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>> Bienvenidos a "Generación Latina" This is an MCTV program
that highlights the voices and the passions
of Latino students here in Montgomery College.
Con nosotros hoy, tenemos a Iskandar ¿cómo estás?
>> Muy bien, mucho gusto.
>> Pues un gusto tenerte aquí.
Cuéntanos, tu nombre.
Okay, es lo que más me llamó la atención al comienzo,
como que yo nunca jamás había oído un nombre así, de qué...
cuéntanos el background digamos.
>> Bueno, mi madre y mi padre, mis...
I'm blanking on the word...
>> It's okay.
>> My parents.
A mi padre le gusta mucho la historia, he's a history nut,
so he actually found that Iskandar was the Persian variant
of the name Alexander, Alejandro Magno, and my mom thought
that it sounded okay, because she wanted something
that could translate into Spanish and English,
and all the other names were very one-dimensional.
>> Pues cuéntanos cómo creciste.
¿Tú creciste en varios países?
>> En varios.
Yo nací aquí en Virgina pero nos mudamos a Perú cuando yo
tenía, ¿cuántos años?
Siete años.
Vivimos en Lima por cinco años, eso es de donde viene mi madre,
entonces vivimos ahí donde yo viví cerca de mis abuelos.
Y desde ahí nos fuimos a Egipto,
a Cairo por tres años y después de eso a Estambul,
donde me gradué y ahora aquí.
>> Okay, ¿qué te trae a Montgomery College?
Yo sé que es una pregunta un poco complicada
but that's okay, you have a very...
I want to know your journey because it sounds like,
you know, I understand you hit a wall but you kind
of had a fresh start here, so how does it all come together?
In high school I was not very academically focused,
I've always been much more creatively focused
and it can be both, a good thing and a bad thing.
It helps a lot with my writing development
but it definitely did not help in the classroom, you know,
especially in classes I didn't like.
So my first year in college I came to Massachusetts actually
and I did very poorly because I was not mentally equipped to,
you know, hunker down in the academics.
So I was actually out of school
for half a year before realizing that,
you know education is super super valuable going forward
in life, and that having a better one means basically,
you know, being able to have a better life down the road.
So I decided, you know, well I have to go back,
I want to start somewhere where I can get back in to education
without overbearing myself and slowly climb that latter
into productivity and then you know, be able to transfer
to a school where I can really get the most
out of the education, so that's why I came here.
>> You're now a 4.0 student.
>> Yes.
>> So, how did you go from nearly flunking
out to now being a 4.0?
What kind of set up does MC offered you that you were able
to make that 180 turn?
>> Montgomery College has a flexibility of courses.
A really cool thing about this school is that there are not,
I mean, there are prerequisites to graduate but,
especially if you've coming here such as I am, to take courses,
basically just to get amount of credits per transfer
and to build a better resume academically.
This school is very flexible when it comes
to which classes you can take and what you want to pursue.
You know, first is the affordability
and second the flexibility of this school helped me,
not only come here and take classes that I would want,
and not worrying about going into debt but also classes
that I am actually interested in, you know, I didn't have
to take a math class, I could just focus
on history or art or whatever.
>> Or mythology.
>> Or mythology yeah.
>> So, your passion is in writing.
>> Yes.
>> And you write published poets.
>> Yes.
>> So, congratulations.
Tell me, what does poetry means to you?
Why do you love writing so much?
>> To me poetry offers,
and writing in general offers basically a window
in to the world you know?
It's... I don't remember who said it, but it is very true
that a poet is a passport,
that you can go anywhere and that you can...
You know as a poet I want to be an astronaut and a firefighter,
and a forest ranger and an actor, so I'll just be a writer,
that way I can be all of them.
I can write about everything, read about everything.
>> You've got this incredible experience growing up,
absorbing different cultures, languages and ethnicities,
how do you then connect with the Latino roots?
>> First of all, I'm very thankful for how I grew up.
I think that exposure to cultures is very important
to me, I think is integral to people in general,
obviously not everybody is going to get the same opportunities
but expose yourself as much as you can.
It's really developed my writing, specially poetically
in the sense of identity, because in living
in different countries and absorbing different ways
of being and religions and ways of life, one comes to reflect
on how they live theirs and, you know, specially now a days,
grappling with being half Latino, and having lived
in Latinoamerica but also outside of it,
and being a Spanish speaker.
And weirdly enough, never, because of the travel,
never really having a place to go home,
I've always been moving, so I am Latino and I am American
but I feel like neither one at the same time.
So, it's a helpful affordable for me to go off and explore
who I am in relation to culture.
>> So, favorite author, Latinoamericano.
>> ¿Latinoamericano?
>> ¿Qué recomiendas?
>> ¿Contemporáneo o clásico?
Bueno, a mí me gusta mucho la poesía de José Angel Araguz,
que es un contemporáneo,
también es latinoamericano pero, mexicano creo,
y él explora qué es ser un latino americano,
osea en América, aquí en Estados Unidos.
Y ser claramente latino, as suppose to me you konow,
my father is half American
and everyone just thinks I'm a white person, but you know,
the exploration of how race influences culture
and how one cannot masquerades and how
that follows him everywhere, so very very interesting.
>> Excelente.
Pues te quiero agradecer muchísimo por tu tiempo,
tienes clases, tienes que correr así que muchas gracias por ti y
bueno, por todo lo que estas contribuyendo a MCTV,
ahora que también estás trabajando con nosotros.
>> Muchas gracias.
>> Un gusto.
Ya regresamos con más, aquí en "Generación Latina".
>> El éxito profesional comienza en Montgomery College.
Obtén la educación que necesitas para el trabajo que
quieres y ahorra hasta un 50% en costos de matrícula en
comparación con otras universidades.
Comienza tu futuro ahora, en Montgomery College.
>> ¿Sabrías reconocer si tú o un amigo o amiga sufre de
ansiedad o de depresión?
Pues presta atención,
que Ramón de la Cruz nos trae más información sobre
salud mental.
>> Hi, my names is Ramón de la Cruz.
I'm the Central Services Building Coordinator
at our CT building at Montgomery College, as well as mentor for
"Alma Advancing Latino Male Achievement Program".
Club advisor for MC outdoor adventures
and professional mentor for our MC World Ensemble
in our Music department.
Some of the signs you want to look out for, some red flags
for students who are having challenges
with mental health issues
or experiencing anxiety and depression.
First think you want to look at for is changes in behavior,
changes in attendance in class,
changes in personal hygiene and personal care.
Changes in conversation and relationship,
the average relationship with your student,
you can pretty much tell when that relationship goes
out of touch and make sure you check in at times.
If you see somebody breathing,
if you see somebody breathing heavily, rather.
If you see somebody stressing, turning in assignments late,
asking for more accommodations
without having an accommodation letter on file.
These are all red flags that something maybe going
on besides just challenges with academics.
So if the student has a panic attack, first you want
to assess the situation to make sure
that is something you can handle,
that it's actually a panic attack.
If it is, you can intervene with a simple exercise,
by having the student take a breath.
Personally I think that stress causes physiological reaction
in the body to hold your breath and that increases the sense
of crisis and sense of anxiety which contributes to depression
and on going mental illness.
So, there're different strategies, the strategy
for the moment is to find the way to reconnect
with your peace, which mean being active in searching
for your peace in your day and not waiting till you get
to a crisis situation.
Sharing that piece as a faculty member,
as the staff member with the student.
And as a student, being aware of things
that trigger these reactions in you
and what coping mechanisms work best for you.
Mental health is a case by case issue; there's not a one size,
fits all for us as a resolution for it.
And there might not be a resolution for it;
mental heath may be simply something as similar
to physical health where you go to the gym every day
to maintain that health.
Well same think with mental health, I think we need to get
to a point with our society where we can accept it
to a point where, hey I need this mental heath exercise
to keep myself healthy and not just a crisis reaction.
On campus we have many resources at Montgomery College,
you have club advisers like myself, you have professors
who are invested your success, you have actual coaches
and ATPA programs which is Achieving the Promise Academy.
We have Mitch programs for certain groups
that show challenges
with completing their their higher education,
academic matriculations such as Boys to Men,
which is an African-American affinity group to create support
for that group, and on the brother side of that is ALMA
which is Advancing Latino Male Achievement, providing support
for Latino males, Latinex, students here
at Montgomery College.
Besides those programs you have actual social programs
with the offices of student life.
You can join the Outdoor Adventures Club,
you can join the Chess club, the Smash Brothers Videogame club.
Whatever outlet you connect to for peace, for stress relieve,
for relaxation, that's a great resource for you to engage in.
So, creating healthy habits for yourself to deal
with those moments of anxiety and depression
and mental health challenges.
For faculty members we also have behavioral intervention team,
the BIT team and you can find more about that
at montgomerycollege.edu.
We also have the Student Assisting Program here
at the college and the unbuds [phonetic] which is open
for anyone to come and talk to, determine what issues are
and provide resources to support mental health challenges
and illnesses.
Anxiety and depression manifest themselves differently
in all people.
Anxiety in one person might be the inability to communicate
in public or public forum, it might be someone always sitting
in the back of the class not engaging
because they may be introverted, they may feel claustrophobic
or they may have a social phobia that stops them
from engaging fully in class.
Doctor Polar [phonetic] has a great philosophy
of Radical inclusion, so if you are a faculty member,
you are a staff member, reach out to a student,
take that upon yourself, take that challenge upon yourself
to improve the life of our student body,
of our community at the college.
>> Estás viendo "Generación Latina".
>> La motivación por la cual hemos traído a los estudiantes
a este museo de Historia Nacional Estadounidense es
precisamente porque la exhibición a la democracia se
presta perfectamente a la discusión del bilinguismo que
hemos tenido en MC y en esta clase para bilingues y es una
manera para que el estudiante participe de forma cívica,
académica y ver en carne propia artefactos culturales que han
formado nuestra democracia.
>> Aprendí muchas cosas,
por ejemplo de que si una persona se propone hacer un
cambio, y el cambio que te trata de proponer es bueno y beneficia
a muchas personas,
con sacrificio y mucho esfuerzo se logra hacer los cambios.
Cuando estuvimos viendo el video de los cuatro chicos que se
sentaron a almorzar y que no les servían comida,
ellos no se dieron por vencidos,
ellos siguieron yendo al mismo restaurante hasta que se hizo
algo muy popular en la ciudad y las demás personas lo apoyaron
porque era por una buena causa.
A través de la historia de Estados Unidos siempre hubieron
divisiones y siempre han habido muchas personas queriendo quitar
esas divisiones.
Y ahora a la mayoría de los inmigrantes latinoamericanos los
están considerando como segunda clase,
pero el poder adquisitivo de los latinos está incrementando
y ...
>> Según el Pew Research Center el número de votantes hispanos
ha aumentado por cuatro millones en los últimos cuatro años.
>> El español para bilingues o para hablantes de herencia
106, es un curso diseñado para que el estudiante que es de
origen hispano o tiene alguna crianza con el idioma español y
tiene el deseo de ampliar sus destrezas.
Es decir, quiere mejorar su escritura,
quiere ampliar su vocabulario,
quiere crecer en el idioma en general y quiere profundizar su
habilidad de mantener una conversación o mantener una
interacción plenamente en español sin tener que cambiar
entre el inglés y el español.
>> Según el censo del 2010,
el 21% de los estadounidenses hablan otro idioma además
del inglés.
Para el 55% de los estadounidenses bilingues,
el segundo idioma es español.
>> En esta clase, además está dirigida a aquel estudiante o
aquella estudiante que esta interesada en explorar su propia
cultura e identidad cultural.
Y además llegar a algunas conclusiones propias,
en cuanto a el valor de esa identidad cultural en un mundo
donde el inglés domina.
>> Yo le recomiendo esa clase a otros que se han interesado en
tomar una clase de español.
El profesor es muy amable, da mucha información,
les ayudan con mucho gusto,
en esta visitas así da mucha información también.
Les enseña que pasó sobre la historia y lo que
pueden cambiar.
>> Para Generación Latina,
desde Washington DC Silvia [inaudible].
>> Gracias por ver "Generación Latina".
Si quieres contar tu historia no dudes en contactarnos al email
que ves en la pantalla.
Nos vemos la próxima.
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