Bringing culture to classroom
No Comments →Teacher from Mexico teaches kids about her culture, tribe.
Sonia Marquez started to cry as she thought about her trip to Hillbrook School in Los Gatos.
Everything is completely different from the school she works at in Mexico, she said. The school where she teaches is the size of one classroom at Hillbrook, and she must buy materials for her students because the government won’t supply them and parents can’t afford them.
Marquez, 42, visited Hillbrook due to a four-year partnership between the K-8 school and the Cucapah tribe. The partnership began when the nonprofit organization Comunidad Para Baja California reached out to Los Gatos schools looking for a school to “adopt” the tribe.
Hillbrook signed on immediately.
“It was very important for us to come here and teach our traditions,” Marquez said through an interpreter. Although some teachers from Hillbrook have visited the tribe in Mexico, this was Marquez’s first trip to Los Gatos.
Marquez visited Hillbrook on Thursday and Friday, teaching students some of the traditions of her culture. She showed the students a food storage basket made of willow leaves. Willow leaves, she explained, are used because bugs stay away due to their smell.
She showed the classes pottery used to carry water and honey and taught students how to make a traditional beaded bracelet.
For the past few years, the children from both cities have communicated through letters and pictures. Hillbrook students have sent items to the Cucapah tribe items such as soap and toothbrushes.
Horacio Gonzalez Moncada, who has worked as a liaison for the two cities and doubled as Marquez’s interpreter on her trip, said many of Marquez’s students are from poor families who find it hard to afford the basics.
When families were asked to help out by chipping in $2 for school supplies, some couldn’t afford to do it, he said.
But Pamela Pearson, one of the founders of Comunidad, said the group is working to better the tribe’s quality of life.
She said the organization broke off from the “Flying Doctors,” a group of doctors and pilots that give medical aid to residents in rural and poor areas of Mexico. Pearson said she and others noticed a “great need” on the tribe’s reservation and decided to focus on helping to give them and three other tribes medical treatment and help rebuilding decaying buildings.
Pearson said the group thought a sister-city-type program with a Los Gatos school would be good for teaching students about life in another area unlike their own.
“It’s a way for the Los Gatos kids to communicate in a global way, in a way they never have before,” Pearson said. “We think both will benefit immensely from this.”
Marquez said the supplies from Los Gatos have enabled her 45 students to do projects they otherwise could not have.
Jodi Kittle, a teacher who has spearheaded the relationship between the students, said children are perfect ambassadors because they are very interested in each other.
“This is just an empowering experience, and a humbling experience for the students,” Kittle said.
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