alice-bag: Many of the students at Hoover Street Elementary where I taught in the mid-1980’s w

alice-bag:Many of the students at Hoover Street Elementary where I taught in the mid-1980’s were the children of families from Central America. During that time, several countries including Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua were caught in brutal, horrific civil wars between communist revolutionaries and U.S. backed governmental forces. The Reagan administration had authorized covert CIA operations to train and fund the “counter-revolutionary forces” without seeking the approval of Congress to wage what was essentially a war by proxy. Few details of these secret wars were made public at the time, but the swelling population of Central American refugees in Los Angeles was evidence of a growing humanitarian crisis. I had seen my share of hardship growing up in East LA but it was nothing compared to what some of these little kids and their families had been through.Early in my teaching career, I was sitting with a small group of kindergartners. The children were talking about their backgrounds. One little girl raised her hand and said “Maestra, yo soy mojada.” Another voice joined in.“Yo tambien, maestra.” Their trust compelled me to share my own story.“It’s OK. My father was illegal too.” I told them about how my father used to cross over for work. As I shared my family’s story, their faces brightened as my own revelations somehow assuaged their shame. I realized that I was in a unique position to help these children; that they could relate to me in a way they couldn’t with most of their other teachers.A shy boy who rarely spoke in class raised his hand and began telling us his story, haltingly at first. He told us about his family raising money to send him and his older brother to the United States. As he spoke and recalled more details, his speech came more rapidly, the words tumbling out one after the other. He told us about the frightening experience of crossing the river by foot with a group of other people he didn’t know led by a coyote and then being squeezed into a single truck, having to be quiet and still, afraid of being caught. When he arrived in San Diego, he was supposed to be met by relatives who would pay the coyote the balance of the transport fee, but the relatives hadn’t been able to come up with the full amount for both brothers. Only the older, teenage boy was released and my student had to stay behind until his relatives could raise the money. He had to remain behind, trapped in a dark, filthy, cockroach infested motel with people he didn’t know for over a week, not knowing if he’d ever see his family again, wishing that his mother would rescue him. His classmates sat and listened sympathetically and the girl who had initially spoken reached over and put her arm around him, giving him a reassuring squeeze. ~ excerpt from Violence Girl -- source link

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