I am privileged to teach in a school where the majority of the student body represents minoritized groups (mostly Mexican American). Being of Mexican heritage myself, I am positioned to relate to my Mexican students, but as I complete my fifth year of teaching, not only do I see a need to keep my students’ cultures vibrant, I have also seen how upbringings in Mexican families differ from my own.

There is much variety within the Mexican and Mexican-American families of my school. There are recently immigrated families who are learning to live in a new country. There are patriarchs and matriarchs of families who remember life in Mexico but whose grandkids have only known living in the U.S. And there are families of Mexican descent who have lived in the U.S. for four or five generations, still identify with their Mexican heritage, but have lived their lives immersed in US culture. Seeing nuanced differences among the family structures of my Mexican and Mexican-American students and my students’ proximity to cultural cues, led me to reflect on my own upbringing in order to understand my perspective, so I can be more intentional when creating lessons that reflect my students’ cultures.

In order to understand my students’ identities, I had to unpack my own. I had to look at what I believed - figure out why I believed those things - reflect how those things are currently looked at - and come to terms with what that means if those beliefs are different than my own.

I grew up in the Rio Grande Valley or the RGV, the southernmost part of Texas that lies next to the Rio Grande River, the river that separates the US and Mexico. Where I lived in the RGV and its closeness to Mexico (a 20 minute drive) has created a culture that is a blend of Mexican and US traditions - something truly unique that continues to grow with the people who live there. The language heard in the cities in the RGV reflects this. English and Spanish are used interchangeably in conversation, and a term is used to describe this. Spanglish. A mix of English and Spanish. The idea that language (Spanish or English) has to be grammatically and academically perfect exists as a measurement of correctness, a standard. Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley I did not believe Spanglish was a pejorative term, though that belief does exist. The interwovenness of English and Spanish was something I heard all around me, so it was natural to my ear and was not something that registered as incorrect. 

My mother’s pride in her Mexican identity provided a bridge to my Mexican heritage. Her pride in being a Mexican immigrant is the inspiration from which I draw my Mexican pride. From a very early age, I was exposed to the culture my mother grew up in. Since I was six months old I spent my summers in Guadalajara, Mexico to visit my maternal side of the family. I had strong relationships with the Mexican culture from those yearly summer and Christmas visits which helped develop my understanding of the traditions of my family and the Spanish language.

In the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where I teach now, I observe families of similar heritage use Spanish in their day to day speaking as well but it is becoming more common that I notice families that do not. When I began my first year of teaching in a part of Texas far north from the Rio Grande Valley, I experienced a language/culture shock. I was surprised to encounter Latinx children who did not pronounce their Spanish language names with the pronunciation. When I would pronounce their names, students preferred I say their names with an “Americanized” pronunciation. Seeing how frequently this occurred, I realized some Mexican American students had been raised as mainly English speakers - a very different experience than my own. Though we are a part of a shared culture, our relation and understanding of that shared culture is different.

Processing my identity in relation to my students’ has made me wonder how my students view their own cultural identities. There are those students who just migrated to the US and may claim their home country’s heritage. There are students who have had generations of their families in the US but still connect with their heritage of origin. There are probably students like me, who won’t claim one more than the other. How will I as an educator include all these identities and cultures that are still evolving? 

I noticed the differences between these groups in relation to my own identity and I noticed how my students were communicating the way in which they view themselves. As a music educator, I recognize that all cultures, new and old, have a place in my classroom. I recognize my identity but I also allow space for where I currently teach, knowing that although we have a shared heritage, north Texas is different from where I was raised in the RGV. I see this as an opportunity to teach more than music. I want my classroom to be an open space to talk about all the cultures found in our school. I want to bring my understanding of my identity to my classroom and offer more information and more options. Music is a tool that can be used to open the door to different cultures so students can learn more about themselves and others.  

There is not just one musical sound that represents Mexico though sometimes it is presented that way. My students and I discuss genres like reggaeton, ska, mariachi, ranchera, norteño, corrido, folklorico, huapango… In my music classroom, we explore many different types of musical styles from within the same country. The history of these genres are inspired from many different countries or traditions within Mexico. When my students begin to see how one musical genre is cultivated from many different influences, then they begin to understand how nuanced and intertwined music can be. In these discussions and realizations, my students open up about how they were raised and feel pride sharing that with others and we see that we also come from different influences like the music we learn about.

Every school year my goal is to introduce a new country or people’s songs and children’s games to my students. I always start with a conversation about how the world is full of a variety of people and how we must have an open mind towards the unfamiliar because that’s what makes us unique and worth knowing. If the music classroom is an open environment for all students who enter, then I, the teacher in the music classroom, must be the example. I must do the work to learn about who my students are, who they are in the present, and in return they will learn who I am now because of my past.