Dialogue on The Voice of Girls
I appreciate the invitation to participate in this important discussion.
Having been born and brought up in Houston places me in an interesting
position. My father, "El Guero" Pando Portillo is from the part of the
world now called far west Texas. He taught us to respond to the question
often asked: "From what country have you come?" with the correct response:
"Texas". He and our mother, Maria Librada Cosio Cisneros, (she was born in
Chihuahua and met my dad in Rosita, Coahuila) helped their four children
remember that before any European set foot on this hemisphere there were
people here. We have a direct connection to those people. Still my mother
is considered an immigrant today. The area that in English is called a
"border" we grew up calling "la frontera". Two very different concepts.
I find myself in Massachusetts once again. Between 1982 and 1992 I
worked first at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine and
then at Tufts University Medical School. I have come to Lowell from
Houston
where I was guidance coordinator at a comprehensive K-8 exemplary school
that houses programs for hearing impaired, medically fragile and gifted
children as young a 3. The boundaries between professional education,
public education K-12, bilingual education, early childhood education seem
quite
permeable. In every setting in which I have worked there has been room for
improvement with regard to accessibility. One of my professional and life
goals remains supporting the creation of access to education for males and
females who have for any reason been excluded. My experience has taught me
that "The academy" along its entire continuum, is made more effective when
it makes itself accessible and inclusive . It is also, along the length of
its continuum, changed.
Immigrant girls can help educators, counselors, administrators
understand who we are. They can help us find our way to learning that
American education is preparing students to live in a world of permeable,
variable, often virtual boundaries. Differences abound. Each girl will
follow her own path. We can facilitate the maintenance of important links,
the redefinition of established roles, the building of bridges between
opposing values, and the mapping of an academic path. We do this while
keeping in mind that adolescence remains a time of conflict and change
under the best of circumstances.
The young women from Lowell high school who are participating in
this discussion are children of parents who came to this part of the
world from Cambodia and Puerto Rico and Ecuador. They represent a student
body
that is close to 50% young people of color. Imagine, among the close to
3800 students, are young people who have themselves (or have parents who
have) come to Lowell, Massachusetts from Brazil, El Salvador, Viet Nam,
Sierra Leon, Ghana, Portugal, and on and on and on. They wear similar
clothes and like some of the same music. They speak some of the same and
many different languages. They will all have to Pass the MCAS to receive
a high school diploma. We have to work together to make it possible.
Raquel Portillo Bauman
Guidance, Lowell High School
<rbauman@lhs.lowell.k12.ma.us>
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