Thursday, June 21, 2018

My Purpose: An Introduction to "Why We Came and How We Got Here"




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From my Facebook, about two weeks ago:

Hot off the press...after weeks and weeks of writing, re-writing and editing, this labor of love is finally complete! In this, our 15th edition, my students share some pretty compelling stories of why they came here and how they got here.

Like the generations of immigrants who came before them, these youngsters made their oftentimes dangerous treks here to escape extreme poverty and a very war-like environment.

They’re all great kids and they were afraid to share their stories because, well, we all know the attitudes towards immigrants these days, and so the only way I could get them to share their stories was to promise to publish them anonymously.

I’m very proud of ‘Why We’re Here and How We Got Here: True Stories of Young Immigrants,’ and I am thinking about publishing this as a PDF. Please click ‘like’if you’d want a copy. Thanks!

In the past couple of years it's become evident to me that I have a purpose in life.  It's something that I'm not yet totally comfortable with, but I find myself being driven by it.  From my own actions and reactions to the things going on around me lately, it's become pointedly clear that the things I'm doing are as natural to me as anything else in my life, ever, and so when the recently heated debate about immigration came bubbling to an ugly surface, I decided I had to act on it.  I put myself wholeheartedly behind what I do, what I live, and what I believe, and this is my truth.

It is with that in mind that I pointed my class' annual magazine in the direction of laying stories bare.  As one who teaches some social studies in my classroom, I know that primary sources of information, sources coming from those who have had actual experiences connected to a topic, are the best kinds of sources to go by, and so what better way to convey the stories of today's immigrants than to hear from them.  

Me and my students began this undertaking about six weeks prior to publication, and I'm proud of them for sharing what they experienced.  I've learned a lot about immigration from them that I never knew before, and I think that sharing the stories beyond the area of my school district is a worthwhile endeavor.  So I begin with my own introduction to the publication, a piece that lays out the process behind it.  Read on and stay tuned for some of their stories...

Dear Readers,

Welcome to “Why We Came and How We Got Here,” the latest version of our ENL Magazine. We began publishing this annual collection in 2004 in the hope that readers might gain a new perspective on our students, an often-misunderstood group of youngsters. To this point, I believe that goal has only been partially achieved. With the political climate of the country the way it is these days, misinformation and misunderstanding about the immigrant experience has reached an all-time high, and so our purpose for this year’s edition takes on a greater significance than ever before.


A Class Project Leads to a Mission

Early in the school year, the students in my ENL class completed an autobiographical project. This wasn’t the first time I’d ever assigned such a task, but it was the first time I ever really had to sell them on something. You see, with today’s immigrants drawing such open criticism and anger, I wanted to gain a better understanding of their stories. I wanted to know the real reasons why they came here and what they went through in making their way here. Even though I’ve been working with these kids for so long, even I wasn’t aware of the real answers to these questions.

Virtually all of the students were reluctant to tell their stories, and it was a hard sell to get them to do so. I had to assure them that the things they were going to share would stay within our group. In addition to a written piece, the students were also required to make a presentation to the class, sharing not only their personal stories of why and how they came to be here, but other such things as what they’d put on their bucket lists, some of their favorite things, and even their hopes for the future. It was during these presentations that my eyes opened wider than they had in fifteen years.

For more than two weeks, each of my students came to the front of the class to share their auto-biographies, and I learned things that I may have suspected over the years, but never really heard told so openly. Laughter and tears, and plenty of anguish permeated the room with each presentation, and those watching even just one of them either commiserated with the speaker or became consumed with empathy.

Empathy. It’s a word I often use in my classroom and one that I wholeheartedly believe everyone needs a little more of. If we make an effort to empathize more, we might just gain a whole new awareness that we didn’t have before, and hopefully these new perspectives might make this world a more tolerable place.

Once our presentations had finished, we continued with the theme by tackling the NY Times bestselling book, “Enrique’s Journey” by Sonia Nazario. It tells the story of a boy from Honduras who makes the harrowing and dangerous trek to the United States in search of his mother who had abandoned him when he was only five years old. Once again, memories were jarred by the many stories found in the book. 


A New Mission

When the time came to begin working on this publication, it seemed that general attitudes towards immigrants had become even worse than before. New stories and videos showing harassment towards immigrants, more specifically Hispanics, seemed to pop up every day on social media. News outlets cover raids and roundups of undocumented immigrants, families being forcibly separated, children being held in secretive, jail-like camps. The list of stories goes on and on and the more we hear, the worse the situation becomes.

In the poem, “Push and Pull,” I speak of the plight of the many generations of foreigners whose desperate situations led them to immigrate to this country. Each group of immigrants had its own reasons for coming, and most often it was to flee danger or poverty. The stories of today’s immigrant are no different, only the rules have since changed.

So I thought that perhaps we, our little group of immigrants who chose to settle here in Southold, might do our own little part in helping people gain a better understanding of who they are and why they came. Their stories are sometimes raw and always very personal, and show just how desperate these immigrants must be to undergo such a dangerous journey that they are not guaranteed to finish. I believe that the immigrant population in Southold is a microcosm of the greater immigrant population and their individual stories reflect the experiences of the whole.

Again, selling this idea was a difficult task. Some of the stories contained within are highly personal, and I am sure that still there were difficult details that were omitted because of their emotional impact. I convinced my students that this undertaking will be worth it if we get even one person to see immigration in a different light. The idea of their stories being published elicited an even greater protest than the project had, and so in the end we decided that all of the stories published would be anonymous. I encourage you to read on with an open heart and an open mind.

Thank you,

John Myers













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