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by Mary Jones
On the morning of the Latinos in Action (LIA) conference, the LIA advisor, Matt Braithwaite, called in sick. NS teacher Ryan Syme was asked to sit in on the virtual conference. As some of the virtual presentations were rather boring, Syme began to ask the group questions about their experience being in a minority group at NS. He and some other teachers who came in throughout the day were surprised to hear that the LIA group felt they were being treated differently than other students in the school.
“During the day, I was able to get a couple teachers to come in,” Syme said. “Every teacher that I was able to bring in was surprised that the Latinos in Action group felt this way about their regular classroom. I don’t think there’s a teacher in this school who doesn’t want to fix this.”
Students talked about several aspects of their experience in school, mentioning that they feel that they go unheard within the classroom.
“We’re afraid we won’t be heard, so we just stay quiet and work on our own,” said NS student Marcos Cisneros. “I feel like when we ask for help, it’s harder for us because it feels like they aren’t going to take our opinion at all. It’s harder for us because when we ask for something, they give us a feeling like that wasn’t really important, or that wasn’t smart, or it just makes you feel like it was dumb.”
To Syme, comments like this began to make him think about how he viewed discrimination and equality within the classroom.
“It made me think about the way that I thought about kids that are different as a teacher,” Syme said. “I used to believe that I treated everybody the same, and maybe I did, and I thought that was like the apex; that means I wasn’t discriminating against anybody because I was treating everybody exactly the same. I’m starting to feel like, as teachers, treating everybody the same may actually be unfair.”
In each class within the school, there are several different people with several different backgrounds and ways of learning. Because of this, educating everyone equally is hard.
“So in education, there is a tension between equality and equity,” Syme said. “Equality can be defined as treating everybody the same, assuming that everyone in the classroom is on the same level and has the same life experiences. Equity means that you try to meet the needs of everybody.”
According to Cisneros, the hesitance to ask questions within the classroom isn’t a new problem for Latino students. A lot of it comes from experiences that have taken place in the past.
“Most of it comes from the past; it’s harder to ask questions or ask for help,” said Cisneros. “For me, it’s elementary. A teacher yelled at me because I couldn’t speak English right. Ever since that, I worked on my English on my own so I wouldn’t get yelled at again.”
Events outside of the classroom also affect the way that students feel at NS. According to NS student Maritza Gonzalez, LIA students are frequently told that because of their race, they will only ever be able to achieve a certain degree of success in their education and future employment.
“By our race, they’re like, you’re going to be a gardener, or you’re going to be a strawberry picker, or you’re going to be a construction worker, or you’re going to be a housewife,” Gonzalez said. “What can we do about that if that’s all that they base us on?”
Just as with the reluctance to speak up in the classroom, these comments are targeted at students from a young age. Though Gonzalez claims that she is now used to hearing these things, when she was young, it came as a shock.
“It bothered me a lot; it made me really sad,” Gonzalez said. “It just makes people sad because, like, it’s a little kid. You’re telling a little kid something that they don’t know about older people with what they do. They are going to be in shock, and they are going to be like, ‘I didn’t know this’ or ‘I didn’t know.’”
These comments, other than registering as a considerable shock for young students, can, over time, become something that they accept. As students are repeatedly told this type of thing, it becomes what they perceive as true.
“Our being told ‘you’re not going to go anywhere, just go back and work like your parents’ and what not. That, you know, it’s kind of like brainwashing in a way,” said NS sophomore Fernando Montano. “If you keep hearing that for twelve years all the way down from kindergarten to high school, that can really mess with somebody—that’s the mentality that they’re going to stick with now.”
Overcoming these things takes effort. According to Montano, one of the most crucial things in alleviating this issue is understanding one another.
“Understanding one another has a lot to do with this. You can’t relate to someone you don’t understand, ” Montano said. “You can try to understand them; it won’t work out probably because people grow up differently, even within our own minority community. But we all can relate somehow. People tend to not like things they don’t understand, and so at first trying to understand can help the situation.”
Understanding others is essential in recognizing and helping to meet other people’s needs within the NS community.
“It’s definitely made me think about the difference in treating everybody the same and meeting everybody’s needs,” Syme said. “It’s heartbreaking to think that people would feel different or isolated or scared or sad at North Sanpete because I don’t feel that way, and I think that’s what I love about our school—that we are a family.”
