Social Studies Work

Summer 2006

	Photo: Barbara Miner Jose Aelaya, 5th Grade, La Escuela Fratney Elementary School.

By Kevin Lamastra

Miguel was a student who liked to ask the tough questions.
One day in ESL class he asked:
"Why do the black kids call us dirty Mexicans?
I'm from Colombia, Paul is from Haiti and Edgar is from Poland.
That doesn't make no sense!"

Miguel was a tough kid, but like anyone else, he too could cry.
Last month during journal writing, his tears flowed and he sobbed as he wrote.
He didn't want to talk about it at first
but later he told us
that his father had to go back to Colombia
and they had just said their goodbyes
before the homeroom bell.

Today was another day.
Things got heated in Mr. Smith's social studies classroom.
Like most ESL kids, Miguel usually keeps quiet
and does what he needs to do to get through.
Mr. Smith always talks about patriotism
and reminds the students of all of the reasons
that the USA is the greatest country on Earth.

But today was different.
The teacher was talking about people he calls "illegals."
"He talked bad about them. He talked about them like they were insects."
What Miguel heard stirred his emotions and memories.

"Did you ever get so mad it made your eyes get wet,
not like you're gonna cry, it's just that you're really upset?
I couldn't stay quiet. I had to say something. I said:

"'Mr. Smith, what do you know about these immigrants?
Do you know what they have to do to get here?
Do you know that they have families back home that they care about?
Do you know how they die in the desert to get here?
They work like animals. My mother used to be one of them.
She worked all day and night in a factory.
When she came home she couldn't move her fingers anymore.
She couldn't hold her fork at dinner.
She couldn't help me tie my tie on Sunday.
And they paid her and the others next to nothing!
One night I went to the factory to meet her when she was getting out of work.
There were hundreds of people, all of them were immigrants
but none of them were white
except for the manager and the security guard.

"'If you ask me, this country wouldn't be nothing without these people you call 'illegals.'
Who else is going to work so hard for so little?'"

"What did Mr. Smith do? What did he say?" the students all asked.
"Nothing. He just got red and sounded angry.
He jabbed a finger into the social studies book and said:

"'Turn the page and get your work started.'

"He didn't want to talk about it.

"At the end of class some of the black kids waited in the hall to talk to me.
These kids never talked to me before.
They said, 'Damn, Miguel, what you did in there was tight.'
That made me feel really good.
They shook my hand and we went to our different classes
thinking about what happened while we
sat in our desks
doing our work."

Kevin LaMastra (klamastra@linden.k12.nj.us) teaches ESL, French, and adult literacy in Union County, N.J. The poem is based on comments made in class by one of his ESL students. Students' and teachers' names have been changed.

Summer 2006