Maria Elena White
Various difficulties faced emerging Latinx immigrants arriving in the Wisconsin area. Racial and ethnic differences were among the most prevalent. Many of these differences had to do with language and education. In an interview with Maria Elena White, she describes how her involvement with the local businesses shaped her identity as a bilingual teacher in the Milwaukee area. She describes her passion for teaching because of the prevalence of poor illiterate women she noticed in her community. She describes teaching older women English as being a extremely difficult task because they have only spoken Spanish their entire lives. She also describes the demand for bilingual workers as she progressed in the community while teaching factory workers English that was demanded from them by their bosses. Patience was her ultimate virtue which landed her success with other jobs teaching Latinx immigrants counseling centers and even local jails. [1]
|
Anita Herrera
Another case is of Anita Herrera. Similar to Maria, Anita was also focused in the bilingual field in the Kenosha and Racine area. Anita got into teaching while involved with her church and was persuaded by her priest to teach and do projects at the university of Michigan. She had a lot of ties with the Spanish center in Racine and worked as a Latinx activist in her community. Anita advocated for jobs and collaborated with her local mayor for potential programs to implement in the local community. However at the time she described how she was still seen as a person of color to the white majority of the population, and thus is not recognized as valuable asset by the population in the eyes of the white community despite her hard work and success. [2]
|
"Feeling the Stress and Strain"
Other boundaries and difficulties in the Wisconsin area can be found in the recent public school system. In the article “Feeling the stress and strain – race, economics, and the educational experiences of Latinx emergent bilinguals in a ‘new’ destination school”, Baily Smolarek describes how the local school districts create issues by not valuing bilingual education in the Latin x community. “ For example, Melissa Baker’s previous position serving emergent bilinguals was cut then combined with the role of three previous positions to create her current role as the District ELL Program Coordinator” (Smolarek 9). This shows the lack of interest of ELL programs which ended up in the lack of funding and frustration of the staff who worked in the department. [3]