Catholic Schools: Learn, Live, Serve, Succeed Sitting in one, unified group circle, my retreat group is gathering their thoughts from the busy day helping out in the less fortunate community of Louisville. The retreat leader softly illuminates the room by lighting a lone candle in the middle of our circle to help us relax. The only noise that breaks the crisp silence of the room is the occasional car driving by on the street adjacent to the retreat center. As I sit there reflecting on the past day, I realize that just an hour before that, I was sitting across from two adult refugees from Cuba who were eager to learn English in order to adapt to their new life here in the United States. Having only been in the United States for less than a month, both refugees struggled to speak English. Fortunately, my many years of studying Spanish enabled me to engage in a conversation with them and learn more about them and their culture. Through my Catholic education, I gained the opportunity to …show more content…
learn. Specifically, I received the opportunity to learn a second language, Spanish, for encounters just like the one I had during my retreat. Starting at a young age, around third grade, I began learning Spanish once or twice a week at school. Gradually, the frequency increased each year until I studied it daily. Not only was I given the opportunity of an education through my Catholic school experience, but also to live. On my retreat, I was able to bond with my classmates in ways I had never done before. When we came together to achieve a common goal, serving the disadvantaged of Louisville, we learned more about each other. Close friends that I knew almost everything about revealed a different side to themselves: a side that was eager to live throughout their community and immerse themselves in it. Service is an essential part of living the Catholic faith. Pope Francis says that “we all have the duty to do good.” In Catholic schools, we are challenged to serve throughout the community to fulfill our duty to do good by assisting the less fortunate. Specifically, our vocation to serve is initiated by Catholic schools. There may be a number of hours needed for a service requirement, but in the end, the goal of Catholic schools is to push us to do service so we realize our duty to do good on our own. Ultimately, the last essential goal of Catholic schools is to succeed. Education at Catholic schools is immeasurable because they offer you the best staff, care, and assistance around. The staff only desires what is best for each and every one of their students. I was educated with a new language and, consequently, I was able to succeed in teaching immigrants my first language, English. Not only are Catholic schools centered on education, but also religious education. The education one receives at a Catholic school sets them up to succeed not only in their career or profession, but also in their faith. Catholic schools enable one to succeed by thriving in their faith. Through my Catholic school sponsored retreat and education, I personally experienced the core values of Catholic schools—learn, live, serve, exceed—first-hand.
After learning a second language, I was able to go out and make good use of that knowledge, helping newly arrived immigrants learn the language. I could live in my community, particularly the non-English speaking portion, and help them become accustomed to their new life here in the United States. I was able to serve by assisting the newly arrived immigrants in learning the English language. By helping them learn this new language, I was not only setting the immigrants up for success, but also myself. The immigrants can apply for more job opportunities here in the United States with English on their credentials, and I was able to apply my knowledge of the Spanish language to set these immigrants up for success. Using all of the skills and values accumulated by Catholic school education, I was ready to succeed in the
world.
I thought it would be an interesting idea to enlighten and inform people about the Lao Iu Mein and our process of immigrating to the U.S. as well as the challenges we have to overcome. I interviewed my parents, Lao Iu Mein refugees who immigrated to the United States from Thailand. Through this interview, I had a chance to hear for the first time the story of my parents' struggles and experiences as they journeyed to a place where they became "aliens" and how that place is now the place they call "home."
Something that has always fascinated me is the confrontation with a completely different culture. We do not have to travel far to realize that people really lead different lives in other countries and that the saying "Home sweet home" often applies to most of us. What if we suddenly had to leave our homes and settle somewhere else, somewhere where other values and beliefs where common and where people spoke a different language? Would we still try to hang on to the 'old home' by speaking our mother tongue, practising our own religion and culture or would we give in to the new and exciting country and forget our past? And what would it be like for our children, and their children? In Identity Lessons - Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American I found many different stories telling us what it is like to be "trapped" between two cultures. In this short essay I aim to show that belonging to two cultures can be very confusing.
How would it feel to flee from post-war Communist forces, only to face an ethnocentric population of people in a new country? In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a portrait of a disquieting, often times touching, ethnography (i.e. a book that details particular data of an extended period of time an anthropologist spent living closely with a community of individuals during his or her field work) of Fadiman's experience living in Merced, California, which was home to the largest population of Hmong refugees, such as the Lee family, from Laos who suffered mass confusion when trying to navigate the American health care system. Because the Hmong could not speak sufficient English until the children gained language skills native to the United States, residents of California were not accepting of the Hmong community. Fadiman aims to better understand how knowledge of illness among Hmong and Western medical practitioners differ, which pushes the reader to understand how the complicate medical treatment in the past as well as the present from a perspective of an American observing a Hmong family's struggle with the system. In America, it isn’t uncommon to be judged for your clothing, your house, or the amount of money your family makes, so it is easy to believe that the Hmong people were not easily accepted into American society. As a whole, ethnocentrism, or the tendency to believe that one's culture is superior to another, is one of America's weaknesses and this account proves ethnocentric behavior was prominent even in the 1970-80's when Fadiman was in the process of doing her fieldwork in post-Vietnam War Era California.
In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa explains the implications of living under the influence of two cultures. She begins with a story of how she was punished by a teacher for correcting the pronunciation of her name. Anzaldúa gives the reader anecdotes about her life in a dual culture society, explaining the trials of accepting her heritage, fighting to find her place in Mexican or American society, and establishing herself as a proud Chicana.
Throughout Richards early childhood development he quickly understood that in order to succeed in America he would have to learn to confidently speak in English. Richard is Hispanic American and although he was born in America, Spanish was the only language that he was exposed to as a young child. He grew up in a home where Spanish flowed freely, but he soon realized outside of his home the language that he primarily knew was foreign. His parents spoke fluent Spanish along with all of his relatives. The brief encounters he experienced of his parents speaking English were only in public places and the proficiency was very poor. Rodriguez’s home was as a safety net for him and his Spanish speaking family with they are his only real connections to the outside world. It wasn’t until Richards encounter with his teachers that he and his family was heavily impressed on the importance of developing a public language. After the encouragement of the visit home from a teacher as a family
For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author describes the social, cultural and linguistic difficulties encountered in America as he attempts to assimilate to the American culture. Richard Rodriguez by committing himself to speaking English, he lost his cultural ties, family background and ethnic heritage.
What this tells us, or rather the challenges faced by South Asian Americans through the lens of Americans is that they are barbaric, living in close quarters, with more than the “normal” number of individuals in a room or even a building. Another interaction with Erica was when they were both in the ocean and Erica comments “I don’t think,” she said finally, “I’ve ever met someone our age as polite as you” (Hamid 25). What this tells us, or rather the challenges faced by South Asian Americans is that they have to be extra nice and polite in order to compensate for their “barbaric and backwardness” view that Americans tend to associate with these group of people. And of which has been heightened following the aftermath of 9/11. Another interaction with Erica was when she invited Changez over her parent’s apartment for the very first time and during a conversation with Erica’s father, he asked Changez how things were back home, to which he had replied back as “quite good, thank you” (Hamid 54). Erica’s father response to this:
When the school day came to an end, I would feel a nervous sensation as I waited to see if one of parents was standing on the other side of the school gate. From the conversations I heard amongst adults to the news I saw on TV, I knew that the possibility of never seeing my parents again existed. No one gave me a clear explanation of what was currently happening, but I was aware of one thing -- what the term “deportation” meant.
When the class was first asked to think of a topic for our reflective paper, this scenario was one that I could vividly remember as if it had just occurred yesterday. After I read Jose Antonio Vargas’s “Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” and Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, I noticed a common theme across these two pieces that I could very much relate to. Jose Antonio Vargas’s mother reminded him to fit into the American way of living by saying “If anyone asked why I was coming to America, I should say I was
“I am a first generation immigrant and a woman, but I don't really write about that because I feel like I'm a human being. There are universal human experiences.” (“Evelyn Rodriguez”). As a first generation woman myself, I can relate to the notion that I am more than my background. While there are universal experiences people go through, my cultural experience is something that sets me apart from others. I believe that it is essential for me to find the balance between assimilating into American culture while keeping my cultural identity.
Before I was five, I thought I was Chinese. However, I wondered why I couldn’t understand the Chinese patrons of Chinatown restaurants. Upon learning my true ethnicity, I pulled out a mammoth atlas we had under the bed. My father pointed to an “S”-shaped country bordering the ocean, below China. It was then that I learned my parents were refugees from Vietnam. “Boat people,” my mother, still struggling to grasp English back then, would hear kids whispering when she walked through the halls of her high school. Like many refugees, although my parents and their families weren’t wealthy when they came to America, they were willing to work hard, and like many Vietnamese parents, mine would tell me, “We want you to be success.”
The subject of this paper is Liz, a 52-year old, 1.5 generation female immigrant from Hong Kong. What this means is that she immigrated to the United States when she was a child, around 7-years old (Feliciano Lec. 1/4/2016). As a child of a family that consists of five siblings and two parents that did not speak any English prior to immigrating, the focus of this paper will be on the legal processes that the family went through to become legal immigrants and the various factors that aided in her path towards assimilation.
The education system has been changing in recent years and the same problems that existed continue to get worse as years pass. Problems that were seen as minor at first have now grown. How to change the public higher education system has been a major topic of discussion but there has still been no major action taken. We struggle to figure out how much funding is needed for higher education and where it should come from. Our people continue to suffer from an underfunded high cost system. The wealthy minority of people continue to be the only ones accounted for and it is time to change this. We need to adapt to the changes and the costs that continue to rise. It is time to help the struggling middle and lower classes. I believe that the best
For a new Dominican immigrant the united states must seem like a scary place, where there are seemingly insurmountable obstacles that need to be quickly dealt with. The first thing that must strike a Dominican who comes to the United States is that they do not speak the language. This problem seems like an obvious one, but it is so simple to take for granted that the people who hear you will understand the words, which are spoken. To come to a new coun...
Education is meant to be the key to a successful life. It is supposed to inspire great ideas, and prepare each and every generation for their future. However, school for today 's generation fails to meet those requirements. Every student knows education is important, but when school is not engaging or in some cases, even relevant, it makes learning difficult. Improving the school system is something educators attempt to accomplish every year. Despite their best efforts, there are numerous flaws students see, but adults overlook. There is a lack of diversity for students to learn, an overabundance of testing, and students’ voices are being ignored on how to create a more productive learning experience.