Demographic questions a) What is your age?
b) What is your gender identity?
c) Where were you born? (family village, state, province, country) d) How many years did your father attend school?
e) How many years did your mother attend school? f) What is your father’s occupation?
g) What is your mother’s occupation?
h) How many brothers and sisters do you have? How old are they? i) How much education have your brothers or sisters?
j) Are you presently employed? If so, what kind of work do you do?
k) Are you attending college? What type of college? Community college? private college? private or public university? Where? What are you studying?
l) What is your major or minor in?
m) What is your High school graduation year?
n) Were you a newcomer or recent arrival at your school? o) For how many years have you known about MEP? p) Where do you live in Lane County?
q) How many years have you lived in lane County? r) What high school did you attend in Lane County? Ethnic self-identification
Please mark with an X one or more of the following Chicano (Mexican-American) ____
Chicano (Mexican-American First generation) __x__
Chicano (Mexican-American second or third generation) ____ Mexican __x_
Central American (please state your country) ____ Guatemalan (Ladino)______
Guatemalan (indigenous)______
Guatemalan (mixed racial heritage) ______
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Researcher: Now, I would like to ask some questions in regards to your knowledge and experiences with Oregon Migrant Education Program or MEP. You may stop me at any point to ask for clarification or expand on a certain answer you feel is important to you. Please state clearly that you have understood the directions and that you wish to continue. If so, let’s proceed
1. Please tell me about what do you know about Oregon Migrant Education Program MEP? If you do not know anything specific about the program, what does the name of the program tell you? From where does your knowledge about MEP come from?
2. How did you know that you qualify for MEP related school services in school? Who told you?
Researcher: As you can remember, MEP students at your school used to participate in workshops and events that were available to them only
3. Please tell me all about an event of this kind that you remember the most? what did you like or dislike? And if you would have done something different to improve it and why?
4. If you do not remember any MEP event or you did not participate in one, share about any other school event that you participated in. Tell me all about the event, who organized it? What was the purpose? Why did you enjoy it or not?
5. Some MEP students were also part of the English Language Development Program or ELD, please tell me all you know about this program. What do you remember the most? What did you like or dislike about the ELD classes? Why?
6. Share about specific feelings you had when you were attending ELD or any other classes in the school, were you pulled out from ‘normal’ classes a lot in order to get ELD language support? Was this annoying to you or beneficial? Why?
7. Did people in your school identify you as a minority? How? Who did it? And what do you think was that?
8. Minority students face challenges in getting an education that others students do not face. Could you tell me about some of the reasons why minority students might experience these difficulties and why? Do you think that does it have to be with culture? If so, why?
9. Think about your specific challenges and successes while you were attending school, what has motivated you to do well? What has
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inspired you to continue with your education? Who has inspired you to do well in school?
What do you think people in general see of you when they call you Latino or migrant? Think about your life, family members and other around you as agricultural workers, how does this image was important or not in terms of your relationships with teachers, classmates and other school personnel? Please be as specific as you like
10. What does it mean to be Latino and migrant for you? Please talk about aspects that you think define you as Latino or migrant. I encourage to consider whether or not you have changed these ideas about yourself or how are they still the same?
11. if you were a newcomer or recent arrival, please tell me about what you felt the first day you went to school here in the United States? what was the name of the city, county your school was at? 12. What was the first impression you had about teachers,
classmates, school buildings, classes, and any other aspect that you think was significant to you.
13. If you were born here in the United States, what do you know about newcomers? If you do not know anything specific about them, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘newcomers or recent arrivals’
14. What do you think is culture and identity? do you think these terms are important or not? And how?
15. How do these terms resonate with you? Please think about your school years and now
16. Now, let’s talk about choices after high school, how did you decide what you wanted to do after high school? Was there someone who made or advised you to take a specific decision? Who is this person? How important is this person for you and why?
17. What do you think about the following statement: “some people think that being from a minority group in this country such as Latino, African American is a disadvantage and it relates to academic success”? how does it make you feel and why? How does the statement relate to you and/or family members or people you know?
18. Now, let’s talk about the concept of illegality, please do not refer to your particular legal status in this country. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word illegal? What do you think about the way this word is applied to people who have entered the country without visa or other documents? How did teachers make use of the illegal when referring to other students? 19. Is there anything else you would like to say that has not been
covered yet. While you think about this, I would like you to ask to yourself who I am? And what truly defines you as the person you
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are today? we can talk about these aspects more or we can end the dialogue at this point.
Thank you very much for your participation in this study. I will share with you a copy of my thesis at the end of this project.
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