I don’t know what it is like to be separated from my parents for prolonged periods of time, but I can imagine that the feeling must be painful and extremely aching. The closest thing I’ve got, and I’m sure that many have felt before, is feeling homesick when I was away from my family. But every time I was homesick, I was eventually able to go back and be with my family. However, I’ve learned that some who have forged their own path in another country simply don’t have that luxury.
You might have seen her taking out the trash in your classroom, or cleaning up around the school–Ms. Sanchez is in her eighth year working in the Bedford School District. Before coming to work at Bedford High School, she was a custodian at McKelvie Intermediate School. She was born and raised in Mexico, and so Spanish is her first language. You might want to practice your Spanish with her! Outside of school, Ms. Sanchez really enjoys cooking spicy Mexican food.
After marrying her husband, Ms. Sanchez moved to the United States and has been in the country for 24 years now. At first, she did not need to learn English since she was working in a Spanish-speaking environment. However, when her three children started going to school and speaking English to one another, she knew she needed to learn. And so, taking advantage of the technology of this age, when she started working in Bedford she would listen closely to what people were saying in English, write it down, and then ask Google what the words meant! By the process of immersion, i.e. watching TV in English and surrounding herself with the language, she was able to achieve fluency in it.
Ms. Sanchez expressed that working in the Bedford School District has been a delight. In her previous position, before she came to work at BSD, she was not so blessed to have a good working environment. “My previous job,” she said, “was very, very, bad.” She explained, “They treated people bad. They didn’t treat everybody the same, because the position that you had affected the way they treated you.” She was afraid the same situation might happen in Bedford, but she found that “The teachers, when I start at McKelvie, they treated me so well.” Bedford restored in her the faith that people can be “so nice”, and “so respectful.” When she made the move to BHS, she found that everybody here was also “so nice”. She likes working here, though sometimes it can be a challenge, she said, especially when some people are disrespectful with the bathrooms.
What’s hard for her though about being in the United States is not being able to see her family back in Mexico, not even on holidays, Ms. Sanchez said. With much violence in her hometown, any traveling there would be extremely dangerous. Not being able to be with her family on occasions such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother’s Day, she said “I really miss a hug from my mom.”
Note: parts of the interview here have been lightly edited for clarity.
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