English class in Nogales, Sonora

Monday, 07 December 2009 01:00

Just a few yards north of the Centro de Estudios Tecnologicos Industrial y de Servicios (CETIS), a high school in Nogales, Sonora, is a weathered green border fence.

The daunting buildings towers over the buildings along its length, separating the United States from its southern neighbor. While it stands as a symbol of great divide within the U.S. political landscape, the border wall is just another piece of backyard architecture and everyday life for the high school students.

“You can stand beside the wall and you can see Mexico with a lot people, with a lot of problems, with a lot of violence and you can see the U.S. which is the other side of the coin,” said Amaury Gama Sánchez, a Tucson-born student studying English at the Mexican high school.

The border fence exists to prevent migrants from crossing the border illegally. It represents the separation between nations, but what it fails to keep out (or in) are the influences of United States culture that pour over the border, even past the reaches of the deep shadow that it casts.

“The English classes are comparing Halloween and Day of the Dead for a project,” Vice Principal Francisco Orozco Gutierrez said.

The teachers at the school use the bits of American popular culture – like music and holidays – that trickle  past the border wall as teaching tools in their curriculum.

For teachers, it is an easier avenue to take because the students are already exposed to it everyday.

“Students are encouraged to learned English because of the border,” Maria del Carmen Herdia Cota said.

Cota, an English teacher at the high school, also teaches English to help prepare students for better opportunities that present themselves when the students know the language, she said.

"In public schools, students are introduced to English in middle school,” Cota said. “But they don’t fully develop the language until they reach high school."

There are only a few private schools in Nogales that teach English in elementary school.

CETIS, a three-year and six-semester public high school, divides its English program into five sections that are spread out over six semesters.

For beginners, "we tried to pull out any vocabulary the student might know," Cota said.

Students are tested on their English proficiency before they are placed in an English course.

Cota said her students only have five hours each week of English.

“When students go home they don’t practice English very much because their parents or siblings might not speak English,” Cota said about many of her students.

But for some students, like Zamora Espinoza Anahi Cecilia, 17, practicing at home is not a problem.

“My dad speaks English and when I don't know something I can ask him and my mom doesn't know anything in English and my sister doesn't know anything in English," said Cecilia, “but my brother who is 6 years old speaks English very well.”

On Oct. 25, a shy Cecilia rose up in class and began to speak about how much U.S. pop culture influenced her to speak English.

“When I was little it was Britney Spears and now I like T.I.,” Cecilia said about the popular U.S. musical artists. “I use a lot of MTV and when I was little I watched Sesame Street.”

Like many of the other students, Sanchez, 17, wants to study in the United States and eventually become a doctor. The openly vocal student is often found sharing his thoughts about the two countries in his English class.

“Mexico is a great country, Mexico is my house, it's my home. I love Mexico. If sometime there was a war with the U.S. and Mexico, I would definitely be with Mexico,” Sanchez said. “But I think all the problems that we have as a nation come from the government. It's something that can get you angry sometimes.”

Written by Roxana Vásquez