What happened to Esme?

Becoming Something Different: Learning from Esme. Fairbanks, Crooks, and Ariail.
Connections: Meier, Rodriguez, Johnson, Kozol.

I enjoyed reading this article about studying Esmes life from middle school to high school.  These three women studied the construct of artifacts, they detail Esme's school history and the resources she used to respond and reposition herself.  After reading the first five pages I immediately thought of Institution vs. Individual.  I saw the school placing Esme into a remedial class because at first she was considered as needing a large amount of help since English is her second language.  She definitely needed this instruction throughout middle and early high school.  We then found out that she was doing quite well and that she came along way due to her remedial instruction.  The teacher was then going to take her out of the class but Esme said since it was the second semester she just continued with the class.  I feel and believe that the teacher and school didn't push Esme enough and guide her to tutoring for her honors classes.  She could have taken that remedial class time and used it for her honors classes rather than dropping her courses.  Maybe with more guidance, awareness and instruction, Esme maybe would have focused more on her studies so she could of passed the TAKS.  I believe the school didn't take an active role in Esme's education but rather placed her somewhere because of her ethnicity and language barrier.  Esme's reaction to this was very passive and like "well okay, whatever."  Well hello this isn't okay and the teacher wasn't aware of how damaging that attitude was?  How detrimental that would be to just kind of give up and take easy classes.  Esme wanted to take easy classes because the hard ones were hard because she had no guidance or direction to show her how to make better grades.  Like the author's had stated Esme positioned herself by removing herself of difficult times and settling into rather easy ones.  Her attitude on graduation was to take easy classes, go to class early and do your homework.  Students shouldn't need to conform to easy work, they need to be pushed and challenged to further grow intellectually and socially.  This would have made her vocabulary progress significantly and made her a better student.  But what Esme did was shape what she thought was successful in her own mind due to the constraints of her home and social life.  I believe the school could have done alot more in taking an active part on students like Esme but I soon realized that highly unlikely due to the test scores and graduation rates across the board.  Where graduation for these students are based solely on taking easy classes, managing a multicultural life and being the first one to graduate in the household.  I believe Esme would've attained more language proficiencies if she had tutors who helped her with her honor classes and reading in general.  This directly relates to Meier's article about the influence of storybook reading at a higher level.  Esme would have maybe in turn found another avenue of learning how to speak and write better.  The importance of reading is important in all ages and develops ways of thinking and helps with all areas and subjects.  Especially with bilingual students who are struggling with English as a second language. It makes them more confident in speaking to the rest of the class and to each other in group activities.  We all know practice makes perfect and with this Esme would've benefited from this.  I also noticed it related to Rodriguez's article "Hunger for Memory."  Esme found herself at a crossroads between two different worlds, Spanish and English.  She found herself the odd girl out at first by living her Spanish heritage at home and then trying to establish herself in the dominant "white cultures" of school.  Which is what Allan Johnson explains in Privilege, Power and Difference.  She found herself trying to conform to a new way and the most accepted way of thinking and acting.  She had to seek out how she was going to fit in while having English as a second language.  By the length of her hair, dress, friends and home life. 

Some questions and comments that I wanted to bring up were did she have individuality?  Did she have to conform in ways that weren't accepted at home or in school? Did she have to give up her culture at any point or vice versa?  Did the school do everything possible to help her achieve ultimate success?  Or did they do what they had to do to try to get her by?  What she did was conform to the ways of the majority sometimes at the expense of her family or dominant culture.  Bilingual education.