Chicago Public Schools Mon Oct 26 2015
Give Me a Mirror: Why Students Need to Connect to their Teachers
By Mayra Almaraz-De Santiago
When I was 6 years old, I believed you could not be Mexican and American. In my world, they did not go together. It was like wearing polka dots and plaid: each was interesting on their own, but they could never be together. To me, there was a time to a time to be Mexican and a time to be American. Being Mexican was a private affair, reserved for people who did not need an explanation for my differences.
I grew up on the Northwest Side of Chicago in a mostly Polish, Irish, and Italian neighborhood. I clearly recall being in kindergarten and telling my teacher that I was the youngest of 10 siblings. Shocked, my teacher asked me to tell her the names of my siblings. Afterwards, she walked me over to one of her colleague's classrooms and asked me to recite the names for her. What followed was thunderous laughter. Then I was escorted off to a new classroom to recite my siblings' names again. To this day, I'm not sure why the teachers were so amused. Was it my siblings' names? Was it that I had 10 siblings? All I know is that I was being singled out for being different. In later years, whenever my teachers asked for the number of siblings in my family, I told them I had two sisters and one brother. Every time I told that lie, I felt my heart sink. I hated knowing that I had allowed others to make me reject a part of me.
— Mechanics
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