Dreaming Forward: Latino Voices Enhance the Mosaic

By Martha E. Casazza

Martha captures the spirit and vibrancy of our community in the most authentic, inspiring and thought provoking manner possible. By telling stories of struggle, perserverance and triumph, she breathes life into everyday joy human beings have at their fingertips when we listen to and value our life stories.

Juan Salgado, M.U.P.

President and CEO, Instituto del Progreso Latino

This book inarguably pieces together the true spirit of the Mexican-American community, their struggles, their sense of family and their resolve to realize their dreams.

Santiago Silva, Ph.D. LPC-S

Clinical Professor (Ret.), University of Texas-Pan American

In Dreaming Forward: Latino Voices Enhance the Mosaic, Martha Casazza not only tells the stories and describes the struggles of Latino students, she also provides a context that gives meaning to these stories and struggles. The themes that result from these stories represent concepts that will benefit every educator.

Hunter Boylan, Ph.D.

Director, National Center for Developmental Education,

Appalachian State University

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491752111

Martha E. Casazza

Martha E. Casazza has coauthored two books with Dr. Sharon Silverman: Learning Assistance and Developmental Education: A Guide for Effective Practice and Learning and Development. She also coauthored Access, Opportunity and Success: Keeping the Promise of Higher Education. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to South Africa in 2000 and was an invited scholar to the Kazakhstan-British Technical University in Kazakhstan in 2013. She is a founding Fellow of the Council of Learning Assistance and Development Education Associations. Sharon L. Silverman is an educational psychologist and a founding partner of TRPP Associates, LLC. She was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa and a Fulbright Specialist at Suleyman Demeril University in Kazakhstan. She is the recipient of a Rotary International Award for Research in South Africa and the Noel Levitz Retention Award for student success programming.. Along with Dr. Martha Casazza, she co-authored numerous publications, including Learning and Development: Making Connections to Enhance Teaching.

Book preview

Dreaming Forward

Latino Voices Enhance the Mosaic

Copyright © 2015 Martha E. Casazza.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5212-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5211-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919555

iUniverse rev. date: 01/22/2015

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1.   Fabian

2.   Christine

3.   Rafael

4.   Jose

5.   Zulema

6.   Alvaro

7.   Herminia

8.   Martha

9.   Ana

10. Teresa

11. Fernando

12. Rocio

13. Eliamar

14. Patricia

15. Francisco

16. Estela

17. Dolly

18. Carmen and Angela

19. Joel

Epilogue

This collection of stories is

dedicated to two individuals whose voices were significant in the development of this book.

Angela Perez Miller was one of the first to share her story. Angela was a passionate leader and tireless advocate for bilingual and special education in the Chicago public schools, where she worked for thirty years. She was well known throughout the Mexican American community and served as a role model to many. Dr. Miller was courageous and never afraid to speak out where she saw inequities. At the same time, she had a wonderful sense of humor and laughed with her longtime colleague Carmen Velasquez throughout our time together. Angela died two years following our interview. She is missed.

Fabian Torres was a student in the Chicago public school system who also wanted to help make the schools a better place for others. Fabian was not simply a disenchanted student who stopped out of school for a while. He cared deeply and had specific ideas for changing the system. He spoke of how he would advise Arne Duncan, head of the schools at the time of our interview, to create change: smaller classrooms, adequate resources, and teachers who demonstrated personal concern for their students would help to promote student achievement. Fabian was twenty-seven years old, was enthusiastic about his college classes, and planned to run for the local school council, when he was killed tragically in a car accident. He was not able to complete his vision.

Preface

T his collection of stories, built upon family histories and dreams, brings forward voices from two communities on the south side of an urban center in the Midwest. The voices are Latino, primarily Mexican American, and represent a wide range of ages, educational levels, and family histories. While the stories are deeply personal, there is a common element among them: dreaming forward. The earliest dreams often began in Mexico when families decided to move to the United States for more opportunity. Some of these dreams led to disappointment and fear. There are descriptions of life-threatening situations and instances where self-esteem was challenged. The overall theme, however, is a strong desire to continue dreaming forward rather than dreaming of the past. Each of these stories contributes a piece to the larger mosaic. As with any large image, one must step back to see how all the pieces fit together. We will do this at the conclusion of the stories.

Mosaic images have a long history in Mexico of telling stories and advocating for political causes. These images are rarely completed by one artist and are often under construction when we are fortunate enough to see them, frequently as public art on the walls and rooftops in Mexican communities. We could say that each of the common elements in this collection of stories represents one piece of the larger mosaic.

Individuals speak of their heritage and the cultural and ethnic history that provide the foundation for their lives. They respect this history and feel enriched by it; they celebrate it and integrate it into their dreams for the future. Extended families stay together in communities despite opportunities to move on to locations that might have healthier infrastructures but less shared traditions and values. The past provides a lens for thinking ahead; each story underscores the significance of past events and how they have shaped a personal vision for the future. Despite a reverence for the past, however, none of the voices is stuck there. They see the past as a beginning, and the community becomes a strong background for a mosaic that is not yet finished but provides them with the necessary outline to paint a clear vision for the future.

Collecting the Stories

The stories told in these pages began with an interest in uncovering community attitudes toward education. Over a period of four years, my colleagues and I interviewed and tape-recorded nearly forty individuals who either lived or worked in two Mexican American communities. The interviewees ranged in age from seventeen to seventy. We conducted the interviews in locations that were convenient to the storytellers. As a result, we visited homes where we were welcomed with food and the opportunity to meet family members. Without interviewing Rafael in his home, I would not have had the chance to meet his son and listen to him describe the books lined up on a bookcase that took center stage in his living room. As we talked, his wife brought us a multicourse hot meal. We also met in workplaces and local cafés. Meeting Cristina at her school gave me the opportunity to meet her students and see firsthand how she interacted personally with them. Talking to Teresa in her office on the ground floor of an elementary school allowed me to experience the rhythm of her days. These authentic places helped to contextualize and personalize the questions and made the stories profoundly meaningful.

We designed our questions to elicit stories about the educational histories of individuals. We also looked for their experiences with the public school system compared to what was actually happening out in the community. The answers went far beyond the original focus and evolved into this series of stories that describe the challenges and dreams of individuals across two urban Latino communities. I have chosen to tell them individually. Rather than weaving them together thematically, I want to highlight the personalismo of each story. By sharing them this way, the complexity and distinctiveness of each individual contribute to the overall richness of the series. The stories are written here in the original words of the storytellers, with editing only where necessary to clarify the meaning and flow and also to preserve their privacy.

In addition to the natural distinctions among individuals and the overall focus on education, there are common themes across the stories that deserve special attention. I will briefly describe them through the original voices and invite readers to seek them out in context as they read the stories and get to know the storytellers. These themes represent issues and concerns experienced in Latino communities in urban areas across the United States, and they all relate to the overall focus on education. As you read, you will undoubtedly discover variations on the themes that will help you to step back and view the overall story mosaic.

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Elements of the Mosaic

Identifying the Common Themes

History

Many of the stories begin in Mexico. Parents often moved in the hopes of finding increased educational and employment opportunities. One parent might have come to the United States first to find a job and later send for his or her family. Sometimes entire families crossed the border together, depending on the season, to work together as migrants in the fields. When the family eventually settled in an urban area, the children attended school, where they learned English, and the parents worked multiple jobs to provide for the family, often leaving no time to learn English. Stories about their Mexican heritage were passed down through generations, as was the respect for their past that accompanied them.

Teresa talks about how proud she is to be an immigrant and how difficult it was during her early years to cross the border to pick cotton in Texas with her family. She tells us, I’m an immigrant who really lived through a very, very tough time when there was no voices. And I was born in Mexico … My history just of where I was born makes me very proud because I was born on the side of the road in a tent; at times, my parents used to live in train cars, boxcars.

Eliamar travels to Mexico every year to buy artifacts for her store in the community. She was born in Texas but lived in Mexico as a child with her parents, who are Mexican. She says, I always wanted to know a little more about Mexico—how it was developed, how it was established, and all the history behind it. Most of all, I wanted to know who was I really and what it was meant to be a Mexican.

Family and Community

Staying in a community that vibrates with their ethnic and cultural heritage was important to the individuals represented in these stories. They expressed a desire to stay near extended family and friends and to raise children in an environment that would expose them to cultural traditions and contribute to making the community a healthier place for future generations.

Herminia tells us, What I like about it here is that it’s our neighborhood; it’s our language; it’s our people. There are things here that you will not find anywhere: the authenticity of the food, our authentic products from Mexico. The culture itself—it’s just around here, around the corner. Here in the community, I can find people I can relate to, because we all come from the same place. That’s important for me, also the language. I really want my kids to grow up being fluently bilingual, Spanish and English.

Dolly talks about how the members of her dad’s family all followed each other from Mexico to live in the same community. We lived right next to each other in the same building. I think that was very important, especially since in Mexico, it’s all about family. You tend to mingle with each other and be involved in each other’s lives. And I think that’s what they wanted. They wanted a little bit of Mexico here.

Safety

As much as individuals want to stay in the community, they also expressed concern about safety. Many of the individuals discuss the prevalence of gangs and high crime rates in their communities. They clearly reflect on the tension of staying in a community that carries some risk and wanting to help reduce that threat versus moving to a safer location.

Fernando has lived in the community for most of his life. He left for a while to go to college but came back in order to make a difference by working for immigration reform. In his story, he talks about safety. It was tough compared to my surroundings, all the things I had to deal with … In terms of violence, gangs, and you always had to be careful who you talk to, where you walk to, and just to know you’ll be safe; you have to know the streets where you walk … [O]ur parents will drop us in the morning when we go to school. They always, ever since I can remember, they would take us to school. They would drive us to school every single day; that helped.

Jose talks about his daughter and how he worries for her safety. "I’ll tell you an incident that, that I literally wanted to fall to my knees and cry … My daughter was about twelve years old … You know, seeing Jessica in the middle of the night having to jump to the, you know, off the bed and to the floor because she heard gun shots, something awoke me emotionally; it did. I just felt bad. It was funny at first, but then I thought to myself, God, it’s very likely that something could come in through the window and hit her. You know? You don’t hear this every night; it’s not like you hear them every night, but if you hear this two times a year, that’s a lot. That’s more than enough. So you really don’t want your children to grow up around that—you don’t."

English Language

While all interviews except for one were conducted in English, many of the participants told about how their lack of fluency in English adversely affected their early years in school. In some cases, their language level was mistaken for a lack of ability, and they were placed in classes that led to lowered expectations. In other cases, they were enrolled in bilingual programs that left them unprepared for courses delivered in English due to little transitional programming.

Rocio tells a story about her gym teacher. My sister and brother-in-law came to school only when they picked up my report cards. That’s how they found out the problem with gym; they didn’t speak English … The teacher told him, ‘I don’t know if it’s sort of a tension problem or something, but sometimes I tell her things and she does kind of like the opposite. When other girls kind of explain to her, then she kind of gets it, but when I first tell the instructions, she doesn’t quite follow them.’ Then he says, ‘Don’t you understand? She’s in the bilingual program. Probably she doesn’t understand the language.’

Joel talks about being lonely and left out due to his lack of fluency in English. My dad understands English, and he is able to ask for directions, but that’s it. He doesn’t know a lot. My mom understands it now, but back then, she didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I’d ask my mom, ‘Can you help me?’ She would say, ‘I don’t know English.’ My dad would say, ‘You’ll figure it out.’

Education and Encouragement

Nearly everyone expressed frustration with the lack of personal attention given to students in the schools. Students often felt like numbers and thought that no one believed in their ability to succeed. Frequently, they expressed their perception that teachers and counselors gave up on them before giving them a chance.

One principal from an alternative school talked about the significance of providing support and demonstrating daily how much she believed in her students’ ability to succeed. Christina tells us, I get excited by just taking, giving additional time, the space, additional support that the students need and just help them grow because unfortunately, this is the only home for some.

Fabian, a onetime high-school dropout, committed as a young adult to making changes in the public schools. He recalls, What would have made it better for me? I would say more encouragement from educators, from the teachers, more like support from counselors—true support. I think we lack the supports, and that’s why a lot of the children often quit school. It’s because they feel like there’s no purpose to it, and I feel like the educator’s role is to put a purpose to it.

Martha talks about how the lack of a mentor cost her time in graduating from high school. Martha attended high school, and she tells us, By the time I got to my senior year, I was told I wasn’t going to be able to graduate, because I was missing one credit. But they wouldn’t give me another major, and I spent like the first few weeks of school going to talk to my counselor, and they were all too busy to talk to me; they weren’t paying attention.

On the other hand, Rafael, currently a police officer, experienced the significant impact of receiving personal attention: Because of my age, one of the instructors said that I needed to repeat fifth grade. So I had already finished fifth grade, and they put me back in fifth grade … Well, there was a teacher, and I don’t forget her name; it was Garcia. She, when she heard the news, she actually pulled me aside and said, ‘If you get straight As, when you finish fifth grade and go to sixth grade, I will pick you up and take you to seventh grade.’ So I think she gave me a purpose, hope. She gave me hope. So that’s what I did; I worked very hard, and I got straight As.

These themes describe the continuous challenges for many of those who are dreaming forward to fill in the pieces of the mosaic. The stories profoundly describe the foundation into which the mosaic will be embedded, which includes a strong extended-family network, a sense of cultural and ethnic history, and a community that has a collaborative spirit and commitment to building the future. Perhaps the most significant piece of the mosaic is the community, which is at the heart of it all.

Reading the Stories

As you read the stories, you will get to know the individuals and hear how the challenges and successes have affected their lives in different ways. Look for the dreams—those that have been fulfilled and those that are still in process. At the beginning of each story, there is a brief introduction to the storyteller that will add a little personalismo. At the end of each story, there are reflections that might help you to stand back and see where the story fits into the overall mosaic.

Acknowledgments

T his book would not have been possible without the help of those committed individuals who volunteered to put time aside to tell their stories. The energy and enthusiasm that they bring to the Mexican American communities they represent are truly an inspiration.

I also want to acknowledge the significant amount of time that Sarah Goenne and Mark Burnette dedicated to this work. Sarah transcribed the interviews, while Mark ensured that they were all catalogued and saved electronically. In addition, Esmeralda Dominquez translated and transcribed the one interview that was conducted in Spanish.

Alvaro Obregon was there from the start and introduced me to those in the community who would generously share their stories. He also conducted and recorded the Spanish interview. Without his assistance, I would not have had a place to start. Laura Bauer was also there at the start to help formulate the questions and conduct an interview.

1

Fabian

I  met Fabian when he attended National Louis University as part of the Bridge Program. This program allowed public school students to take college courses while still attending high school. Everyone at the university knew Fabian because he was persistent and hungry for a supplement to his high school work. He constantly wanted to stretch the expectations and enroll in more courses than allowed in the program. His determination to move ahead often created obstacles for him, as he tried to take on too many courses. Fabian is dreaming forward for his community.

Background

I went to high school at a career academy. Yes, that’s where I graduated from, and I still have an interest in the school. I plan on running for local school council as a community representative this coming April. A lot of things are going on in the school. I constantly hear negative things, and it’s like, That’s the school where I graduated from. It doesn’t feel good when you hear negative things about stuff like that. We need to change that status, and I believe we can. If we have like-minded people who want to change things, we can do it. But as far as it is right now, I don’t think that there’s any likelihood that people are interested in trying to change things. We just plant the seed so that further more down the line, someone else can come down the line and say, Hey, let’s continue the legacy.

I have an older brother, two younger sisters, and a younger brother. My parents are separated, so they kind of have different children with different people. I share a full brother who’s older than me and two half sisters and a half brother who are younger than me. My older brother’s twenty-five years old. He went to school, and he got a bachelor’s in telecommunications management. He’s right now in their CTI [College of Computing and Digital Media School]. He’s in the graduate program for network security. He’s the first in the family to go to school, and I’m following behind. He’s been very helpful to me with some of my questions I’ve had about school and picking the right program. With computers, especially, he’s been very helpful. He’s an IT specialist. He works for IBM now. He’s a very good person if you have any questions about computers and stuff like that.

My sisters are entering their teens, so they’re at that stage where their hormones are going crazy; their feelings are just everywhere. My brother—he’s in a private school; my younger brother, Matthew—he does academically well. He’s performing above average. My younger sister—she’s in the public school, and she’s not performing as good as she should be doing. We’re encouraging her to do well—to go to school, do homework, get involved. It’s hard to make a child realize that you have to do something unless they see a concrete reason why I should do this. If they don’t see anything, like there’s no interest. You have to sort of instill it in them that, hey, if you don’t do this, what are you going to do with your life? You got to do something. You just can’t do nothing. Everybody does something.

My father went as far as high school—never finished high school. My mother went to high school, dropped out, went back to get her GED, and took some course work at the university. She never completed her undergraduate degree, but I encouraged her to go back, and I’m telling her, Hey, go back; it’s only going to be best for you. It will only do you good. It can’t do you any harm.

I’m in my third year of college, and it’s way more challenging than high school. It kind of makes you want to come to school, whereas in high school, it was like you didn’t want to be there, because it was wasting your time. In college, the material is more interesting. You read lots of different points of views. You get different arguments, different sides of the debate. Not everybody thinks the same way you do, and I think that’s good because you’re open to discussion where not everyone’s going to agree on the same topic. You’ll have debate; you’ll have argument, and people can express their opinions in a good way, not disrespecting anybody, not offending anybody. This is what you believe, and you hold a strong, firm belief in that matter.

I think being exposed to college while in high school [in a dual-enrollment program] was something that took me away like I was taking a class or two, and I enjoyed it. I need to be here. This is where I belong. I don’t belong in high school. I had to come to college, and I think what motivated me is having the opportunity to participate. And taking classes while in high school kind of gave me that extra push to finish and come out to college.

Educational Experiences

The parents, I feel, are sort of discouraged from getting involved with the schools. A lot of times, they feel that they don’t have the resources, the power, to make change, and there’s not much information out there available to them. A lot of times, they’re not English speakers. They don’t have access to information, so it keeps them from knowing things—what they can do and what they can change. Students—I feel like they can change things. They’re young, they have the potential, and if you encourage them and coach them appropriately, I think they can revolutionize a lot of things—the situations in the schools right now.

I think the teachers are overwhelmed with the work that they do. A lot of times, their course load, their workload, is so heavy they just want to get the day over with and go home; they’re not really concerned with what the issues are affecting the school community, especially the environment that their students are exposed to. Some do care. I know I met a few that were willing to stay after school and work with students and give their time to form a group or committee to sort of encourage students to participate and get involved in community affairs. Administrators and principals—their work consists of more management-level stuff; they’re not really concerned. I want to say a true, a good educator would be interested in every student’s life—what they’re exposed to at home, what they’re exposed to in the community. But a lot of times, I feel like some of those administrators lack ability to truly understand or to connect things—truly connect. That kind of keeps them separated from the environment that they’re supposed to affect.

For the most part, there were counselors at the high school who were supposed to be encouraging you to stay in school and, if not, to give you alternatives to what you can do. A lot of time, I felt like the counselors there were not very supportive. They sort of said, Hey, if you feel you can’t do it, then don’t bother wasting your time, and don’t bother wasting the teacher’s time. Let them focus on the kids who do want to truly learn. And I understand that’s how they felt. I don’t think that’s what they should have said to somebody, because their role as a counselor is to keep you and retain you in the school and help you advance, not discourage you and forsake you and just kind of like forget about you. There were some people who were encouraging. Some teachers were like, Hey, you gotta do it; you gotta keep up with it. There was a social worker there that I really liked. She was very instrumental to my staying in school, because she told me, This is what you need to do. She kind of guided me. And I highly respect her because she was a major figure that kind of made me realize that you have to do this. You need to do this. There’s no and, if, or buts. You got to do it.

My experiences in school were good and bad, more bad than good. I felt that teachers that I went to school with really didn’t pay much attention to the students. They didn’t really care. They kind of said, Hey, they are not going to make it. When I would be in a classroom and I had a teacher like that, it kind of upset me. I wanted to say, Hey, you’re getting paid taxpayer dollars, and you are supposed to be teaching us, and you’re telling us that we’re not going to make it. I don’t know if it was a tactic that they were trying to use to make you want to come to school and show them you could do it or if they were being truthful about that. They were really exposing themselves to us; I didn’t think that was appropriate. I didn’t think that was the right thing to do, and my impressions were not very good. I felt I could have done a better job if I were in a teaching position. I could have motivated students more. They’re going to want to come to my classroom because I’m going to make it fun, interesting. They’re not going to want to skip my class. And if they do, they’re going to want to come back and do the extra work because it’s going to be that enjoyable in my classroom. If I were the teacher, like, I feel I could have done a better job than they could. That’s how I felt.

The teaching was very traditional lecture, open-book test. They weren’t very visual; they weren’t. We did have a lot of technology resources, but we lacked an adequate library. We lacked a lot of other facilities that other schools were plentiful in. We were an underperforming high school, and we were always underperforming according to state exams. Our dropout rate was about 50 percent. If you have a class of, let’s say, a thousand freshmen entering, maybe four or five hundred will graduate out of that class. That was pretty depressing, and the truth of the matter is that’s how it is now. We’re trying to change things.

Dropping Out

I sort of went through some situation where I wasn’t interested in education; I wasn’t interested in school. I wasn’t interested in having any business doing this until I realized how important it was to have an education. I dropped out of high school when I was a sophomore, and I wasn’t able to get a job, and that was what kind of opened my eyes. I need some education. I need to go back to school and finish high school and go on to college just to be a competitive individual in the marketplace—just to be able to say, Hey, I have some type of skill. I can do something. I didn’t want to be another statistic. I didn’t want to be a low-wage earner. I wanted to have a good quality of life and that made me realize that education was the key for me—a key to anything for anybody, so that’s what made me go back to school and motivated me to get involved.

When I dropped out of school, my parents were very, very upset. They didn’t know what to say. They were disappointed. They wanted me to go back. I really didn’t want to go back. Then I had a good job. That’s when I realized I could get a job. You could get a job, but it wasn’t going to be a job that required you to use your mental abilities. It would be a labor job, getting paid very minimal, and I just couldn’t see myself doing that. That’s a motive to go back to school. I have to do something with myself. I wasn’t thinking at the time. I was thinking, I don’t have to get up every day, go to school, seven o’clock in the morning, and go through what I go through every day. For me, it was so bad I would say, I’m getting up to go through another day of hell, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Going to school was like walking into prison, where the environment is so negative people don’t respect you; people look down on you. There’s no encouragement. It’s like, why are you here? It’s like, why are you wasting time? Do yourself the favor and go—just go.

Going to school was like walking into prison, where the environment is so negative people don’t respect you; people look down on you. There’s no encouragement. It’s like, why are you here? It’s like, why are you wasting time? Do yourself the favor and go—just go. Nobody wanted to deal with you, and that was not a very good experience for students. It made you think about things like is there a purpose to this? Why am I really here? So you start thinking about stuff like that, and one wonders, Should I really be here? Then you start thinking other things that make you take actions like drop out of school. Then you realize that was not a smart move. Then you have to go back. The hard part is really taking the action going back to school.

For a lot of students who don’t return, a lot of times, they are more interested in getting a job that pays—that just pays, and they’re not really thinking about the future. They’re not thinking about how they want to live. They’re just worried about how they don’t want to open up a textbook and read boring material and do boring assignments. That’s not what they wanted to do with their time. Too many times, I see in the community where minority girls sometimes get pregnant. It happens a lot, I think, in the Latino community, and that becomes the top priority—their children—and they lose focus on education. It’s like, how do they expect their lives to get better? You want to give yourself an opportunity. You want to give your child a better future than what you had. The school’s not going to help. And it’s sad when I see stuff like that.

Too many of my friends went through that situation. I can recall the number of people who I went through grammar school with who later on went to high school, got pregnant, and just never went back. And it’s so sad to hear about that, because I thought they could have done something if they had had it in them. It’s just unfortunate that they had to leave.

Some mothers do still go to school and still care for their child. I look up to those women, but then the ones that don’t, you’re not giving yourself the opportunity. In the long run, you’re going to wish that you stayed in school, and you’re going to wish that you did something with yourself. My mother was an example of that. She dropped out of school because she got pregnant with my brother, and she went to go back and get her GED when she was pregnant with me. When she had me, she was taking courses at the university. She never finished. I think one of the reasons was she had to work. She had to take care of her kids. She was a single mom. So it was kind of harder for her. I think that kind of impacts people’s lives as well.

Sometimes I think it’s hard for minority students to stay in school, especially when you have other factors like having to provide for the family and having to work to help pay bills to put food on the table. Especially when there’s little ones involved where you have to sit there and care for them. Sometimes there’s not adequate child care available for them. So often, that can hinder them or take them away from schooling. That’s not the priority at the moment.

I was out of school for three months. I think the hardest