October 15, 2024 | Diana Good Solis
As a Mexican-American, my Latina heritage has long evoked pride and a deep sense of belonging to a rich culture with a heart-centered, familia primero (“family first”) approach. But it wasn’t always that way.
When my family first moved to the United States from Mexico City, the little girl in me wanted nothing more than to fit in, to shed my Mexicana self in an attempt to blend in with my classmates. In those early elementary years, I stopped speaking Spanish at home, answering my father’s Spanish with English-only replies meant to cement my membership in this new place. Years later, as a young teacher in my first classrooms in Denver, Colorado — surrounded by young people whose parents had made the same journey, from Mexico to the United States — I began reclaiming my full self, one pride-filled recognition at a time.
I saw, in them, the same quiet grace I recognized in my father. I heard their stories of dedication to their families, their desire to earn a living in order to provide for their parents and siblings. I understood their struggle to hold two cultures in one heart, to fly using the wings of opportunity granted by their parents’ courage without leaving their families behind in the rush to assimilate.
In watching my students, I saw myself. In loving them into a full recognition of their cultural tapestry, I found my own.
This fall, at the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, I had the honor of visiting our Ector campus in Odessa, Texas, and attending their graduation celebration. While there, I sat with a young woman named Ruby as she worked on her graduation speech. She told me about her grandparents who moved here from Mexico to give their children and grandchildren a better life. We talked about the sacrifice required to make that choice — leaving behind familiarity in search of opportunity — and about how she is the beautiful answer to that sacrifice.
Did you know? The Hispanic population in Ector County, Texas, is 63.6% of the total population. >>>
Diana and Deily at the September 2024 Ector Acceleration Academies high school graduation in Odessa, Texas.
I met Deily, an Ector graduate whose mother came to the United States from Mexico as a teenager and who never got the chance to earn her high school diploma. As a result, she raised her two children to work hard and to value education — lessons Deily plans to pass along to her own baby, due to arrive next spring.
Watching our Ector graduates and their families on that September afternoon, I thought about the long journey from there to here. And as I listened to the musical blend of Spanish and English weaving in and out between laughter and tears of pride and accomplishment, I remembered that little girl who worked so hard to distance herself from the place she was born, only to find herself coming home, again and again.
To all of us whose parents and grandparents left what they knew so that we could know something more, here is what I know most of all: We are the beautiful answer to that sacrifice. And what an answer it is.
Diana Good Solis is a proud Latina and the Executive Director of Model Fidelity at Acceleration Academies. She joined Acceleration Academies in March 2019 after two decades of teaching English Literature and coaching high school teachers and leaders in Denver, Colorado.