Note_20231117_2319_otter_ai

Priscila Castro, who migrated from Mexico as a child, talks about her experiences in the U.S. She came at the age of 9 for better education and a new life. Despite the language barrier, Priscila felt supported by compassionate teachers and her siblings. The transition was scary but exciting for her, and she had to be responsible and independent. There were challenges due to being migrants, but they overcame them. Here in my dining room sits Priscila Castro, someone who can speak on her experience of traveling here when she was a young child. Hi, my name is Priscila Castro. I'm currently 30, I migrated here when I was little with my parents, and right now I take care of working with a construction firm and accounting, and then I have an evening job doing cleaning, commercial cleaning. Okay, so now that we know a bit about Priscila's background, I want to ask you if you can tell us anything about what you remember when you came here to the U.S. When I came, I was about 9, 10 years old. We migrated from Mexico due to the economy and just to get a better life education-wise and living. When you came here, when you were how old? I was 9. And how was the culture shock arriving here? As a young child, I don't think you feel it so much since you spend time with kids. It's more a language barrier that you can't communicate and you can't really express what you want to say. And how was that when you started school? Thankfully, we were actually the first immigrant students in the school we went to. It was Fair Lawn back in 2002. I was going into third grade at the time, and we did get a lot of help. The school wasn't prepared for us, but they found a way to get all the resources and teachers and ESL teachers to get us in the right path of learning the language and getting homework done and getting through classes. What was it like being here? You said you were in third grade, and it was just you at that time. How was that, going through that by yourself? I did have a younger sister and brother. We all went to the same school. Oh, yeah, you're right. We went to the same school, so we were kind of together, even though we didn't have the same classes. We kind of see each other through the hallway, so I didn't feel as alone. But like I said, a lot of teachers were very compassionate, very understanding. They weren't pushing me on getting my homework turned in or if I asked a lot of questions. It was more home whenever it was time to do homework because my mom wasn't able to help us a whole lot to get homework done. And those resources were kind of short. Like I said, we were the first students there, so we didn't have the tutoring or had extra help with classes or sports or anything like that. How was it like being in a new place that you weren't before? It was scary, but at the same time, with my personality, I kind of liked it because it was something new. It was different. And since I'm the oldest, so it was kind of more like me having to be tough and being the responsible, independent. And it was hard, but I didn't think it was. It was a little bit, I want to say, harder for my younger siblings than it was for me. How did you think? How did you perceive the world then? And how do you think it perceived you? Then, in certain situations, I want to say probably it was a lot of scaring, a lot of stigma since we were migrants. And during that time, there wasn't a lot of Hispanic community as there is today. So my mom not knowing the language, us not knowing the language, there were a lot of barriers that we had to overcome. Living situations, school situations, getting to places, things like that were hard. Is there anything else you would like to add? No. Thank you, Lois.