Teaching and Learning and Caring Blog
EL PASO – Last week I wrote about residential segregation and the stereotypes we have about people from other parts of town. This week I would like to follow-up on that theme, based on a reader’s comment. Frances Sanchez is one spunky woman who graduated from Bowie High School, lives in Washington, D.C., is studying for a Master’s degree in Cultural Journalism from Georgetown University and working with Candy Crowley’s CNN program, State of the Nation. She has never let her eyes wander from “the prize.” Don’t mess with her if you know what’s good for you.
Bowie High School football stadium from Border Highway with mountains in background. (Cheryl Howard/Borderzine.com)
How do I know? I first met Frances when she was a student at Guillen Middle School. For two or three years I volunteered there, going once a week to meet with a group of girls to encourage them in pursuit of higher educational goals. Frances didn’t need encouragement as much as she needed a map of how to get where she wanted to go. That was about a dozen years ago, and though she has had some help, France has basically blazed her own trail; she is an example of how much students can teach teachers. Frances followed Steve Jobs’ (RIP/DEP) advice before it was his advice: “Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
Frances Sanchez (la Bowie). (Courtesy of Frances Sanchez)
Along with residential segregation, there is such a thing as educational segregation which is just as, if not more, important. Inside our neighborhoods are the schools our children attend. Elementary and middle schools in El Paso have four types of students: gifted, regular, Spanish speaking and Special. At some point after the administrators and counselors are finished categorizing students, they begin to label each other and themselves, then act their parts. Layered on top of that are emerging distinctions between students who are sports or music oriented, like to draw, cause trouble, etc. Rivalries among high schools are fueled by sports (e.g. Bowie Bears) and UIL (University Interscholastic League) competitions, and by preexisting neighborhood stereotypes. Frances got it from both sides. She wasn’t accepted at Bowie because she set her sights higher than most, and she wasn’t accepted by students from most other high schools because she was from la Bowie. Frances knew she was getting cheated, and like every child who notices unfairness, it made her angry.
For many, the high school you went to is a mark for life, at least in the minds of other El Pasoans, especially if you stay here. But Frances wants us to remember that no matter where you go, how far away from the border you are, if there is another person from El Paso, they are likely to judge you. For her, it has been a wound that, just as it starts to heal, someone comes along and opens it, someone from here. For others, it may be an undeserved pat on the back, an instant camaraderie without merit, thinking you know someone when you don’t.
El Paso Railroad tracks. (Raymundo Aguirre/Borderzine.com)
Children can’t make their parents rich or Anglo or choose where they will live or where they go to school. I saw how it was at Guillen—high turnover, poor teachers more concerned about seating charts than the students who sat there, good teachers burning out, absenteeism, poor test scores, sweat smelling like fear and desperation permeating the hallways. Several years ago I had UTEP student, now a professor, whose parents sent her from Cd. Juárez to Jefferson High, thinking she would get a better education in the United States. How wrong they were! She was promptly tracked into secretarial courses, and only realized how cheated she had been when she got to college.
Why are there real differences between high schools, even within the same school district, and why do we manufacture even more? In Frances’ (la Bowie’s) own words: “Because we are stigmatized and fixated on … stereotypes, life’s experiences cannot teach people otherwise if they refuse to see what’s beyond those railroad tracks or what’s on the other side of the mountain.” We are who is on the other side of these tracks and on the other side of this mountain.
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Answer to “Come on Baby Light My Fire” blog test photo:
The answer to the test photo is (drumroll): NOT A CORN. Although the color of the stone is similar, the workmanship is not.
Surely, no one was fooled.
