Moving Stories ReCap

Born and raised in Chicago, Sheila is a super-achiever who exemplifies many themes of being the child of immigrants growing up in a vibrant diverse immigrant community.  

She speaks to the importance of community resilience and being “surrounded by people like you” who are engaged in activities and “having fun together.” The Catholic Church, community pageants, and her involvement with the orchestra give her a sense of belonging and purpose even though sometimes she feels “too Mexican for Americans and too American for Mexicans.”

Her parents cross with coyotes as youths and though active participants in their community for a quarter century are never able to regularize their status. Their motivation to cross the border was to break their family’s “cycle of poverty” and to provide their children the opportunity for good educations—a dream fulfilled through Sheila’s educational trajectory through John Hopkins as an undergraduate and the Harvard Graduate School of Education for a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership. Consistent with findings revealed in the new ground-breaking book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success by economists Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan (based on longitudinal linked big data examining the pathways of immigrants over the last century and a half) while the first generation may struggle, the second generation reaps the benefits.

Sheila speaks to her gratitude for her parent’s sacrifices and the ways in which they point her to jobs that are not like theirs entailing hard physical labor. At a young age, she thinks deeply about how to advance her life and lands early on a passion for the violin. Through a mixture of a bit of luck in connecting with a community-based music organization and great persistence and drive on her part, the “violin changes [her] life.”  Though her parents are not able to guide her through the college access pathway, their dreams and faith in her provide wind in her sails. She has the good fortune to find mentors and educators who also support her along the way, and she is admitted to and graduates from the prestigious John Hopkins Peabody Conservatory.

Though she does not find herself represented amongst her peers and sometimes feels a bit of an aesthetic dissonance in the choices of the music world in which she finds herself, she also finds her calling—to bridge the worlds of music and higher education to become more culturally responsive in such a way as to become a transformative opportunity for Black and Brown students like herself.

As I listened to Sheila’s interview, I was particularly reminded of Marjorie Faulstich Orellana’s and her colleagues’ important work on immigrant children’s language and cultural brokering. That work has shown the critical skill and mindsets that children of immigrants learn as they translate for their parents. At a young age, “as the first to learn” English, Sheila (like many immigrant-origin children) takes on the role of translating for their family in important, often high stakes, situations like at the consulate, bank, and for legal processes.  Charged with these responsibilities, she developed extraordinary skills, self-discipline, and a sense of responsibility that have served both her and her family well. She carries this into her sense of life purpose and drives to provide transformative opportunities to others. Her passion and dedication are nothing short of inspiring.

Listen to Sheila’s Story here

Estela’s moving story is a testimony to and a celebration of multilingualism.

She shares with us her complex and “unique” identity as the daughter of Japanese origin and second-generation immigrant growing up in Brazil. They remind her that her “only inheritance is education,” a message reinforced by observing them peruse higher education at night after long days of physically arduous work.

While she grew up in a Japanese-Brazilian community, as a child, she learned to speak only limited Japanese and now identifies fully as Brazilian. At college age, she pursued a unique opportunity to study abroad in Japan in a program conducted in English. Embarking on this educational, linguistic, and cultural journey, she begins a life-changing course. She describes how language became “an entry point into culture” and a “way to connect to people by understanding their viewpoint and language.” She speaks to her privilege of becoming multilingual through an alchemy of her exposures, “encouraging environments,” and natural curiosity.

She pursues graduate studies to better understand the process of language acquisition, and as she does so, she begins to see how many newly bilingual students experience prejudice and marginalization from both their peers and teachers. This sparks in her a “bright desire” for children to have a positive experience learning a new language and culture as they make their way into a new land. She reminds us of how language is so deeply interconnected in the experience of immigrant children and, in her parting words, reminds learners of new languages to “be brave” and “not be ashamed” as they make inevitable errors that come with the process of learning. Indeed, Estela’s philosophy of “approaching life with a learning heart” is a lovely reminder to us all.

Listen to Estela’s Moving Story here