During my time at UMass, some classes that I took at have often had overlapping themes even though they were completely different disciplines. For example, SPAN394 (part 1 of IE), my service-learning course: Tutoring in Schools, and my thesis seminar, Conquest by law. A lot of SPAN394 was spent discussing different perspectives, entering different cultures, going to Holyoke Bound, and also service learning. As my IE experience I chose to take a service-learning course tutoring in schools and became a tutor at the Amherst-Pelham Regional Middle School. In addition to tutoring in the classroom, it was paired with a weekly seminar that highlighted how to teach to different learning skills and also discussed the diversity of students. We discussed the possible histories of students that would affect their learning such as being an English learning (ELL) student, or living in poverty. One class was dedicated to the low graduation rates of Latino students in schools where most students were people of color, but most teachers were white and held little expectations from their students. Also, ELL students in non-bilingual programs often were behind the curve but teachers did not lend as much as help as the students truly needed, either because of lack of interest or the lack of time and resources available.

What I did not expect was to witness this in the very classrooms I tutored in. I noticed during my tutoring shifts that ELL students would generally sit with their interpreter and receive less attention from the teacher. If the interpreter was not there that day, the student would be off on their own and the teacher could not provide the extra attention the student needed since she had to attend to the whole class. Also, because the teacher had other priorities, I noticed that sometimes interpreters and students would go off topic and discuss other things unrelated to the lesson, and the teacher could not always rebuke them since she did not understand their language. All schools have their own systems for dealing with ELL students.  My class would discuss different ELL programs schools had such as bilingual immersion, and how to create a better learning environment for English language learners, the majority Hispanic. Dropout rates for ELL were much higher than the average.

This topic complemented my honors thesis course, Conquest by Law: The Use of Law to Subjugate and Marginalize in the US, which focuses on the legal system and how law and policy are used to marginalize vulnerable people. In this case, some states, (Massachusetts up until last year), have laws that prohibit bilingual programs and do not allow schools to create their own programs. In this class we discussed how lawful acts such as gerrymandering and redlining cities where districts filled with minorities and higher rates of poverty have their own district and therefore cannot receive as much funding since property value is low. This is also a way children of immigrants who are learning English are marginalized in school systems which hold back their potential and do not nurture the student on their journey to adulthood. Racism and classism play an important role in schools too. It is common for teachers and administrators to perceive Latinos and other students of color as less intelligent and are biased by stereotypes. As a result, they believe that people of color are less interested in their education instead of questioning other factors such as home life to explain why drop out rates are so high and do not bother pushing their students academically.

The first two classes that I mentioned taught me about these issues in US social systems and led me to write my honors thesis about the subjugation of people through legal means. These courses gave me a different perspective on how people face tough lives despite always doing their best and working hard. For my thesis I chose to research marginalization of immigrants in the US. So many people see the immigration system as a necessary component of law to regulate the flow of migrants, but what I came to learn is that the origin of immigration law was just xenophobia and white fear of losing superiority over people of color. With my research for my thesis, I could finally understand and explain why my own life as a first generation immigrant faced so many obstacles that my peers never had to go through. I did not expect for all these classes to come together and teach me to look at everything critically and then culminate into my senior honors thesis.