Yankee speech,” however, and the questions stopped. I made new friends and joined a new church, so my mesosystem stabilized rapidly. Finally, what about the “culture shock” of moving to the North? My macrosystem had changed from “Southern U.S.” to “Northern U.S.,” but honestly, for the most part the kinds of worldview shifts that went on as part of the move simply went over my head. I did notice that people in my new home comported themselves somewhat differently and talked differently, but I adjusted quickly. Within a couple of years, any thoughts I had of moving back to South Carolina or returning to the South had stopped. (At least, until I began looking at colleges many years later.) I look forward to learning more about my mentee and his experience, and I hope I will be able to do something to help him emotionally process the powerful shifts he has undergone since coming to the continental U.S.

Week 4 Jamie Nickell-- Psychosocial Experience of Immigration

Jenny, my mentee, and I making bracelets after completing her math homework.

Immigration effects every person very differently. A child may not feel the same inside that an adult immigrant feels. It depends on the person. However, I feel like many immigrants whether adult or a child have similar feelings as to feeling isolated from their neighbors, coworkers, classmates, etc. In my experience with working at AMIS, I have noticed a great deal of isolation, depression even, and low self-esteem and self-worth. To me this seems to be much more common in girls, which was not as surprising at first, but now it truly worries me because their levels of self-esteem are SO low that it is very difficult to bring up and make them realize that they are just as special.

Jenny, my mentee, is a fairly recent immigrant from Honduras. Her family moved her about 8-9 months ago. Her family consist of her mother and father (which I am told are both illiterate) and her younger brother, also at AMIS. The rest of her family members still reside in Honduras. She says she has not been back to Honduras even to visit, and that her family has no plans or means of being able to visit. She has also experienced many developmental changes in her life since her recent immigration. She faces issues with her language barrier. Her native language is Spanish, yet she is learning English on top of all her other subjects as a 4th grader. She struggles a great deal in learning English however, our communication has increased dramatically because she is learning from me as I am also learning Spanish from her.

On a whole, Immigration affects everyone. It not only affects those who are immigrants themselves, but it affects those who are involved and interact with immigrants. "While trying to acclimatize to a new culture, almost all immigrants undergo a shared experience dealing with 'unexpected obstacles of poverty, discrimination, language, ambiguous immigration or legal status' ( Gloria & Segura-Herrera, 2004). (Vaughn 96)

There are many difference in how culture socializes people. Every individual is culturally different by race, gender, religion, social status, etc. "Based on culture, people structure their worlds and determine their social interactions." (Vaughn 4) Culture is incorporated in our lives in many aspects and the fact is that how we view culture will determine how we use it in our social interactions.

Week 4- Dominique Lawson- Psychosocial Experience of Immigration

While immigration is a chance at a better life sometimes, it comes with developmental and socialization issues in most cases. The most obvious way that immigrants are typically affected is through the language barrier. This barrier is not only in verbal communication but in nonverbal as well. As a country, our way of socializing the immigrants is through education. "In almost every culture, educational systems are strong socializing agents and there is an intimate link between culture and education across many areas: language, school systems, parental and familial values, teaching styles and teacher-student relationships, different ways of learning, attitudes and appraisals of students" (Vaughn 166). It is said that school is the reflection of what a culture believes is important to learn because it "mirrors the culture's view on intelligence" (p. 166). In our schools we teach language. If they do not understand the language it is hard to learn the other topics of study. For most immigrant children it is hard to adjust to the new educational systems. Almost all of the children in Igoa's novel needed friendship to get them through the years. Cindy expresses the happiness at being paired with another Chinese student in the US because at first she "didn't understand anything at all" (Igoa 87). In cases where they could not make friends, they reached out to friends from back home because of the communication barrier (87). Most children have emotions related to leaving the country. Some expressed sadness at leaving their friends, others express the joy of leaving war trodden countries. But while leaving the country may have been in the best interest, it comes with psychosocial costs.
Many families go through a role reversal. Because the child is receives educational support, they are typically more cultured than the parents. In instances like this, the child is often seen translating for the parents in business and medical situations. The family has to work together to help each other out more than a typical American family would.
There is also the experience of being different whether it is by skin color, the language spoken, or cultural differences. Children experience it at school and parents experience it at work. "I was afraid to say anything. I was afraid people would make fun and laugh at me because of my feeling different from others. I kept quiet" (Igoa 78). Most immigrant children go through this at some point. It is important that the families work together to talk out the problems and the emotions, but in many cases this does not happen. Immigration often causes people to change the way the normally act. For the immigrants it is adjusting to a new culture, for the host country, it is learning to communicate and make the immigrant feel welcome.

Week Two: Prejudice/Discrimination (Hamilton)

            After moving out of Chicago and into the surrounding suburbs I attended a school that was extremely homogenous. There was little cultural diversity, everyone was relatively well off financially, and most students came from stable families. While there were groups and cliques, exclusion and discrimination based on ethnicity or financial situation was nonexistent. Teachers and staff members treated all students collectively and taught identical curricula.

When talking to Jose, even briefly and about surface issues, I was able to pick up that in his learning environment this was not the case. When I asked him about teachers and students, he always distinguished between the French, English, and Spanish aspects of each. He later explained that some students take classes in French and English, while others take classes in Spanish and English. He knew which students were in the French-speaking group and which students shared classes with him in the Spanish sector. This language barrier created a strong division among the students that was completely new to me. Jose didn’t seem to imply that either of the groups was superior to the other, but I wonder if I would have seen some conflict had the groups been brought together.

Joyce Hanlon; Week Two; Week Three

Week Two
Immigrant Children

This week, I met Sarah De Los Santos, a reserved, ten-year-old from the northern edge of Mexico bordering the state of New Mexico.  Sarah kept to herself for much of our first interraction, answering questions politely but with not much elaboration.  Yet she still shared enough for me to get a glimpse of her childhood.  She moved to Cincinnati with her family from a small Mexican town when she was six.  With only four years of immersion, she is now fluent in English and exhibits no distinct hispanic accent unless speaking her native tongue.  She has fully adapted to life in America and seems to have a sense of belonging.  She seems self-conscious of herself and of her schoolwork, a sentiment probably amplified by a perception of being part of a minority especially in a school clearly established for international students.  To relate to the concept of Sarah's immigration, I have included a picture (below) of other immigrant children all clinging to their matching backpacks.  The backpacks themselves are a staple of American schoolchildren and represent an immigrant's need to adapt to American culture and lifestyle the way Sarah has done.

Sarah and I clearly experienced incredibly different upbringings, from what I can infer from our first interraction.  I was born and raised in a suburb of Chicago, while she went from a small town to an urban city in a completely different country.  While my family moved a lot before I was born, I have never moved houses or towns, while she has had her whole world turned by being immersed in a completely different culture and forced to learn a new language.  My comfortable, undisturbed upbringing mixed with a naturally extroverted personality contributed to me being a very outgoing, sometimes goofy ten-year-old, always eager to participate in class and meet other kids.  Below is a photo of "suburbia," the quintessential American suburban town which I believe paints the picture of my hometown.

Week Three
Prejudice and Discrimination


I have learned through psychology readings that when taking standardized exams, minority students are likely to perform less strongly if they are asked their race before taking the exam.  This has to do with the effect prejudice and stereotypes have on people and the concept of self-prejudice.  This concept is especially relevant in the United States where diversity is much greater than in less developed nations.  Sarah's shyness could potentially be related to a feeling of self-prejudice given the setting of our introduction.  When I met her, I was the educated, well-dressed, nineteen-year-old white girl walking into the Academy of Multilingual Immersion Studies with twenty other caucasian students like myself.  That in itself sets a scene of not only superiority in age and grade level, but the relation of that to race, even if the relation is only made subconsciously.

When I was Sarah's age, I attended a diverse grade school comprised of a mix of caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, and African American students.  While prejudice was addressed as a social issue, I did not see that many of my classmates exhibited racial prejudice.  Social groups were established generally on the basis of personalities and extra-curricular interests.  Most of my friends throughout grade school, in fact were Asian or Hispanic Americans.  They would occasionally make "white girl" jokes about me, but it was always in jest and I never felt like an outsider.  Similarly, our school was racially mixed enough that the subject of prejudice was never taken very seriously because it rarely was visible.

Week Two: Introductions (Hamilton)

My mentee is named Jose. Currently a nine-year-old third-grader who attends AMIS, Jose moved to Cincinnati from Mexico with his family seven years ago and does not remember much about his time there. Most of his family still lives in Mexico, and he told me it has been hard not seeing many of his relatives. Jose didn’t talk much, but I did learn that his grandmother had passed away last October, and that he remembers his mom crying all day. A relatively shy kid, I attempted to get more than one-word answers and silent gestures from him. Eventually I learned which subjects he enjoyed most and which teachers he liked. We also talked about his interests outside of school; Jose loves to swim and snowboard, and medieval army combat computer games are his favorite.  I hope to get Jose out of his shell more in the coming weeks, and cannot wait to see him again.

In third grade, my mind was always wandering. I could never focus on one thing for long, and was eventually tested for ADD. While I do not have ADD, I do feel as though I can relate to kids who have trouble focusing, and noticed that Jose’s mind was constantly wandering. He watched children on the other side of the room constantly and had to ask me to repeat questions often. In that sense I can see that Jose and I are a lot alike. At his age, however, I loved school and was always excited to learn. I drew all the time and loved art, but Jose doesn’t care for the subject at all. Beyond surface similarities and differences, it seems as though Jose and I are actually a lot alike. His immigration experience did not seem to affect him much and he spoke English perfectly. Culturally, he also seemed completely American. I hope that he will continue to open up and allow me to see some of the cultural hardships that he experiences.

Week 3; Jonathan Hilton

Week 3: Prejudice

The Suarez-Orozco pair reviews some of the major causes of prejudice against immigrants in the first few chapters of her book. They focus in particular on the economy (page 41), the welfare state (page 45), assimilation concerns (page 49), the legal status of immigrants (page 47), and crime (page 47). In my mind, it is these last two topics that seems to carry the most weight in my own experiences with prejudice. Although the economy is always a major concern, I feel that most of the people I have met during my short lifetime understand that immigrants do the jobs the "rest of us" aren't willing to do--that is, poorly remunerated, manual labor jobs. More people that I have met care about the legal status of immigrants and their association with crime.

There is a strong and probably unjustified association in people's minds between immigrants and crime. Take, for instance, SB 1070 in Arizona. This bill refers to "THE GANG AND IMMIGRATION INTELLIGENCE TEAM ENFORCEMENT MISSION FUND" on line 25. Since when were immigrants automatically associated with gangs? On the other hand, I can see how such a mental connection would instill a fear of immigrants into public perception. At the nearby United Dairy Farmers on Clifton, I found some gang graffiti. I dislike this kind of graffiti because it strikes me as direspectful and reckless. If I associated the following gang sign at right with immigrants, I would be more likely to want tighter immigration control.

--Jonathan H.

Week 2; Jonathan Hilton

Week 2: Immigrant Children

Immigration can cause increased stress for the family.

Working with immigrant children presents its fair share of challenges. Currently, I work with Cincinnati's Guatemalan population. There is always some new mountain to scale, whether it is helping them to become literate, dealing with legal issues, or working to teach them English. Suarez-Orozco discusses the exhaustion that can come over new immigrations: on page 73, she discusses "acculturation stress". Differences in verbal and body language, dress, and other cultural elements force parents to rely more on their children, leading to a reversal of the traditional guardian-child relationship. This causes increased stress for everyone. In the picture to the right, everyone appears tired and stressed out. This is typical of the immigrant experience.


There is a lot of joy to be had from working with immigrant children, however. Despite the stress, the challenges, and the frustrations, we can maintain hope in the face of adversity by knowing that it is possible to make a difference. The adult on the right has started a relationship with an immigrant child. In addition to helping the child learn to understand U.S. culture (by speaking English with her), this adult also serves as an added authority figure. One thing that would be interesting to research is whether or not the presence of such an additional authority figure helps combat some of the negative aspects of the guardian-child role reversal that so often takes place during immigration. Perhaps having someone from the dominant culture reinforce and bolster the child's parents would help maintain the traditional familial sense of order.

--Jonathan H.

Week 3: Prejudice and Discrimination

As a white male, I don't experience discrimination or prejudice personally very often, if ever. However, I have seen how it affects people firsthand. When my parents adopted my brothers, they brought them into a small town with very little diversity. Throughout elementary they were the only black people in their grade and at one point they were the only black people in the school. Small, country towns have a reputation for being ignorant and racist. Ours was no exception. There was one student in particular that made a point of antagonizing them everyday on the bus. It got so bad that our parents wouldn't let us ride the bus anymore and our mom drove us to school and picked us up everyday.  The comments really bothered me but I can't imagine how they made my brothers feel. They were able to make friends and as they got older they were more accepted and more black families began moving into the district. Now that I've graduated and gone to college, I don't see the prejudice they experience. However they will have to deal with it the rest of their lives.

Immigrants face prejudice every day of their lives. The last several years have brought a very negative view of immigrants. The problems with the economy have only worsened this issue, especially towards Hispanic immigrants. It is automatically assumed that they are illegal immigrants, even if they are U.S. citizens, they are viewed negatively by the general population.  As an immigrant from Senegal, Mouhamahou experiences prejudice against immigrants and black people. Especially as a young child, prejudice can be very damaging to self-esteem and image. It affects how they in turn view everyone else and causes trust issues. I haven't had the chance to talk to Mouhamadou about any of these things but unfortunately I don't think he's an exception and has probably experienced prejudice since coming to the United States.

Theresa Lingardo Week 3

One of the greatest issues that affects immigrants and immigrant children is prejudice. Many times people are prejudiced against people and cultures because they do not know about the beliefs that other people may have. Unfortunately, prejudice is something that is very hard to get rid of, but there is something that all people can do to confront it. by being educated and open to what people of other cultures have to say and believe, people become more open minded and more accepting of each other.

In my life, I have never really experienced any prejudice however I have faced some stereotypes. Because I went to private Catholic school for my entire life, people have assumed that I am a stuck up, snobby, rich girl who loved to wear a neat and tidy uniform to school everyday. People who believed this could not be more wrong. I do not fit any of those profiles at all. Sometimes it was hard to deal with, knowing that people were completely judging me based on what they thought was true. It was more annoying that the people who judged me, didn't try to get to know me because they thought they already knew everything about my life from one small detail.

My experiences, however, are nothing compared to the prejudice and stereotypes that immigrant families face. It is hard for me to compare my own experiences with those of my mentee Adama. I am sure that he and his family has dealt with a lot of adversity since immigrating here from Africa.A lot of people tend to judge a person by the way they look or the accent with which they speak, so being an immigrant is probably a very hard thing to deal with, especially as a child.  However, I do believe that Adama is well equipped to deal with these adversities. I can tell that Adama is not afraid to speak his mind and he is not afraid to share his interests with those who care to listen. one thing i was surprised to find out when i first talked with Adama was how similar he really was to a lot of other kids i knew that were his same age. They all liked to do similar things, and have similar outlooks on life. this shows me that a lot of the prejudices that people perceive are totally made up in the mind. people in our culture judge things they don't know too quickly, which in turn leads to a lot of hurt and hardship that is totally unnecessary.

Theresa Lingardo

Before going to AIMS, I was already picturing how I thought this mentee program would go. I figured that it would be a struggle to find interesting things to talk about, because, lets face it, how could I relate to someone from a completely different culture. But after only a few minutes I found out my initial thoughts were completely wrong.

I grew up in suburban Cincinnati where there really isn't a whole lot of diversity. Furthermore, I went to private Catholic school where everyone, for the most part, comes from the same type of backgrounds. Coming to UC has been the most exposure to diversity that I have ever gotten. With all that being said, I wasn't really sure how this program would go.

But then I met my mentee Adama (or Mohammad, which is what he told me I could call him.). When I first began to talk to Adama I quickly realized that he was like any other 4th grade boy. The conversation was a little shaky at first. I could tell he was a little nervous, and I could also tell that he wished he was with a boy mentor. However, as I continued to ask him more and more questions about what he likes to do, and some of his favorite things, I could tell he became more comfortable. It was still a little awkward, and I began to run out of questions to keep the conversation going, so I decided to bring out some paper so we could play some games. First we played hangman, and the first word he chose for me to guess was my name. I thought this was great because 1.) i was glad he remembered my name, and 2.) it showed me he was really comfortable talking to me. As we continued our game i learned a lot about Adama's personality. He loves Harry Potter, Ice Cream, X-Box, and dinosaurs, the same things as any other kids his age. By the end of the session, I had completely forgotten that Adama has grown up in a completely different culture from a lot of kids his age. We had a lot more in common than i thought we would. This made me realize that no matter where we are raised, we can still find common ground with many other people, and we may have a lot more in common with people we feel are different than us than we think.

Week 2: Introductions

When I first sat down with Mouhamadou, getting him to talk was like pulling teeth. He was very shy and probably intimidated. I did find out that he is from Senegal and that he likes to draw. When he said he liked to draw, I got out two pieces of paper for an activity I learned as a Link Crew leader in high school. We folded our papers into six sections, with a question assigned to each square. This gave me a way to get to know Mouhamadou in a way he was comfortable with. I learned that his favorite sport is soccer but he also likes basketball, he likes fighting movies and watches WWE: Monday Night Raw every week, and his favorite food is cheese pizza. The more he drew, the more comfortable he became around me. He started talking more and would ask me questions about what I was drawing. Right before they had to go back to class, he showed me some of the drawings that he had done at home. They were way better than something I could draw now and he's only in fourth grade.

Clearly there are distinct differences between Mouhamadou and I but there are also some very important similarities. When he found out that I spoke a little French, his eyes lit up. Whenever he couldn't explain something in English he could switch to French and eventually I would figure it out. We both also really like soccer. He was in awe of the fact that I played for 14 years. Soccer is a huge part of his native culture. In the United States however, it isn't as popular. I think it was kind of shocking to him that we had these things in common.

Between the noise from the other side of the gym and the slight language barrier, I wasn't able to learn very much about his family. I don't know how long he has been in the United States or how many brothers and sisters he has. He would try to answer my questions and when I asked him to repeat what he said because I couldn't hear him, he thought I just couldn't understand him and would get frustrated.  He understands English pretty well and I know a decent amount of French so as long as we can hear each other we will be able to communicate better.

Week 3- Michael J Harrington

My mentee(s) and myself did not discuss prejudice.  But I can imagine the issues they face on a daily basis.  Statistically immigrants are discriminated against, often blamed for people losing jobs, for spreading bad morals and committing crimes.  Immigrants are more likely to work a dead end job or be arrested.  This will definitely be very detrimental to their lives.  I cannot even imagine how difficult it is to lie with such discrimination, being a white, middle-class, male.  But I do face a certain stigma, that although not as serious as the discrimination faced by immigrants, does make my life more difficult.  Many people think that my age makes me less responsible, or more likely to mess up with certain tasks.  But I am a very independent capable person.  For instance, I've been working as a lifeguard for the past few years at a pool called Fair Valley.  The manager they had hired the last few years was less than ideal, and oftentimes I had to take extra responsibilities to keep the facility operating well.  This year the manager and assistant manager were let go.  I was one of the candidates for manager, but despite being an employee there for several years and knowing most of the patrons personally, the board committee hired an outside manager with virtually no pool experience (none at the pool in question).  The man got it in part because he was "old enough to command authority" although I had basically been in charge of the pool for the past two years.  I did get the assistant manager position, however I have a feeling I will be doing the job of manager too, for the pay of assistant manager.  I am grateful for getting the assistant manager job, but slightly upset that I did not get manager for such a ridiculous reason.

Being born and raised in America I have some advantages over my mentee(s).  First of all I look like most of my peers, making me less likely to be discriminated against.  I also don't have an accent and speak the English language like a boss, making communication less cumbersome between me and other people.  I also grew up in this community, so I know the customs and rituals of the society, while they may be oblivious to them.

Week 3: Prejudice/Discrimination

In my life, I've experienced a good deal of prejudice. Growing up in the suburbs, attending a primarily all white school, I can't say I've ever felt like I blended in anywhere. As far as being treated differently in a negative way based on something arbitrary like skin color, race or religion, I can't say I've personally experienced all that much of it. To think of one striking example, my family is Hindu and so we(used to) frequently attend temple just to feel close to our culture, and one day the new temple had been spraypainted with vulgar words from local kids. At the time, I was in no position mentally to absorb what hateful words were even saying,or even what they were in the first place at that. Outside of a few isolated incidents though, I don't feel I've been the direct subject of as much racism as some people might expect. Yes, friends have in the past have joked about the prejudice of "brownness" and what that even means, tying into the stereotype of the immigrant parent, specifically asian parents, that seem to "live through" the accomplishment of their children because they may not have the ability with limited skills in English to rise as high in  the workforce of America. But again, I grew up mostly isolated from my own culture because my mother, the one who would have encouraged this relationship to be reinforced constantly, got stuck living in Sri Lanka for the next 14 years(to this day) without us, which forced my dad to work around the clock and basically left me to my own, growing up amongst my own friends more so than closest family. In Kevin's case, he is hispanic, a much more widely recognized race of people, so for him things might be a lot different, not that I currently know but it's definitely possible that he lives in an area among people of similar descent as well, and I saw that his friends at school, or just the kids he sits next to maybe, are all of Hispanic origin. This, to me is another reason why he seems so tied into his own culture, because he has friends to reinforce it, and so he may not be embarassed about like sadly I used to be at times, but certainly not for long. 

Nish Thiyagarajah- Immigrant Children

This week, I finally met my mentee, Kevin. To be totally honest, things didn’t go all that smoothly at first. Not only did it take me about ten minutes to realize that Kevin was a Spanish speaker, but I was actually talking with the idea that he moderately understood what I was saying. Pretty soon I found out that pretty much the entire time he had been nodding along silently to everything I was saying, smiling on cue with my smiles. It was actually kind of convincing until I asked for a response 

and he smiled and nodded. When I realized he was Spanish it wasn’t all that bad, since I’ve taken 4 years of Spanish, but it made me about 100% aware of how little I remember and just how ridiculously faded my Spanish speaking ability was, but I was able to recall enough to at least talk, and follow somewhat coherently. I found out he has one older sister, really enjoys basketball, and enjoys the Spanish culture much more than the English. I personally can relate to this in that I went through the same thing as a child, just in the opposite way. My family’s from Sri Lanka, and I lived there for about a year when I was four and learned to speak the language fluently, as well as forgot English. When I returned to America, I quickly absorbed the culture as I was so young but missed so many of the cultural aspects of Sri Lankan life and so I favored it for years, always telling people about it any chance I got and reminiscing as much as possible. Kevin seemed the same way about his family and his roots, but again, we weren’t able to connect incredibly well through spoken language, so I thought it might be a good idea to try letting him draw, since he looked like a quieter kid who might enjoy doodling. Sure enough, his eyes lit up when I mentioned the word dibuja and boligrafo, which don’t necessary fit as pen and painting, but he knew what I was saying. After that, things went pretty smoothly, and he demonstrated his enjoyment of drawing by mapping out his closest family for me and then asking about my family, which he then drew. He kept the drawing and even seemed kind of fond of it, but I would blame him for not holding on to it. Overall, I really thought Kevin was great for me especially to spend time with. He seemed like a great kid who cares about family a lot, the only concern I had was the language, which it turns out I’m able to recall but only in baby steps. Hopefully, this will be a mutually beneficial relationship we have going.

Week 3: Michelle Prinzo

I am going to bend the photo journal rules a little bit for this post and combine my self and other post into one. In all honesty, I did not really approach the subject of stereotypes (nor did it come up) at all with my mentee. We did, however, talk a lot about school. Both my mentee and I love school and both of us do well in school. What does this have to do with stereotypes? In my mind a lot. I think that our public education system perpetuates a significant amount of stereotyping. Children from suburban schools will likely have hundreds more opportunities for extracurricular and enrichment activities than children from a urban school like AMIS. Academic achievement in my school was an expectation, while achievement in my mentee's school is an exception. Futhermore, it worries me to think about the difference social and peer pressure can present in these different school settings. 

As I moved into middle school and high school, it was never un-cool to do well in school. Popular kids, geeks, athletes, and regular kids at my school did well in school. I am not as familiar with the secondary schools in CPS, but I do not believe that high achievement is looked upon in the same way. Further more, I do not think it is fair that the opportunities I had as a student are far more than my mentee will likely have as she pursues her education. 

When we met last week, we did a lot of drawing. I asked her if she like art. I asked her what she does for art and she said that she draws at home. Then it hit me, she doesn't have art class at her school and likely does not have many art supplies at home. It is a simple thing, but as a student who was lucky enough to have art class all throughout my education it upsets me that my mentee will not have the same opportunities. I am not an artist, but I do believe art education enhanced and increased my academic learning. Not only was I able to express myself, but also practice patience, take risks, make decisions, and build focus and concentration. 

My hope is that my mentee will continue to make progress in school (with or without art class) and that education for her can be an equalizer, even if it is not for some of her peers.