My Worst Year By Ellen Degeneres

It is crazy how much acceptance and understanding comes out of hearing someone else’s narrative. Yesterday, I read an academic journal by Traci Fordham-Hernandez titled, Raising Chicanos in the Great White North: A White Mother’s Muse, and it gave me a new perspective on the challenges that parents with two different ethnicities, cultures, and customs face when raising children. Undeniably, preserving the customs of our Mexican heritage mom has been something that you constantly try to instill in us so that we do not forget who we are. Traci, the mother in this narrative, is white, her husband is Mexican-American/ Chicano, and her children areLrt brown Mexican-American/Chicana/o. Just to give you a little bit of background mom, Traci lives

Growing up in a Hispanic household has taught me many things. I have learned to see things as an optimistic person, and that it doesn’t matter where you come from as long as you work hard for what you want anything is possible. My family has always implemented the values of life that lead me to perceive what it was about to throw at me.

Have you ever been a target of an individual’s cruelty and hatred? It does not necessarily have to be physical, but more like being verbally degraded or publicly humiliated. The effects bullying can have on its victims is something that may last throughout their lives, or something that may end their life(Braithwaite, Hyde, Pope, 2010).We all are well aware of childhood bullying but as evidence shows bullying does not stop on the

Taylor Swift surprised all her public with her recent album "1989" that was release on October 24,2014.. Not a lot of musical artist would dare to reinvent their sound so drastically. Taylor Swift's new album "1989" was made in a very different way apart from the country style Swift has on her past songs. Although she is still singing about relationships and love songs, this album is a definitely the end to her country style.

Young adult literature such as The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, emphasizes teenagers using both their actions and their voices to overcome injustices such as racial inequality and police brutality. Racial inequality and police brutality is discussed greatly throughout The Hate U Give, due to the difficulties the protagonist, Starr Carter, endures when her best friend, Khalil, is killed because of him being African American and situated in an unsafe neighborhood. Starr embraces an inner conflict with herself in regards to speaking up and taking action against the presented injustices she constantly faces. The author, Laura M. Robinson, of Girlness and Guyness: Gender Trouble in Young Adult Literature thoroughly explains why adolescents are

A big part of Hispanic culture is family. Family is everything. Mine was huge and I can’t thank them enough for all of their support, especially my mother. Majority of my life, she was a single-parent. My father passed away when I was still in junior high. It was hard and we struggled. There were times when I thought I would never make it to college. Sure, I had the grades, but I didn’t know how I would pay for it. HSF was my saving grace. Their scholarship allowed me to go to college, and now I’m here giving kids the same opportunity they gave to

I was thirteen when I started to see the negative effects of being part of the Hispanic culture. The teacher assigned the class to make a Powerpoint about their family and their culture. Initially I was excited to share my background to people in my classroom. As I walked home at the end of the day I kept thinking of interesting things to include,and I

Growing up as a Latino child, I never realized the segregation within my community in the city of Baldwin Park. I attended public schools with students that came from the same background and struggles as my own. It made sense living in an area with similar Latino families because I thought that was the way things were supposed to be. Even today in America. communities are segregated and made up of people with similar backgrounds. I never questioned why we were not surrounded by people that were African American, Asian, or any other race differing from my own. As I grew older, I started to realize how this was a problem because it did not allow for the community to be diverse. Today, I believe that by not being exposed to other cultures at

Rosanna Tavarez visited our class to share her experience in the United States from a Hispanic perspective. Ms. Tavarez’s parents are from the Dominican Republic. In their early twenties, they moved to the United States and settled in New York, and spent time in Miami. Ms. Tavarez was born in New York, and lived in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood. Specifically, she described her neighborhood as having the exact characteristics of a neighborhood in the Dominican Republic. For example, you could hear Spanish music and see people outside playing dominoes. In general, Ms. Tavarez spoke positively about her experience growing up in New York with an immigrant family. Yet, she did describe the discrimination her parents faced.

The video “To this day” by Shane Koyzcan, based on the poem by the same name, reveals the permanence of the emotional damage bullying causes the victims. In addition, two interviews that reveals his personal experience with bullying. To begin with, Koyzcan was bullied as a kid for a simple misunderstand of him thinking pork chops were the same thing as karate chops. He was taken away from his grandma for 3 days until the truth about his accident was revealed. The story got out and that’s how he got his first nickname: “pork chop”. Although, he got his nickname as a child, it still haunts him today as an adult. Instead of showing all of this cruelness Koyzcan would much rather have us spread love, beauty, and forgiveness that will be able to

My first observation took place in a third grade classroom of twenty-two students. All students were of Mexican descent and labeled as intermediate/advanced English language learners. The classroom environment itself was very warm and welcoming. There was a bulletin board that displayed pictures of students and their families along with autobiographies. There was another bulletin board dedicated to celebrating Mexican culture and people. The teacher was a Caucasian women in her mid twenties with three years of teaching experience.

However, many Hispanic families were and in some cases, still are viewed as lower-class citizens. According to Barrientos, “To me, speaking Spanish translated into being poor. It meant waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms. It meant being left off the cheerleading squad and receiving a condescending smile from the guidance counselor when you said you planned on becoming a lawyer or a doctor” (561). They are not respected in a lot of communities, they live dirty, and they have bad jobs. These stereotypes are reasons why Barrientos did not want to be called Mexican and never wanted to learn Spanish. If diversity had been celebrated when Barrientos was a child, as it is celebrated and honored now, she would have grown up speaking Spanish and being proud of her heritage.

When I was 4 years old I came to New York and I spend 16 years leaving in the Bronx with my family that includes my two older brother and my parents. I grew up in 175 th and grand concourse a community full of different cultures. The neighborhood that I grew up in had so much diversity that I got to learn about different foods, languages, norms and religion. The community was very child friendly the neighbors loved the kids and try to protect them from harming themselves or any danger that could come their way. The adults in the community try to guide us by telling us what was good and bad and explaining why. The community had three different Bodegas that were owned by Hispanic man who often gave the children free candy and kept an eye on the kids if doing mischievous things

With all schools talking about bullying and the media regularly reporting on latest research, it could seem like we're in a bullying epidemic. But, it's not all bad - the incidence of

Just a few days before I had to do this essay, my mom shared a story with me. In the middle of a Spanish lesson, one of her students asked her a completely unrelated question: Why do Mexican children always wear frilly dresses and slippers to the supermarket, and why do the men always crowd in the back of pick-up trucks to go to work? Although some of the students thought it was funny, my mother, of course, couldn't pass up this opportunity to respond and teach a more important lesson, interestingly enough, about stereotypes. She reminded me of our trip to Mexico some time ago and related those experiences to her students.