School teaches children their heritage
Students in the bicultural classes learn Latin American dances and music, and self-esteem.
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published March 28, 2005
TAMPA - Maria Esther Carrillo worried when her son refused to speak Spanish.
Then he turned up his nose at all things Colombian.
Then one day he came home and asked her, "Mummy, what does it mean to say "dirty Mexican?"'
The children at school, where 6-year-old Daniel had tried so hard to be like any other American kid, were making fun of him. Where he strove for sameness, they saw difference.
His mother set out to make him proud instead of ashamed. A teacher, she tackled the problem the way she knew best. She founded a school.
Six years later, Carrillo runs a bicultural school in northwest Hillsborough County for more than five dozen students whose parents, like her, are immigrants who fear their children will forget their heritage. The Saturday morning school teaches Spanish, music, dance and leadership, as well as the history of Latin America and the United States.
Millions of children of immigrants nationwide are trying to navigate the two worlds they live in: one with family, where their parents speak the language of their home country; the other at school.
In a 2001 book about children of foreign-born parents - approximately 20 percent of American youth - the co-directors of the Harvard Immigration Project said that learning to be bicultural and function well in both worlds gives the child a better chance for success. Those who don't are more at risk of dropping out of school or joining gangs. And even if they become socially successful, they are more likely to alienate their families.
To Carrillo - a former private school teacher at a Baptist school in Carrollwood and an organizer of multicultural programs - biculturalism means higher self-esteem for the children.
"They are confused," she said. "They are here but they have roots in another country."
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The school is called TICH, for its Spanish acronym, which means Hispanic-American Inter-Cultural Workshop. TICH students get a steady dose of Latin American and North American culture and history, with folkloric dances for the younger children and salsa and merengue for the older ones.
Carrillo and her husband, Francisco, an industrial engineer at McNichols Company in Tampa, left Colombia for the United States in 1990 to escape the violence in their country. They had two children in the United States, and Carrillo now works full time for TICH.
Like Carrillo, the instructors, some of whom who were teachers in their home countries, are unpaid volunteers. Parents pay $35 per month per child, which is used to buy materials and pay expenses, Carrillo said.
Much of the schools' materials were destroyed during a fire last year caused by wiring in the air conditioner. TICH lost historical documents, books, costumes and videos.
Since obtaining nonprofit status a year ago, Carrillo has aimed for grants to expand the program to East Tampa and St. Petersburg. Already, her students have performed dances and plays at the Florida State Fair, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Salvador Dali Museum, and at festivals in Hillsborough and Pinellas.
When the students are performing, their language and heritage is well-received by the audiences, Carrillo says. But back at school, classmates sometimes tell them to go back to their countries and to stop speaking Spanish, even those who were born in the United States.
Carrillo has seen some children of immigrants get embarrassed by their parents, some of whom have left jobs as lawyers or teachers in their home countries to become housekeepers or dishwashers in the United States.
The program, Carrillo said, is about teaching self-esteem, appreciation for their heritage and leadership.
This year it launched Hispanic Youth Voice of Tampa for high school students for bilingual community service and a volunteer outlet that could later help with college applications.
TICH also is a good place, Carrillo said, to stir up discussion about such issues as the Colombian flag controversy at Freedom High School. That's where a student was suspended in September for displaying the flag against the orders of an assistant principal.
"It's better to see Hispanic kids at the top of their class than 10 kids fighting for the flag," she said.
Several TICH students said they thought it was wrong for students to get punished for taking pride in their home countries. But they also agreed with 13-year-old Liliana Carrillo, Maria's daughter, who said the ensuing arguments between students and faculty at Freedom made Hispanics look bad.
"You have to represent in good ways," she said, and not just with flags.
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Students say TICH offers companionship and stronger ties to their families.
When Daniel Alvarez and his family came to Florida from Colombia four years ago, he felt left out.
"I couldn't speak with anybody," the 14-year-old freshman at Tampa Bay Tech said. "I had five or six Hispanic friends who were Colombian or Puerto Rican."
After he started at TICH three years ago, his circle of friends grew. He learned English at his regular school and about other Hispanics at TICH.
For Maria Villegas, TICH meant remembering her heritage.
"I was forgetting my Spanish," said Maria, 13, an eighth-grader at Progress Village Middle School. Her family moved from Colombia about eight years ago. After three years of studying Spanish and culture at TICH, she can talk to her grandparents again.
The students say they'll have more job opportunities now that they're bilingual.
Carrillo sees even more possibilities.
"There is a lot of division inside the (Hispanic) community," Carrillo said. "The kids will be in charge of this country, and they need to forget these divisions or the Hispanic community will never have the political power it can."
For more information, call TICH at 813 505-6351 or visit www.tichonline.org
--Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 813 226-3383 or amrhein@sptimes.com