Navigating the Transition: A Bilingual Students Journey from Mexico to the U.S. Education System

Abstract

Course name Instructor’s name Assignment due date Ethnographic Interview Assignment Completing the interview experience was an opportunity to learn and experience the differences in learning and teaching between the United States and other countries. My interviewee is a colleague I have worked with for the past two years and I will call him Sam for the purpose of this paper. Sam emigrated from Mexico with his family when he was 15 years old and this has given him the opportunity to experience education in the country and in Mexico. His transition into the education system in the United States is interesting and it shows the different experiences between monolingual and bilingual students. Additionally, the interview with Sam sheds light on the challenges facing English Language Learners (ELLs) and their teachers when they immigrate into the United States. Being an ELL educator, Sam uses his own experience to improve the learning outcomes of his students and become a better teacher (Hughes et al. 2022). He described his teaching career as a passion to use his background as a bilingual educator to impact his students positively and make them confident English speakers. The interview demonstrated that Sam’s education experience has an impact on his teaching strategies as it gives him the opportunity to facilitate the transition of other bilingual students into the United States. Sam grew up in Monterrey, Mexico in an upper middle-income family of four before immigrating into the United States. His family had visited the United States several times during school holidays where Sam interacted with family members living in the country during his childhood. He has two older sisters and a younger brother who came with him and their parents into the United States. Sam’s father was a factory worker in Monterrey while his mother was a teacher. The family moved to the United States when his father’s company offered him a promotion and a position in the country (Chaparro et al., 2021). His family’s income enabled him and his siblings to attend private schools in Mexico that offer more formal and well-organized English education than the public schools in the country. He described his early education as mostly provided in Spanish with several hours each week dedicated to learning the English language. Since his mother was a teacher and his father an employee of a multinational company in Mexico during his early education, they encouraged their children to learn and speak English at school and sometimes at home. The experience separated Sam from most students in Mexican public schools who speak primarily Spanish with some knowledge of English. The family has a significant impact on the education and learning experiences of students as Sam described in the interview. All the members of his family were bilingual and his mother was an English teacher when they lived in Mexico. Therefore, his parents encouraged the children to learn and speak English even when they were at home and this experience contributed to his transition into the United States education system. Sam feels that it could have been harder for him to speak English in the classroom if he did not have the opportunity to attend a private school that emphasized on learning and speaking English. Additionally, his parents’ encouragement to learn English impacted on his ability to speak the language during his high school education when he first came into the United States. He views both Spanish and English as essential parts of his culture and identity as an immigrant in the United States. Working as an ELL teacher offers Sam the opportunity to explore and express this part of his own identity top other people. The interview showed that his identity has influenced his role as a parent and husband in his family. Sam married his monolingual wife shortly after completing his college education and they have a daughter and a son aged five and three respectively. They live in a community where most of their neighbors are English speakers and were born in the United States. Sam expressed the desire to give his children the opportunity to Spanish since it is a major part of their cultural identity. He feels that it would be important for his children to learn to speak Spanish since it expresses their culture and origin. Additionally, his wife supports his view of the role of language in maintaining and promoting one’s cultural identity. She took Spanish classes in high school but is not as fluent as a native Spanish speaker like Sam and other members of his family. As a parent, Sam wants his children to learn Spanish and he uses the language at home as part of pursuing this goal. His native language has influenced his view of the role of Spanish in the Mexican culture and will affect his parenting goals for his children. Sam’s private primary education in Mexico contributed to his relatively easy transition to the education system in the United States. He explained that he had learned more English and was more confident expressing himself in the language than typical immigrant students from his country. He recognizes that some of the bilingual learners in his classroom have less knowledge and experience of English than he did when he first arrived into the country (Chaparro et al., 2021). Consequently, they are less reluctant to express themselves in English and likely to use their native language outside the classroom. From my interactions with Sam prior to the interview, I had learnt that he spoke Spanish fluently and that he immigrated into the United States while he was in high school. He had acquired a bachelor’s degree while in the United States and was in his second job as an ELL teacher. Sam transitioned from an education that primarily uses Spanish in the classroom to one where English is the language of teaching. He relied on the English he learned in school and at home to facilitate this transition when his family moved into the United States. He credits the experience that the change provided to his passion for teaching and his career choice to work with ELLs. Despite his knowledge and experience of the English language from an early age, Sam experienced various challenges during his assimilation into the United States. It was interesting to learn that the exposure to the American culture during frequent visits in the country was not sufficient to guarantee a smooth transition and assimilation. Sam still used Spanish in his native country when speaking with his friends and family members at home. Consequently, the cultural change had significant effects on his assimilation when he immigrated with his family at the age of 15 years. He noted that most of his friends in school and at home now spoke fluent English and he was hesitant to speak around other people (Hughes et al. 2022). Feeling that he spoke differently was difficult and he developed a connection with other native Spanish speakers in his classroom. It was difficult to adjust to the new community and culture where most people were first English language speakers. Sam views his experience as potentially much better than that of other Mexican immigrants who spoke little English. His educational experience prepared him for the transition and made it easier to interact with new friends in school and in the new...