Helping Immigrant Children Build a Better Life

I love to receive letters. When I was a little boy, I lived on a straight street where I could see the mail truck coming from a long way off. After the mailman stopped in front of our house, I ran with hope in my heart down our front walkway, between our two giant maple trees and across the street to our mailbox. Would there be a letter for me? Was someone in the world thinking of me?

One day last year it was not the mailman, but a second-grader on the school playground, who handed a letter to me. I unfolded it.

Dear Mr. Barton, hi it Odeth from 2th grade I miss you a lot I wanted to know about you so much I am being good I am in 4th grade Do you miss me.  I live in __________  I go to school in __________  I hope you will come to my school…can you come visit me in school ask for my name…I am 10 year old I want you to come to my school.

Your best student,

Odeth

What a wonderful thing, to be remembered by a student.

Odeth was in my very first class during my very first year as an elementary school teacher. I will always remember her big dimples, her contagious giggle, her deep brown eyes and her inquiring mind. Later that afternoon, when my classroom was calm and quiet again, I sat down at Odeth’s old desk and wrote a letter back to her.

I told Odeth that I missed her, too. That her class will always be special to me. I reminded her of a geometry lesson in which she made a brilliant design of a yellow flower from the shapes. I told her I still have the photo we took of that flower. I recalled how we talked about her becoming an architect and designing beautiful buildings. I wondered if she still enjoyed designing things. And I reminded her of how she liked to talk and should think about being a lawyer. I hoped that she was being the best she could be and doing the best she could do. 

As I wait for Odeth’s next letter, I wonder about her education and her life. She and her family are first-generation immigrants from Guatemala who are trying to make a better life for themselves in South Carolina. Even though I love the content of her letter, I’m worried about its form and grammar. In their book, Learning A New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society [2], Carola Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco and Irina Todorova write that children of first-generation immigrant parents start off with motivation to try hard and do well in school. But they often end up apathetic and in low-performing schools.

I’m also worried about the life of Odeth’s family. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center report “Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South [3],” many Latinos in the South encounter widespread hostility, discrimination and exploitation. Here in South Carolina, our new legislature seems determined to write an Arizona-style law that uses demagoguery to harass and endanger families like Odeth’s.

Is America a place where she really can become an architect, a lawyer or anything she wants to become? And will the schools prepare her? Odeth is a living letter to me and to you. Her life asks a vital question to our schools and our communities, “Are you thinking of me?”

Let the answer be, “Yes!”

Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.