School Pictures

I’m a teacher and a writer in a Title I elementary school.

In the community around my school, many of the students and their families are from Mexico, Central America and South America.

I participate in their lives, I listen to their stories, and this helps me understand their migratory road more clearly and deeply.

When I browse a story about immigration on social media, hear an interview with an immigrant family on NPR, or read the reporting of a journalist who immersed herself in the lives of migrant workers (yep, I still love to read long form journalism), I close my eyes and see the faces of the Latinx students who fill my life with their lives each and every day.

When I hear the words ‘immigration’ and ‘immigrants,’ I see Maria and Jeremy and Hilcias and Patrick. 

When I hear the phrase ‘migratory road,’ I remember the stories they told me face to face and heart to heart about their journeys from their home countries to Greenville, S.C.

This seeing and hearing and remembering is of monumental importance to the way I understand 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 reach out to the SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center to offer my gifts and talents to their work with immigrant families.

It’s why I read read ‘lots of books and write ‘lots of stories about immigrants and immigration.

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

In the paragraph and poem, you’ll see and hear some of my own writing, some of my own voice, some of my own heart about our immigrant neighbors who are part and parcel of my life.

I hope it helps you become a ‘human being’ person, 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 on his mamí’s back, tied with a threadbare piece of cloth, as she climbed ladders and reached up into the sky to pick oranges and grapefruits from trees in Florida, and as she kneeled and reached down to the earth to pick beans and tomatoes from plants in South Carolina.

The Things They Carry

(a poem for migrants)

Now

on

the land

migrants live

with holes in the floors

cracks in the walls, leaks in the roofs,

broken apart from years upon years of people

moving in, moving out, broken apart by owners using money for things other than repairs

yet held together by people like my abuelo and mamí, who will move into a used place, scrub the floors and walls with soap and water

repair broken parts with things they carry with them, patch them with grit, common sense and love

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2020