EDUC 255- Multicultural Teaching

Cultural Diversity Case Study Interview Questions

Ethnicity
1. In what city, state, country, or continent were you born? I was born in San Pedro Sula,
Honduras on November 7, 1966. Honduras is considered a Central American territory, but it is
recognized as part of North America.
2. Did your family originate from another country? Yes, my mother, father, sister, and I all
come from Honduras. We were all born and raised in San Pedro Sula. It is a dangerous city, and
it has always been hard for people born there to leave to work somewhere else.
3. How do you feel that your ethnicity, or country of birth, affected your academic success?
My academic progress in Honduras was extremely limited by the fact that I was a girl living in a
dangerous city. My sister and I attended a small Roman Catholic mission-built school in the city
until the second grade. Our parents could not always drive us to school, so often we had to walk
several miles to get to school early in the morning. There was an incident when we were little
where a man threatened to hurt my younger sister if I did not agree to inappropriate things with
him. Things like this happen in Honduras all the time, it is very unsafe for children on the streets.
He had been following us to school for a few weeks, and finally tried to attack us. A grocer was
there to defend us and call my father. He shot the man right in front of us. After that we did not
attend formal school for three years.
Upon moving to America (1979) things improved for my sister and I in school.

Language
1. What is your country of origin? Honduras.
2. What is your native language? In Honduras many people today can speak both English and
Spanish fluently. However, for years many people in Honduras spoke only Spanish and
sometimes Carib-indigenous languages.
3. How did your language affect your ability to achieve academic success?
In Honduras, my grandfather had taught both of us many essentials to the English language, so
that we could hold small conversations in English and understand the basic sentences in our
textbooks. It was difficult, because my sister and I had been without proper schooling for three
years so sometimes, we didnt even understand Spanish grammar rules, but we managed. While
living in a small Honduran community in New York, my sister and I began studying under a
private teacher who helped us keep up with our classmates in English. In the 1970s sadly,
schools did not have many of the ESL programs that they do today, so it was difficult.

Religion
1. What is or was the religion that you practiced from birth? My family raised my sister and
I to be Roman Catholic. It is considered the national religion of Honduras.
2. Are you still an active member of this religion? No. It is not that I disagree with Roman
Catholicism, I just would rather explore different types of Christianity. While living in a
Honduran community in New York for six years, my family upheld the Roman Catholic
traditions, but after leaving our Honduran-only community in New York my sister and I began to
experiment with other Christian churches elsewhere.
3. If not, what if any religion are you now practicing? My family and I now attend a large
Methodist church in Bright, Indiana. I work as a Sunday school teacher.
4. During your K-12 school years, were your religious beliefs and practices ever a problem
in school for you? My religious beliefs have never been a problem to me. I have always
believed that it was God who brought my small family to America safely, and God who will
bring other families into American safety out of dangerous places similar to where I grew up. If
anything, I just learned to appreciate and worship God in different ways in my teenage years,
when my sister and I began going to different churches with our non-Hispanic friends.
Geography
1. In what part of this country or another country did you grow up? I lived in San Pedro
Sula, Honduras for 12 years before my family immigrated to America. San Pedro Sula even in
the 1970s was extremely dangerous. There were lots of gang wars, and human trafficking in my
community. Most of the time my father forbade my younger sister and I from even going outside
into our backyard to swing or climb on our tree. This is the main reason why my family decided
to move away from Honduras.
2. Can you explain any political, language, or religious practices that characterized the
part of the world in which you developed as a child and young adult? Aside from the gang
related violence of the streets, politically Honduras was relative stable while I was growing up.
However, my father feared that tensions would arise between the powerful military and the
severl guerilla regimes that appeared to be sprouting out all of over the country. During the
1970s Honduras remained peaceful in comparison to the rest of Central America, which was
suffering from a lack of resources, but the powerful government control of the country was
beginning to make many people uneasy. Right now I do believe that Honduras is suffering badly
from the effects of a hurricane. My family still living down there says that the country never
fully recovered from the hurricane that struck in the 1990s. Drug trafficking is also causing lots
of political unrest, and sadly it is making it harder for people to immigrate to other countries out
of safety because of all of the drug smuggling.