Becoming Something Different: Learning From Esme

By Fairbanks, Crooks, and Ariail

Esme’s life revolves around her family, friends and school which leads us to the quote located on page 2, “...relationships among cultural affiliations, identity, and the experience of school." Emse starts out as adolescence with unknown identity and similar to many other bilingual students as myself, it was difficult understanding what’s going on around you and trying to fit in and what not to follow. Like Esme, I found my own circle of friends who were into school activities and were dorky like myself. We were not a popular group nor were we super smart and nerdy but we were able to get along and connect with each other.

"Esme, who may see themselves as only 'Kind of smart' and dependence on others for guidance..." is similar to myself in different ways. An example was, when I was younger and I was very dependent on my older brother for help on my homework. I didn’t understand any English at all and the funny part was that my brother was only a year older than I am and our ability to understand English was almost the same.

I totally agree with Fairbank’s statement on page 4 when they mentioned, “Furthermore, other scholars argue that Latina/o students would experience greater success in school if their cultural and linguistic practices were considered valuable cultural resources.” That’s why spirit week was invented in schools to help express the student’s culture and in certain class, such as the Multi-cultural class, students often do better because it’s the class to express their culture and of their interest.

On page 20, it was stated that “Being a good student, in other words, did not mean that she would be able to meet graduation requirements or pass the TAKS.” It’s true, not everyone is on the same level even though, they might be a good student or an A+ student who always does all of their work.