Notes from public school - day 22

Being a teacher and a writer in a Title I elementary school in a community where many of the students and their families are from Mexico, Central and South America helps me listen to the lives and stories of our neighbors to the south of the U.S. and Mexico border and understand the migratory road more clearly and more deeply than if I weren’t a teacher and a writer here.

When I come across a story about immigration or immigrants on social media, or hear an interview on NPR, or read the reporting of a journalist who has immersed herself in the life of a migrant (yep, I still love to read long form journalism), I simply close my eyes and see the faces of the Latino students who look to me and at me every school day and allow their lives to fill my heart.

So when I hear the words “immigration” or “immigrants,” I see Maria and Jeremy and Hilcias. When I hear the words “migratory road,” I remember the stories they told me face to face and heart about their journeys to Greenville, S.C.

This seeing and hearing is of monumental importance to the way I see and hear, to the way I understand, to the way I respond to my immigrant neighbors around me.

It’s why I wear a button that says “No human is illegal” on the lanyard of my school ID.

It’s why I reached out to the SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center to offer my time and talents to their work with immigrant families.

I also read ‘lots of books to help me see and hear and understand more clearly and deeply

In the picture below, you’ll see some of the books on my writing table that I am reading to help me become less of a “political issue” person and more of a “human being” person.

In the two paragraphs below, you’ll also see and hear some of my own writing, some of my own voice and heart, about the immigrant children and families who are a part of my life.

I hope it helps you see the human being, too.

                            Migratory Roads

He traveled the migratory roads of migrant workers from state to state and farm to farm with his family when he was a toddler. He rode upon his Mamí’s back, tied with threadbare pieces of cloth, as she climbed ladders and reached up into the sky with her hands to pick oranges and grapefruits from trees in Florida, and as she kneeled and reached down to the earth with her hands to pick beans and tomatoes from plants in South Carolina.

On the land they worked, they lived in trailers and shacks with holes in the floors, cracks in the walls, and leaks in the roofs, broken apart from years and years of families moving out and families moving in, of owners using money for things other than repairs, and yet held together by people like his Abuelo and Mamí, who would move into a new place, scrub the floors and walls with soap and water, repair the broken parts with the scarce resources they carried with them or found around them, and generally patch things up with a mixture of grit, common sense and love. Kind of like the way they lived their lives.