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  1. #1

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    IL-Mexican immigrants: U.S.-born students struggle...

    This is an article from the Chicago Tribune website that is fully titled "Mexican immigrants: U.S.-born students struggle after returning to school in homeland". The subtitle is "Children feel like outsiders, have trouble mastering language, assignments".

    With their job prospects bleak and worried about bad influences on the street, Maldonado's parents sent the 15-year-old back from West Chicago to this central Mexican town last fall.
    Does this mean that they broke up their own family? I thought that was supposed to be inhuman?

    Mexican teachers are finding it a challenge to incorporate students who might share the same last names and heritage but are American in their mentality and experiences.
    Gee, I haven't heard any American teachers having the same problems. (End of sarcasm)

    To be perfectly honest, I thought about putting {SOB} on the title, but decided against. I really do feel bad for the kids in their position. Their parents are criminals and the kids are paying for their mistakes.

    Anyway, the full article is located here:

    Mexican immigrants: U.S.-born students struggle after returning to school in homeland
    Children feel like outsiders, have trouble mastering language, assignments
    By Oscar Avila | Tribune correspondent
    2:22 AM CDT, April 11, 2009
    ZINAPECUARO, Mexico — Juan Maldonado is suffering the same culture shock as many other children of Mexican immigrants: out of place at school. Haven't mastered the language.

    The difference? The U.S.-born Maldonado feels like an outsider in Mexico.

    With their job prospects bleak and worried about bad influences on the street, Maldonado's parents sent the 15-year-old back from West Chicago to this central Mexican town last fall. Almost immediately, he was fighting with classmates who mocked his accented Spanish. He could barely read or write in the language, so his homework was impossible.

    After two frustrating months, he dropped out. Now he works occasional hours at a factory that makes Christmas ornaments as he plans a return to the only country he has ever really known.



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    Immigrant Student Photos "Every day was the same: feeling stupid," said Maldonado, in an interview in English because he requested it.

    Just as American teachers struggle to integrate foreign students into their classrooms, Mexican teachers are finding it a challenge to incorporate students who might share the same last names and heritage but are American in their mentality and experiences.

    Zinapecuaro principals and officials with the state Public Education Department in Michoacan say the number of returned American students is increasing as Mexican immigrants in the U.S. get deported or voluntarily return home because of the economic crisis.

    The fate of these children also has become a political issue in the U.S., as activists argue that the government should stop deporting parents because their children will suffer by returning to Mexico. That was a main claim by Elvira Arellano, who took sanctuary in a Humboldt Park church for a year with her young son before being deported with him to a town about 30 miles east of Zinapecuaro. Her son now is attending a private school in Michoacan.

    In response to the uptick in returning students, education officials are treating these newcomers as at-risk students and have launched new initiatives to ease their transition, including roving bilingual instructors who know English and have studied in the U.S.

    This town about three hours northwest of Mexico City has sent many of its brightest youths to Chicago's western suburbs and California. Many would return home for a few months around Christmas, attend school briefly and then go back to the U.S.

    In a sun-splashed school courtyard where elementary school students assemble in brown uniforms, 6th-grade teacher Noemi Guevara looks on with pride but also worry.

    She talks of brothers who returned from Chicago and already seem like they are slipping. The older brother, Jonathan, was forced to repeat a grade. Sure enough, he skipped school this day.

    The younger brother, Felix, says he prefers conversing in Spanish. But even basic questions yield blank stares.

    Guevara said teachers have been forced to be flexible by allowing parents to translate their children's completed assignments from English to Spanish and by letting several returned students sit side by side for support in the back of the classroom.

    Laura Bibiana Moran, state director with the government Binational Migrant Education Program, said teacher training is critical because many instructors aren't as flexible as Guevara with students who might be used to U.S. schools where they could grow long hair and challenge teachers openly.

    "Teachers here see it as a test of wills," Moran said. "These are students who grow up with an American educational culture even though their family's folklore, food and customs might be Mexican."

    The state education department estimates that several students return to Michoacan each week. Gustavo Lopez, a researcher at the College of Michoacan who has studied binational families, said education officials have not done enough to integrate these returned students.

    One state education official acknowledged that schools often diverted students with limited Spanish skills into special-education tracks, although he says that practice is less common now.

    Lopez said students enjoy different ranges of success, often based on the same factors that drive U.S. performance. He said the best cases are when entire families return home. More challenging are students who return home on their own to live with relatives.

    Interviews with about a dozen students also reveal diverse views. Some are glad to be reunited with relatives and for the chance to walk to school and play outside freely in the more relaxed atmosphere of a small town.

    Others, like 12-year-old Omar Aguilar, miss the comforts of the U.S. He says his school in California had soccer fields. In Zinapecuaro, he usually plays in a concrete courtyard. Class sizes in Zinapecuaro often top 40, nearly twice as large as those in their U.S. classrooms.

    Omar said his teacher shot down his plea to dress up for Halloween, rarely celebrated in Mexico. When he brings up life in the U.S., his classmates tease him as a gabacho, a pejorative word for Americans.

    "I try not to speak English anymore," he said.

    Alejandra Cardiel, a social worker at the high school, said she is most haunted by Maldonado, the student who dropped out. She recalls that he would often come into her office to talk about his rough childhood in Illinois and his struggles in Mexico.

    "He suffered there," she said, "and he suffered here."

    His aunt and guardian, Leticia Mendoza, said English was "the only class he could pass. He probably knew more than the teacher."

    Maldonado realizes life won't be easy if he goes back to Illinois. He has already lost a year of high school, which makes him a prime dropout candidate in the U.S. He admits being a member of a gang, although he says he is trying to get out — another goal that won't be easy.

    Even with that uphill climb, the slight teen with the sad eyes is sure of one thing: "I'm ready to go home."

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,6750769.story

  2. #2
    Senior Member Richard's Avatar
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    If he is in public school the quality of ours is better due to the Mexican Teachers Union. There are private schools in various countries set up to provide students with an American style education maybe Mexico needs one.
    I support enforcement and see its lack as bad for the 3rd World as well. Remittances are now mostly spent on consumption not production assets. Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  3. #3
    Senior Member miguelina's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Richard
    If he is in public school the quality of ours is better due to the Mexican Teachers Union. There are private schools in various countries set up to provide students with an American style education maybe Mexico needs one.
    I don't think that's the problem. The problem is their mentality. The entitlement, gimme gimme mentality is what they bring back. The natives don't like them any more than we do.
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  4. #4
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    I think a lot of these kids could have excellent opportunities---although I agree that the adjustment to small villages would be significant. Wouldn't they do well working in the modern resort areas, or for international companies? In the bigger cities they would have more opportunities, although perhaps fewer family connections? Having experiences in living in the US is, as a rule of thumb, regarded as a big plus for most people around the world. As they mature and grasp the language perhaps they could become teachers or move up within companies that sell to the US market. They would probably be popular in the universities.
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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  5. #5
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by miguelina
    Quote Originally Posted by Richard
    If he is in public school the quality of ours is better due to the Mexican Teachers Union. There are private schools in various countries set up to provide students with an American style education maybe Mexico needs one.
    I don't think that's the problem. The problem is their mentality. The entitlement, gimme gimme mentality is what they bring back. The natives don't like them any more than we do.


    Exactly!
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  6. #6
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captainron
    I think a lot of these kids could have excellent opportunities---although I agree that the adjustment to small villages would be significant. Wouldn't they do well working in the modern resort areas, or for international companies? In the bigger cities they would have more opportunities, although perhaps fewer family connections? Having experiences in living in the US is, as a rule of thumb, regarded as a big plus for most people around the world. As they mature and grasp the language perhaps they could become teachers or move up within companies that sell to the US market. They would probably be popular in the universities.
    Who cares?! I for one don't care. We've got about 60 million of our own kids who can't find their way here, who can't make a day to school without being teased or humiliated over one thing or another here, who can't figure out where their future is supposed to be here because of all those who are here who aren't supposed to be here. Get all those who aren't supposed to be here out of here so our kids can find their place here and know they matter here because they belong here.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

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  7. #7
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    I feel for the kids as well, and I have to blame the parents for not teaching them Spanish. We had a visit yesterday from a young German family, the wife was originally from Estonia and speaks perfect English, German and Estonian; the husband, who didn't speak a word of Englsih when they married is fluent, and their eight-year-old son is fluent in all three, and in school he is now learning Spanish (Russian and Chinese were the other choices). Kids have absolutely no problem learning languages when they are young--starting in high school is way too late. The little boy naturally speaks to his mother in Estonian, his father in German and when there is a chance they all speak English.
    Point be, it IS all the fault of irresponsible parents.
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  8. #8
    ELE
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    Not the American tax payers problem.

    The illegals parents should have thought about the problems their children would have in America before bringing them here.
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  9. #9
    Senior Member crazybird's Avatar
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    The illegals parents should have thought about the problems their children would have in America before bringing them here.
    Plus, hate to be cold, but children of American citizens have difficulty in many cases simply moving from one area of the country to another. Lord I remember kids with a southern accent being teased beyond belief. What's this yes sir and yes mam business!! The New York kids always seemed to have a chip on their shoulder. City kids vs country kids.

    It is an adjustment for anyone.....I just don't understand why it's America and Americans who are supposed to jump through hoops so no one has to deal with it as if it's not requiring us to adjust as well. They can make them learn Spanish, but oh my, don't push them with English here. Maybe they need to have "special classes" for their returning countrymen so the transition will be easy for them and to heck with the kids who never left and have to get out of the way because they have arrived. That's what they have expected us to do. English teachers needed in Mexico....whites, blacks and asians only, so they learn to be racially tolerant and get used the "cultural differences" there. (being sarcastic)
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  10. #10
    Senior Member ReggieMay's Avatar
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    Not to mention our own American kids who are being shortchanged in school due to a large number of non-English speaking students in their classes.
    "A Nation of sheep will beget a government of Wolves" -Edward R. Murrow

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