Special Report
Equity & Diversity

Native New Yorker Finds Spanish a ‘Lost’ Skill

By Lesli A. Maxwell — June 01, 2012 2 min read
Eighth grader Alisa Rodriguez, left, talks with classmate Diana Huerta after school ends at the Family Life Academy Charter School. Alisa is one of the few students of Puerto Rican descent at the mostly Latino school in New York.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Alisa Rodriguez is a quintessential New York City teenager. Of Puerto Rican descent, Rodriguez was born in the Bronx 14 years ago to parents who were also raised in that New York City borough. Her mother and father graduated from big public high schools in the city.

But Rodriguez’s parents—her mother is a school administrator and her father works as a hotel doorman in Times Square—wanted a different education for their daughter, who will start high school in September. Since the second half of her kindergarten year, Rodriguez has attended the Family Life Academy Charter School, a K-8 school in the South Bronx neighborhood of High Bridge that predominantly serves Hispanic students, many of them children of immigrants from Central and South America.

“I would have home-schooled her before sending her to our neighborhood schools,” says her mother, Catherine Rodriguez, now the director of operations for Family Life Academy. The senior Rodriguez, who was born in the American commonwealth of Puerto Rico and moved to New York at age 4, left college before earning a degree. Her husband went to work as soon as he graduated from high school.

At Family Life Academy, Alisa Rodriguez is somewhat unusual among her classmates. She’s one of just a few students of Puerto Rican background and, unlike nearly half her classmates, who began school knowing only Spanish, the teenager is a native English-speaker who understands more Spanish than she speaks. Her mother is bilingual.

“I don’t really use Spanish unless I see my grandparents,” she says. “My parents taught me when I was young, but I never used it, so I lost it.”

A self-described hard worker, she puts most of her energy into her mathematics and science courses because “they challenge me more and I like a challenge,” she says. She is a serious student now, but says that wasn’t the case until the demands of a teacher in 4th grade forced her to buckle down.

“She was a tough teacher, and she told us that if we didn’t work hard, we couldn’t reach our goals,” Rodriguez says. “She read us high-school-level books and showed us what we had to be able to do.”

Her 8th grade math teacher pushed her to overcome nervousness about speaking up in class.

“He brings me up to the front of the class because he knows I can do the work,” she says. “He really pushes me to excel.”

She’s confident that the high expectations and the courses she’s taken at her charter school have prepared her to do well at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering in Manhattan, the competitive public high school where she will be a freshman in September.

Alisa Rodriguez will be the only student from her 8th grade class moving on to Columbia Secondary, and, she points out, the student enrollment is “a lot different” at her next school. Fewer Latino students are enrolled there, she says.

“I’m going alone, and that does make me a little nervous,” she says. “But the teachers there seem very close to the students, and I met one girl at the open house who is Puerto Rican and has the same last name as me. I call her my long-lost cousin. We’ve bonded already.”

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Equity & Diversity Teacher, Students Sue Arkansas Over Ban on Critical Race Theory
A high school teacher and two students asked a federal judge to strike down the restrictions as unconstitutional.
2 min read
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs an education overhaul bill into law, March 8, 2023, at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. On Monday, March 25, 2024, a high school teacher and two students sued Arkansas over the state's ban on critical race theory and “indoctrination” in public schools, asking a federal judge to strike down the restrictions as unconstitutional.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs an education overhaul bill into law, March 8, 2023, at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark.
Andrew DeMillo/AP
Equity & Diversity Opinion What March Madness Can Teach Schools About Equity
What if we modeled equity in action in K-12 classrooms after the resources provided to college student-athletes? asks Bettina L. Love.
3 min read
A young student is celebrated like a pro athlete for earning an A+!
Chris Kindred for Education Week
Equity & Diversity Girls Are Falling in Love With Wrestling, the Nation's Fastest-Growing High School Sport
A surging number of states have sanctioned the sport, with bolstering from various groups.
6 min read
Benton's Callie Hess, left, battles Plum's Saphia Davis, right, during the first found of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., on March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
Callie Hess, left, battles Saphia Davis, right, during the first round of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., on March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
Matt Rourke/AP
Equity & Diversity What's Permissible Under Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law? A New Legal Settlement Clarifies
The Florida department of education must send out a copy of the settlement agreement to school boards across the state.
4 min read
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media, March 7, 2023, at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms under a settlement reached March 11, 2024 between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don't Say Gay.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media, March 7, 2023, at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms under a settlement reached March 11, 2024, between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged the state's “Don't Say Gay” law.
Phil Sears/AP