Sandra Tovar

Intro to Education
April 14, 2016
Culture Identity
I am a nineteen year old female, who grew up in a middle class, Hispanic household. Growing up
in a Hispanic household in the United States requires you to have more expectations from your
community because there is pressure from both your cultures to demonstrate that you are able to fit in
with your culture, according to your parents ethnicity, and the culture where you grow up in. In my case I
grew up with the ideals of the Hispanic culture and began to pick up on some of the values of the
American culture. I personally feel that I have benefitted from the structural discipline my parents
enforced in my household because it has taught me to do well in school and outside of my school
community.
I spent my early childhood speaking Spanish with my parents and my first words were in
Spanish, but quickly grasped the English language at an early age from listening to my siblings and
watching movies repeatedly. I identified myself with English more than I did with Spanish, I found
myself having a hard time communicating my ideas in a language I was not speaking often with and that
made it difficult to communicate with my family and friends. I grew up in a household where I was forced
to learn two different languages; it was a hard transition to change the languages quickly. I found myself
having a hard time communicating my ideas to parents when I did not know how to translate a word or
phrase from English to Spanish and also vice versa when I spoke to my siblings or teachers. I was put in a
new and beneficial program in school, which helped my parents enormously; I was added to a program in
school called the dual language program which basically was a program where I spoke both English and
Spanish in the classroom. It was beneficial to parents who lacked the time to teach their kids their culture
and language, in this case it was primarily Spanish, while the students spoke a language they felt
comfortable speaking, English. Due to this program and the culture I grew up in I am fluent in two
languages and can read and write both, and I felt like this has had an impact in my way of thinking and
reacting to situations and general issues. As a child it was difficult to transition from one language to
another in a small period of time, as I grew older I was able to quickly go from one language to another. I
react to things quickly because I have learned to quickly be able to adapt from one setting to the next in a
reasonable amount of time which has benefitted when I transitioned from one school to another. As a
child I was very strategic in choosing my friends and I identified with everyone in my dual language class
which was great because I grew up with all of those kids who to this day are still my friends. I spent my
first eight years of school with the same people which made my transition from one grade to another very
easy and worry-free, but it became a problem in high school since I was not seeing my same peers from
the past years. Although I was not seeing my friends of several years I found myself making new friends
quickly and was very easy communicating with others.
In my community being a female means that you are and will be a house-wife but because I had
adapted to the American culture so quickly found myself wanting to become something more than the
label that my culture gave me. I was continuously told by my parents, that education was first and only
focus. They were very supportive when it came to an education and outgrew their cultures ideas in
labeling you according to your gender. I grew up in a catholic community but gradually identified with
the Christian community as I grew older; although the Hispanic culture teaches you to become a catholic I
decided to look into another religion where I was able to identify to and agree with what they believed. I
was never involved too much with my culture but I was able to distinct myself with some type of culture
as a child and also today as an adult. I have three siblings, and soon after I was born my siblings had
children of their own, I grew up in a relatively larger family than others. At one point there was fourteen
people living in a house of five rooms and two bathrooms; although there was very little room in my
home we always felt comfortable living in a small house. We are a middle class family, but with so many
people in one household it was difficult to keep up with money for necessities and wants in my family.

My parents made enough to pay for the bills and school loans for my siblings and myself; therefore I
never grew up playing with the amount of toys that other kids were granted growing up with. At a
younger age I never recognized the difficulties that there were growing up as a Hispanic/American
female, now I see how difficult it is to be accepted in both cultures. I was taught that people were all the
same, but I can now see how different people are and how difficult to identify with the Hispanic
community and the American community. And as a female I am just now realizing the hardships that there
are being a female in the career section, there is an identifiable inequality between the males and females,
and I feel like this will always be a problem for females because everyone has adapted and engraved that
men are superior in certain careers and that leads women to doubt themselves and continuing what they
want to do. It is definitely difficult growing up in this kind of category - female Hispanic/American
household - because there is more pressure in demonstrating the cultures that you are part of both and also
demonstrate to others that females are capable of doing the same as males.
I grew up in a household where I was forced to learn two different languages; it was a hard
transition to speak English to my siblings and then transition to Spanish when I spoke with my parents. I
found myself having a hard time communicating my ideas to parents when I did not know how to
translate a word or phrase from English to Spanish and also vice versa when I spoke to my siblings or
teachers. I was put in a new and beneficial program in school, which helped my parents enormously; I
was added to a program in school called the dual language program which basically was a program
where I spoke both English and Spanish in the classroom. It was beneficial to parents who lacked the time
to teach their kids their culture and language, in this case it was primarily Spanish, while the students
spoke a language they felt comfortable speaking, English. Due to this program and the culture I grew up
in I am fluent in two languages and can read and write both, and I felt like this has had an impact in my
way of thinking and reacting to situations and general issues. As a child it was difficult to transition from
one language to another in a small period of time, as I grew older I was able to quickly go from one
language to another. I react to things quickly because I have learned to quickly be able to adapt from one
setting to the next in a reasonable amount of time which has benefitted when I transitioned from one
school to another. My years spent in elementary school and junior high school I was placed in all the
average classes and worked my way to the honors classes in high school. I began honors classes my
sophomore year in high school. I applied myself in school in order to be placed in AP courses to benefit
from them in my early years of college. I was the type of student to complete homework on time and
made sure everything was at its best to earn a good grade, as a student I was always responsible in
completing assignments or studying for exams. Overall, my goal as a student was to take what I learned
and apply it to different situations and also was to do well in the courses. I always wanted to be in the top
ten percent of my class and refuses to take any grades lower than an A, I made sure to strategically make
time to focus on school work.
As a child I was very strategic in choosing my friends and I identified with everyone in my dual
language class which was great because I grew up with all of those kids who to this day are still my
friends. I spent my first eight years of school with the same people which made my transition from one
grade to another very easy and worry-free, but it became a problem in high school since I was not seeing
my same peers from the past years. Although I was not seeing my friends of several years I found myself
making new friends quickly and was very easy communicating with others.
Through my experience I have projected myself in becoming a similar teacher as the ones that I have
shared a school year with. I have the ability to communicate in two languages and I want to use both in
order to benefit other students from gaining a new language but also a way to communicate in different
places where this language might be used. I am planning to be part of an elementary school staff, and I
want to teach the students from a young age the purpose of school; as I was younger I never understood
the reason why we were taken to school and I feel that nowaday many young students are not complying
with school assessments or general assignments for that particular grade. Since technology has become
popular amongst children I think that it is important to use technology that students have become experts
in and it is best to use technology in an interactive way to promote using technology in a friendly and

effective way instead of using it poorly like many children are doing now. I want to focus on the interests
of the students and I want to highlight their ideas in school work to make the experience of attending
school enjoyable for children. The easiest way for students to gain information through school is if you
have them interact with the material.