Chapter 5: México

Oscar is a sixth grader in Mrs. Schmidt’s math class. Although he is a well-behaved student, at times Oscar seems distracted and unengaged even though math is his favorite subject. The first day of math class, Mrs. Schmidt placed Oscar in the remedial level because she believed it would be more useful for him, as she understood English to be Oscar’s second language. While Mrs. Schmidt knows that Oscar loves and understands math well, she believes his disconnect is due both to his lack of English skills and to what she sees as a lack of engagement from his parents. She has sent many letters home requesting parent meetings and has received no response. To give him a community of support, Mrs. Schmidt constantly groups Oscar with three other Hispanic students in the class that she knows speak Spanish. What Mrs. Schmidt is not aware of is that Spanish is not Oscar’s first language; Oscar’s family speaks Mixtec—an indigenous language from Oaxaca, México. His parents speak no English and very little Spanish, and they depend on Oscar and his sister Yuli to translate between the languages. Unlike Mrs. Schmidt’s belief that they do not care about their children’s education, Oscar’s parents use their own stories of struggle to teach their children lessons of the importance of education. Oscar is very aware of his parents’ challenges living as underrepresented indigenous people in Mexico, their ordeal to cross the border, and now their struggles as agricultural workers in the U.S. He is determined to finish school and attend a university to fulfill his dream of being a medical doctor, but his placement in remedial math could be a roadblock on the way to this dream.