Local migrant family realizes the American Dream in their
children
The deck may be stacked against her chances for success, but Britton Middle School eighth grader Anarely Mercado has a goal in life: to help others, namely children, by becoming a pediatrician.
The ambition to be a doctor, with all the education it requires, could be just a dream for someone for whom English is a second language. Anarely, however, is determined to work hard to make her dream a reality.
Working hard to realize their dreams is something that runs in the Mercado family. Her family moved to Morgan Hill three years ago, said her father, Eduardo, 38, from San Jose. A landscape worker, he and his wife, Juanita, moved from Mexico 20 years ago to make a better life for themselves and for the family they hoped to have one day.
“They came to find work, because there are not so many jobs in Mexico,” Anarely said, the accent from her native language barely discernible now. “It makes me feel happy, feel good, that my dad wants to take care of us, wants to make us succeed.”
Coming to California meant a major cultural change for Eduardo and his wife, but he said he was glad to have work even if he had to move around at times to find it before finally settling in Morgan Hill three years ago.
“I worked very hard for many years, and finally was able to get this home,” he said. “I worked to build a life for our family.”
For many families who leave their native countries, this is a common goal, according to Lisa de Silva, executive director of Community Solutions, which provides homework assistance, tutoring and computer classes at the El Toro Youth Center, among other services.
“I think that society in general often makes a sweeping and totally inaccurate assumption that if people come to this county, without much education and cannot speak the language or have limited English skills, that they don’t value education,” she said. “Certainly we see a lot of families that are struggling, maybe are not providing the best environment for their children. But what we often see is parents who have extremely limited education themselves and either no English skills or limited skills, they have very high expectations for their children, to learn to do well, to excel.”
Anarely’s family is a clear example of de Silva’s point. Eduardo and Juanita arrived in the U.S. with limited English skills and a seventh grade education, but they were determined that Anarely and her brothers Eduardo, Jr., 11, and Jesus, 5, would complete at least their high school education, if not much more. Anarely, 13, is a part of the migrant student program through the Santa Clara County Office of Education. Though born in the United States, her English was not considered proficient until the second year of participation in the English Language Learner program.
“They have to go farther,” Eduardo said. “I tell them about all the work, how difficult it can be. I tell them I want them to have a better chance.”
Seated in the family’s comfortable living room, still adorned with Christmas decorations, as the rain fell steadily last week, Eduardo talked about how he worked to improve the front yard of the family’s home. He joked that his wife had, when seeing the “swimming pool” the front yard had become during their first rainy season, teased him about the yard.
“Every year, it gets a little better,” he said. “I worked a little more, made it a little better.”
Like the now beautifully landscaped front yard, the Mercado children are showing the fruits of their parents’ labor.
Since she was 9 years old, Anarely has known that she wanted to be a doctor, to help people – perhaps because she has been blessed herself with a loving, supportive family and knows others may not be so fortunate.
She does spend time helping with and playing with her younger brothers. Eduardo, Jr., who is in sixth grade at Paradise Valley Elementary, said his sister serves as a role model especially with his least favorite subject, math.
“She always helps me with math, I’m not so good at it,” he said. “We’re doing a lot of decimals and fractions. She is good at all that.”
But it is the family, not just Anarely, that reinforces the importance of education on a daily basis.
“My mom, she always says we can’t do anything, like watch TV or anything, before we do our homework,” Eduardo, Jr., said. “We know we have to get it all done, that it’s important.”
Anarely said knowing how hard her father and mother worked to make a home for their family, to help their children succeed, was all a part of what motivates her to strive for excellence.
“My mother, she is afraid if we don’t study, we won’t have a good life,” Anarely said. “She is afraid for us not to study, that then we would not have a job when we grow up. I want to make them happy, to make them proud and not to have to worry. I’m going to try to get scholarships so I can go to college.”
Anarely’s hard work was recently recognized by the Santa Clara County Office of Education, which is part of a regional, six county migrant student program. Brad Doyel, director of the program for the county, said the 22,000 students in the regional program face problems shared by some students not in the program but compounded by the migrant factor.
“There are three major challenges these students face,” he said. “Poverty is one, though not all migrant students suffer from this condition, the vast, vast majority do. Then there’s the cultural factor … Many of these students come from rural Mexico into American schools, American society. And of course there’s the language issue. Migrant students typically come with all three of those issues. On top of that, there is the unique aspect of migrant students, the interruption of migrancy itself.”
Anarely was recently selected as the county migrant student of the year, an honor for which she was nominated by her teachers at Britton. Principal Russom Mesfun told School Board trustees when she was recognized for the award that she was nominated not only because of her scholarship but also her attitude.
“She is one of our most promising students,” he said. “She is an asset to our teachers, she drew the attention of her teachers immediately upon enrolling in the seventh grade.”
