A pair of English teachers at East Aurora High School, along with about three dozen of their students and other faculty members, spent Saturday walking from Aurora to Elgin to put the spotlight on the experience of immigrants.
When it comes to the topic of immigration, students like Ashley Martinez, 18, of Aurora, know something about it first-hand.
“We read this book about someone who immigrated to the United States when he was 9, and for me this was something about not just connecting with the book but with my dad who immigrated when he was 4 years old,” Martinez said Saturday morning as students from East Aurora High School waited in Wilder Park in Aurora for the walk to Elgin to begin. “Taking this walk today is kind of like symbolically walking in both my dad and the author’s shoes.”
Shane and Sarah Gillespie, a married couple who teach at East Aurora High School, each teach sections of a course known as Survivor Literature, organized the walk to offer students the chance to experience what an author of one of the books they read in the class went through as an immigrant himself years ago.
Shane Gillespie explained that this spring, students read “Solito” by author Javier Zamora, who actually came to the school late last month and spoke to the students about his own experiences while coming to the United States.
Gillespie, who also is the coach of the boys’ and girls’ cross-country and boys track teams, said there are about 110 students enrolled in the four sections of Survivor Literature and that about 40 of them as well as more than a handful of faculty members were making the walk from Wilder Park to a place in Elgin that was over 20 miles away.
“The Survivor course has units on survivor situations like the Holocaust, Sept. 11th, things like that,” Gillespie said. “This year, one of our units was on immigration and we read ‘Solito’ and the kids really connected with it and we built this service project. We created this walk as a sort of put ourselves in Javier’s shoes sort of thing and raise some awareness for this topic that’s important to these kids.”
The book itself tells the story of Zamora as a 9-year-old who travelled to get to America.
“I was a big fan of the book. I loved how it was written. It was easy for me to read and it was very captivating,” Martinez said. “Meeting the author was really exciting. You forget they’re like normal people, so meeting him was refreshing in a way and hearing about his experience and post journey was exciting.”:
The destination for the walk on Saturday was Centro de Informacion located 23 miles away at 1885 Lin Lor Lane in Elgin.
“The Centro offers services for immigrants and that sort of thing. We did a similar project in 2018 and this is sort of modeled after that,” Gillespie said of the walk which began at 8 a.m. “We’ll have transportation back but we’re hoping to get up in Elgin sometime around 4 or 5 p.m.”
He said “one of the things that we tell the kids is that hopefully they learn some English stuff in our classes but also learn something about themselves too.”
“I think that’s what you get here – you build empathy, you build leadership skills – you build those things that are hopefully going to be useful through the end of their lives,” he said.
School nurse Kara Patrick was asked to attend in case any issues developed along the way.
“It’s good to experience something unique like this. It’s for a good cause,” Patrick said of the walk.
Kate Hala, who teaches French at the high school, said she was a big fan of the Gillespie couple “who have run this program before with the English department and it’s a wonderful experience.”
“I got the opportunity to do something with them before when an author came and it’s very impactful for the students to see someone outside of the classroom,” she said. “Educationally this is a very experiential thing. You can immerse yourself in it in a very different way, and it connects with the students in a different way.”
Student Sinclair Zackery, 17, of Aurora, said the book “Solito” was impactful to read.
“I think it brought into reality what so many have to go through because of the country that we live in,” Zackery said. “People should not have to put their lives at stake just to live a better life. I was honored that the author chose to come and share his story with us.
“As far as this walk, it’s nothing compared to what these other people have gone through but at the end I hope I’ll have a little more understanding of what they were forced to go through,” Sinclair added. “This experience and this class are definitely in my top three things I’ve experienced over my four years at East Aurora.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
