Mr. Sanchez (00:00):
I think that being a human being on this planet in these times, being a warrior of light and fighting a fight that we know that we may never win, and fighting a fight that we know we may never see the end of, but if we don't fight it, nobody else is going to.
Mary (00:25):
2020 made me afraid. COVID, social injustice, so much grief. I was really afraid that we were going to lose hope. And if we lose hope, we lose everything. So I went out and asked, why do you still hope? To people I trust, the people of zip code economies. And here's what I learned. And you're, like me, going to be so encouraged, so appreciative and so inspired. Please listen.
Mary (01:04):
You're listening to Zip Code Economies 1.5, a special edition brought to you in a time of need by your Zip Code family.
Mary (01:20):
I'm pretty old by now and I still wish I had a teacher like Mr. Sanchez. He has that light in his eye that will carry you even when you can't carry yourself. And somehow he has that despite so many things he's been through, and just makes me want to talk to him again and again and listen to what he has to say. So here we go. Listen with me.
Mr. Sanchez (01:46):
My name is Louis Sanchez. I'm a 10th grade English teacher at Firebaugh High School, which is a primarily Hispanic community. We're a title one school. We're in the outskirts of Fresno County, where we have a lot of students who they themselves travel. They're migrant workers. They travel seasonally to kind of follow the jobs around in California. So a lot of their parents are undocumented and they live in a constant state of fear regarding not only immigration now, but also COVID, and their ability to keep their families afloat and feed each other. So it's pretty interesting out here right now.
Mary (02:25):
Those are heavy burdens to carry. How are they been faring?
Mr. Sanchez (02:28):
Because I grew up in a similar community, so I think that maybe people out here, because we've been forged by such hardships are pretty resilient. So keeping my finger on the pulse in the community, through my students via our Zoom meetings, interactions with the locals here on campus, there's a lot of smiles, and a lot of laughter, and a lot of unity. We're all in the same boat, and I think we're all trying to steer the ship in the right direction. I don't feel like there's a loss of hope. I feel stress levels are high, but everybody is being as compassionate as they can to one another, which I find pretty consoling.
Mary (03:12):
It consoles me just hearing about it, honestly. If you can show up with compassion and we can soothe each other, that's actually pretty powerful. So on top of COVID-19 and concerns about immigration, which have been in the news, there has recently been just this tremendous reckoning that the racial injustice is a real thing and that we've seen it bubble up in very vivid ways. And I wonder if that and how that is affecting your community?
Mr. Sanchez (03:42):
I don't think that that problem has never not been here. I think it's always been here. And I think that the inequities that exist in a community like this are pretty obvious and ever-present to our students and to their parents, simply because just the general structure of the place they live in, it's in extreme poverty. It's a rural community. There's a few wealthy landowners who hold most of the land that are owners of the farms and the ranches. Their parents worked for them, kind of almost like indentured servitude to a certain degree. They come out here and then they have to work because there is no other way to do things but to work for these wealthy, primarily white landowners. So the structure has always been there. The institutionalized racism has always been there. Now I'm not accusing any of these farmers or ranchers of acting out against the Hispanic community or acting in any specific racist way.
Mr. Sanchez (04:44):
But the structure itself lends itself for that inequity and power, and even the way that they can voice themselves within the community and within the school structure itself, it's always been there. So I don't feel like the students are necessarily any more aware of it. They've always been aware of it, but I don't think it's any more than it has been in the past. And I don't think the parents are any less or more aware of it. And that bleeds heavily into the level of education that we can offer these students and the ability that some of these students have to be successful, specifically now that they are at home. I feel like here in the classroom, we can offer them a sanctuary where we can be equitable, or at least some of us can be equitable, and we can feed everybody, and we can feed them not only physically, but also intellectually equally across the board. But now that they're stuck at home and the resources are so vast and different from home to home, I think those inequities are more obvious.
Mary (05:49):
Do you worry that there'll be a generation left behind because they have these systemic barriers that you can't mitigate successfully because they're not in person?
Mr. Sanchez (06:00):
I'm hopeful. I'm a hopeful man. I have to be to survive and to stay sane. We hope that we can do the best we can for every generation of students and that we can give as much as we can give to them. And I feel that 100% of the people that I work with here to some degree feels that they're doing everything they can for these students. But am I worried? Definitely. I'll give you an example. I have two or three students who live miles and miles and miles outside of even Firebaugh who were given hotspots by the district so that they can access the content online, but they live so far out that those hotspots don't have any reception so they can't access the material. And now we're teaching and we're moving forward, but we have students who are being left behind. And not anybody's fault, but just circumstance. We're doing everything we can for them, but we're not giving them equitable education because they can't access the same material.
Mary (07:05):
That's heartbreaking.
Mr. Sanchez (07:06):
We're doing everything we can as a district to get that education out to them, to provide them with the resources, and the Chromebooks, and the hotspots. But the reality is, the place that they live, they don't have any reception. So these kids are sitting around, stressed out, trying to log in every day to no avail, and their peers and their teachers are continuing to march forward. And that's just two or three that I know of in my class. Who's to say that not every teacher has two or three, and now you have 50, 60, 70, 80 students in the district who are getting left behind. And then on top of that, you add the fact that we do work with primarily Hispanic communities who are immigrants, many of them are Salvadorian and Mexican who have never had an opportunity to touch a computer prior to coming to the United States.
Mr. Sanchez (07:58):
And now they have to navigate through Zoom meetings, Google Classroom, access curriculum online, listen to webinars, and screen testifies, and figure out how to use Word, and Google Slides, and Excel Sheets and all of these things where they have not touched a computer the entirety of their life. So that puts them at a disadvantage. And this is what I mean, our community has and will always be at a disadvantage because of the social economic inequities between those who have and those who have not. So it's not a new problem for us. I just think that the current climate has reminded us and has thrown it back on our faces, because it's easy to forget some of those inequities when you can compensate for students inability to reach technology by practicing good teaching the classroom. But now that that's been taken away from us, we're left with the glaring inequities that we as teachers and we as a district have no way of closing that gap.
Mary (09:08):
Right. All your tools were taken, and so the veil has been lifted and the inequities are there.
Mr. Sanchez (09:13):
Exactly.
Mary (09:15):
So you said you're a hopeful man. I'm a hopeful person. I share your hope. But one of the things I've been asking myself is, why? Why do I still hope? And what I'd like you to say is, you just described really a heart wrenching reality that you can't change. Even if you try your very hardest, there are these gaps in access to important things that really in the world that we live in today should be public utilities. Everyone should have access to these things and they don't. So help us understand how you still hope, why you still do it?
Mr. Sanchez (09:52):
I think having come from a community like this, having grown up in this way, being an immigrant myself, having to have learned the language at the age of 11, and somehow have survived it, and thrived and became an educator of the same language that he had to learn, my own personal experiences are also reflected with these students. I see myself in them. And one of the powerful tools that I am equipped with from this classroom is that those students are able to also see themselves in me. The things that these students have gone through and I personally have experienced have forged to some degree the willpower to exasperate every resource, to do everything we can for them. It's almost to a certain degree instinctual. It's the human spirit trying to survive. Like the salmon swims against the current to get upstream, I feel like a lot of these students know and understand the place that they're in, but they refuse to be stagnant, they refuse to be stuck.
Mr. Sanchez (11:00):
I just spoke to one of my students who had a 1.887 his sophomore year and somehow managed to get himself into Fresno State. And now he's struggling, but he's doing at Fresno State. These small successes, and these stories, and the smile on my students' faces every time that I'm able to connect on Zoom, and their willingness and hunger to actually put their own feelings and their own intent out into these classrooms, and to see them actually try, I feel like sometimes a lot of educators become jaded, become angry because of the system, and because they can't understand why students or teenagers act like teenagers sometimes. But to come into the Zoom meetings and these Zoom classrooms and see these students who have been labeled as troubled or who have been labeled as problematic students, ask questions, and be so willing to seek help, and be hungry to read, it's astounding.
Mr. Sanchez (12:04):
And I can't help but to feel hopeful. If these students who are out in the middle of the country, many of them who are not getting the proper three meals a day, many of them who have to work in the fields in the afternoons, many of them who are stuck watching little brothers and sisters while their parents are out working in the fields, if they can put their best foot forward, I have no excuse, and neither does any other person on this campus. And those students who are not privileged are trying, why are we not trying to feed them? And I mean that academically. Their own resiliency and their own will power is what forces me to be strong.
Mary (13:02):
Mr. Sanchez, there's so many things that I love about you and your use of language, et cetera. But the thing that always rises to the very top for me is that you see people, not for the things that they've been labeled as or that you fear they might be, but for what they bring. And I think that's honestly a beautiful thing. It's part of why I so enjoy talking to you and I just wanted to share that. Every time I talk with you, I'm moved at your ability to see.
Mr. Sanchez (13:29):
The climate and situations that we live through forge who we are. And I was a problematic student. I was in the principal's office three days out of the week. I was labeled as a good for nothing. And I was cast aside by a lot of teachers. But having had the help of a few who took interest in me, and understood my situation, and went out of their way to buy books for me, to feed me books, to gift me books, because they knew and understood that I was hungry, that changed my life. And how can I not repay that? How can I walk around and pretend that I know and understand the student's situation without having heard them? And if a kid acts up and if a kid gets crazy, or if a kid is labeled something, we have to remember, no matter how old these teenagers look, they're still kids and they are a product of their environment.
Mary (14:24):
Absolutely.
Mr. Sanchez (14:25):
A lot of these kids live in a home where it's one parent. A lot of these kids live in a home where they're screamed and yelled at every day. And so they come to school to seek refuge, even if it's not an education, to seek refuge amongst their peers and in the classroom where they can sort of blend in and melt into the background. And if I sit here and scold them as well without understanding what they're going through, without attempting to get to know them as a human being, then I have no right to be an educator, because education is not just filling up a jar, education is an act of social justice. We are giving people who have no chance, the chance.
Mary (15:07):
That's beautiful, honestly. Education is an act of social justice. If only more people thought that. So as kids lose their sanctuary, as your ability to deliver this social justice is tempered, basically constrained, what do you tell your students now about this time?
Mr. Sanchez (15:36):
I think it's very easy for them to lose focus, and it's also very easy for adults to lose focus. When we remove the interpersonal face-to-face connection between our students and us, it is very easy to get laxed, it is very easy to say, I'm going to post my lesson, and they can watch the video, and they can read the text and answer the questions, and all I have to do is grade. But I get on every day. I open up my Zoom meeting. Every day at the beginning and at the end of every lesson, I tell my students, you are my customers, your parents pay taxes, and I am here to serve you the best I can.
Mr. Sanchez (16:15):
So to put myself in a role of servitude to them, because that's what we should be. We should be servants to these kids. We are customer service to a certain degree. We are here to provide a service to them that their parents with the sweat off their back are paying for. And if we're not willing to honor that, and to honor the hard work of these immigrants, and to honor the hard work of these parents, then I don't know what I would say to a teacher like that.
Mary (16:47):
So thank you. I mean, you're the definition of an essential worker. You said this, and I just will share how I've always thought of it, is that if we're not in servitude to the next generation, then why are we here in general? Not just teachers, not just educators. We can't afford to lose any of our young people to a life of starvation or neglect. And there, I mean, intellectual, not just physical. So one question I've asked people, and I wonder how you would answer it is, what do you hope they write about in history books when they look back on us as a society? What do you hope we hear, or we read, or generations after us will see?
Mr. Sanchez (17:32):
I hope the generations in the future can look back, and in spite of all the violence, the racism, the lack of leadership, I wish that when all is said and done and they look back at us, that we're remembered and recognized for being a compassionate and resilient generation. That's all I can hope for. I use the word compassion a lot, but that's the only thing we have. It's easier to fly off the handle when there's so many polarizing perspectives and ideas. It is very easy to say, this is my tribe. This is my group of people. And because this is my group of people, I am unwilling to hear you, because I don't like your ideas, because your ideas make me uncomfortable.
Mr. Sanchez (18:26):
I teach conservative students. I teach students who wear Trump hats to school, just like I teach students whose parents are immigrants and don't speak the language. I teach students who are transgender and part of the LGBTQ community. And I teach all of my students the same, whether they're conservative or extreme leftist, because it is not my place to judge them on their perspectives and beliefs. It is my place to give them a safe space to safely have a conversation. I want to validate you as a human being so much that I'm willing to listen to opposing ideas in a calm and peaceful manner and have a conversation with you. That's what I hope.
Mary (19:24):
Well, we have work to do, but I think that is a beautiful hope. If we could do that, if we could have the bridge of dialogue, that would be remarkable. So I'm going to ask you another question. What do you think is the most important ingredient to this idea of justice for all?
Mr. Sanchez (19:44):
A discerning and keen analytical vision. I think we have to be self-reflective, and study ourselves, and our own prejudice and our own mental constraints. And in doing so, I think that self-reflection will lend itself to a more open dialogue. I think a lot of the times that we, as people, don't take the opportunity or don't feel comfortable enough to sit with ourselves and really understand the processes that go inside of us. And I think that that leads to a lot of misunderstanding amongst each other. Being a brown man and having experienced racism, I hate it. I don't like racism. But I understand that some of these racist people are afraid. Some of these racist people are afraid of having power taken from them, because they [inaudible 00:20:37] ... be afraid that what they've done will be done to them. They're afraid of that reckoning. They're unwilling to have what they consider their livelihood and what they consider the values of their life removed and replaced by somebody else's.
Mr. Sanchez (20:54):
And I understand that. I think that if we all were compassionate enough to allow each other to be who we want to be without the detriment to one another, we could really have those conversations. And let each other know, it's okay. It's okay to be straight. It's okay to not be straight. It's okay to be white. It's okay to be brown. And it's okay to have opposing beliefs. And it's okay to be a leftist who hangs out with the right wing conservatives. And I know it sounds crazy, but I have a lot of friends who happen to be right wing. We never agree, and it's always a debate, and it's always a conversation that revolves and we chase each other's tails in circles. But at the end of the day, we smile, and we can disagree, and we shake hands, and then we wait to see each other another time.
Mary (21:39):
This is the definition of civil discourse, if we have civil discourse. I mean, I share your enthusiasm for people who don't agree with me, and they're my best friends. But that's how we get along on things. That's how we move forward. Well, you've answered so many of the questions already, but I'm going to end with asking you the question that I do end all the interviews with. And so, you'll have another opportunity to say it. Why do you still hope?
Mr. Sanchez (22:08):
I guess a different way of saying it would be because it's my job. And I don't mean that in a jaded and cold way. I mean, if we are not here for the next generation, then why are we here? I think that if I lose hope, I become complacent, and I become jaded, and I stop being of service to the people ahead of me. I stop uplifting the people who are going to live out and pay for the consequences of my actions. Because the way that I treat the world around me, I might not live long enough to see the repercussions of my actions, but the students that I have will. If I'm not hopeful for them, then what's the point? Why am I here? That's when we have those crises of why am I here and does it even matter? But yes, it does matter, because regardless of your religious, spiritual belief, whether there is a God or not, we can all agree that there are people who are going to live after us. And if we can't pave the way and prepare a better future for them, then why are we?
Mary (23:24):
Absolutely. I like to make stickers, and get them printed up and distribute them. And so, I'm going to make a sticker on your behalf. The sticker is going to say, hope, no excuses. You just don't let yourself not hope because you feel it's your job. I think that's actually really quite nice.
Mr. Sanchez (23:41):
I think that being a human being on this planet in these times, being a warrior of light and fighting a fight that we know that we may never win, and fighting a fight that we know we may never see the end of, but if we don't fight it, nobody else is going to. It's okay to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's okay with understanding that the rest of your life is going to be a fight against justice and inequity, even if you never see the end of it. But the point is to fight.
Mary (24:14):
To be a warrior of light. I love that. Warrior of light. Well, on that I'm going to end, because you are a warrior of light. And on behalf of basically everyone here on my whole team and every listener, I'll just say, thank you.
Mary (24:44):
So even though I'm old, I do have a teacher like Mr. Sanchez, because Mr. Sanchez in that conversation reminds me, maybe teaches me that hope isn't just something we have, it's something we do. We do it in our everyday practice. He said, education is an act of social justice, and he's in servitude to his student. That's a doing. And that actually gave me more hope, because it means that we can control our future, if you will, not just wait for it to happen and hope it's good, but control it. And that's really what the world demands of us. So I took that in, and I wrote down on my whiteboard, warrior of light fighting the fight. If each and every one of us was a warrior of light fighting the fight, boy, the world would be different tomorrow.
Mary (25:49):
Next time on Zip Code Economies 1.5, we're speaking to [inaudible 00:25:55], otherwise known as the twins. They're from San Diego of Somalian descent. And we're going to hear about how they're weathering the pandemic.
Mary (26:15):
You've been listening to Zip Code Economies, a production of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Please visit our website, zipcodeeconomies.org. And of course, while you're there, don't forget to subscribe, and leave us your thoughts wherever you listen to your podcasts, at Stitcher, Apple, or Tune In. Thank you so much for listening.

This transcript was exported on Mar 22, 2021 - view latest version here.



ZCE1-5-E4-MrSanchez-V2 (Completed  03/19/21)
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