Teacher Of The Year Speaks Out For Undocumented Students

When Wilbur Cross teacher Kristin Mendoza had the floor, she didn’t waste the chance to advocate for undocumented students facing extra disadvantages during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mendoza was selected by group of peers to be New Haven Public Schools’ Teacher Of The Year. Superintendent Iline Tracey invited her to give a brief acceptance speech at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.

Mendoza spent the majority of her speech reading a list of policy changes that she thinks would benefit her immigrant and undocumented students.

“When I have you here as a captive audience, I want to encourage the board and whole city to support English language learners and mixed-status families. This might be the only chance I have in my lifetime,” Mendoza said.

Despite this quip, Mendoza has often used public forums to advocate for her ELL students.

Mendoza teaches English and writing to 11th and 12th graders at Wilbur Cross High School who are recent immigrants and need more language help. She also advises the Cross In Action student club, which rallied to bring then-undocumented teen Mario Aguilar Castañon home from federal detention this January.

In her previous position at Fair Haven School, she helped lead instructional reforms for English learners there.

Mendoza described the nerve-wracking experience of trying to bring a former student home from detention. She said that Castañon had just won asylum when the Covid-19 pandemic started and magnified disadvantages undocumented students were already facing.

To address these disadvantages, Mendoza asked for four policy changes at the district, city and state level:

1. Advocate that the state expand its Medicare program, HUSKY, to include undocumented immigrants. Mendoza said that the school health clinics, which the board just voted to reopen, do a good job serving students without legal immigration status but that access to counseling for trauma and reproductive health cares ends when they graduate.

• “At graduation, I sometimes feel that I’m watching my undocumented students walk off the edge of a cliff. It really feels that way,” Mendoza said.

Open trade schools like ConnCAT to undocumented students.Open scholarship opportunities, especially state aid that helps students attend Gateway Community College for free, to undocumented students.Create a jobs pipeline that supports multilingual students through the higher education and teaching requirements they need to become bilingual educators.

• “So many bilingual educators look like me — a white women who speaks Spanish as a second language — and so few look like my husband, who was born in Guatemala,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza ended her speech with her sense of optimism that things will get better for her students, despite the challenges the year has thrown their way.

“You see why she’s Teacher Of The Year,” Tracey said to the board.

Board members responded by thanking Mendoza for her work. Mayor Justin Elicker asked her to email her wishlist to the board for further consideration.