Every day, students in Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua, and Columbus and Deming, New Mexico, navigate two countries, two languages, and two distinct educational systems. For these young U.S. citizens living in Mexico, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to attend school is just another part of the routine. But for the faculty members from the WNMU College of Education, a recent visit to this border community was an eye-opening experience—one that revealed both the challenges and importance of bilingual education in the borderlands.
The day trip to Deming, Columbus and Palomas was organized by Professor of Education and Associate Dean of the College of Education Alexandra Neves. It was prompted by a desire to better understand the students that the university is educating and to better understand the students that education majors will have in their classrooms.
Many WNMU education students come to the university from Deming, said Neves, and the university also has dual enrollment programs at Deming High School. In dual enrollment, students are concurrently enrolled in high school and WNMU.
In particular, Neves wanted Education faculty to visit a Bilingual Academy class taught by Guadalupe Estrada. Neves praised the work of Estrada, saying, “I wanted our faculty members to see the work she is doing there and to see the pathway she is creating to help the students to come to college. … She really allows them to be creative.”
Students in the program are able to graduate high school having completed the requirements of a WNMU minor in Spanish.
In addition to their time at Deming High School, the faculty visited Columbus Elementary. “Right now, they have about 480 students in the school, and about 400 of them cross the border from Palomas every day,” said Neves. An additional 400 students cross the border to attend Deming middle and high schools.
The WNMU faculty on the trip met with the administration and faculty at Columbus Elementary and learned about the experiences of the students crossing the border as well as the experiences of their teachers.
After their stop in Columbus, the group of faculty crossed the border to have lunch in Palomas, and on their return were able to witness the students crossing back into Mexico at the end of the school day. A string of buses approached the border on the U.S. side, and a long line of parents awaited the children on the Mexican side of the border. Students crossed the militarized checkpoint, having their backpacks searched along the way, before rejoining their families.
Witnessing the children’s experience helped the faculty from WNMU to better understand what it means to prepare future teachers that can succeed in southwest New Mexico, Neves indicated. “We prepare teachers for this context here,” she said. “We need to know how we can help and support them to build the skills to effectively teach those children.”
“That was what I wanted our faculty to be exposed to,” said Neves. “Sometimes you hear about something or you read it in a book, and you have one perception of what that context is all about, but when you go and talk to the children, talk to the teachers—to have that experience is different.”
(AP Photos/Rodrigo Abd, Used with Permission)