My Contribution

November 2005

Climbing Mountains To Level the Playing Field

It’s a familiar story—an impressionable child connects with an elementary teacher and decides right then to become a teacher. That’s how it was for Elias Chapa of Ypsilanti, Michigan, except that his path wasn’t as easy as for many people. In fact it was very steep going.

For Chapa, the inspiration was Miss Pond, his third-grade teacher in Pontiac. “I fell in love with her and the way she taught—her enthusiasm,” he says.

But when he told his high school guidance counselor about his plans, the reaction wasn’t exactly encouraging. “Why don’t you go to work in the factory making cars” suggested the counselor, “like the rest of your kind.”

Chapa’s “kind” was Mexican, because his grandparents were from Mexico even though Chapa was born in the United States. That counselor set him back a bit, but he still wanted to follow in Miss Pond’s footsteps. Only, there was no role model to show him the way. “I took academic classes, but when your dad can’t read or write, and your mother is working to make ends meet and keep all six of us going—I knew I had to go to school to become a teacher, but it wasn’t like, ‘Make sure you do your best,’ it was more, just go to school. My grades were average.”

He got a scholarship to community college, but “I started out majoring in cards.” He had to pay his own way. One summer, he worked in the auto plant, “down the line from my father.” It took him four years to get his AA degree. Chapa then tried to enroll in a four-year college, but was told he wasn’t eligible. He got a job with the township recreation department, where he met his future wife, Nancy.

He moved on to cleaning a public school, and yet again prejudice tried to push him back—a supervisor fired him for supposedly not cleaning the bathrooms well. “The teachers were so mad, they went to the school board and told them the bathrooms were cleaner than ever before,” Chapa recalls. He kept his job, and, with some pushing from his wife, enrolled in college part-time to earn that teaching credential. Four years later, he got it.

While waiting for a teacher opening, he subbed at the school where he was the custodian. “One kid told his parents the custodian was his teacher. The parent complained, so the superintendent had to explain I was certified.”

Finally, he reached that goal that Miss Pond had started him on, so many years earlier. Chapa taught for 27 years, with many low-income, minority students. “I told them, ‘If I could make it, you can make it,’ and some of them came back to say thanks.”

Meanwhile, Chapa was also following in some of his father’s footsteps, although not to the Pontiac plant. His father was a union man, and Chapa got active in the teachers’ union, even before he had the relative safety of tenure. Serving on many levels including the Michigan Education Association’s board of directors, Chapa pushed for more involvement for Hispanics and support professionals in the Association leadership. Chapa retired from teaching this year. For his work in building and broadening the union, MEA surprised him with its Herman W. Coleman Human Relations Award.

—Alain Jehlen

For More

The high school drop-out rate for Hispanic students is higher than for any other ethnic group, according to federal Department of Education statistics. 

In its efforts to improve education for Hispanic students, NEA works closely with several organizations. Visit their web sites for more information on Hispanic students and how we can help them reach their potential in America :

Aspira

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)

The National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE)

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR)

Also, visit NEA’s web site on closing the achievement gaps.