Leslie Gonzalez
Week 8
While reading this week’s materials it was obvious that acculturation is a very complex
term in the Latino community. To me, it seems like everyone experiences acculturation even
those who are not from the Latino community. As time has passed by many people have come to
terms with Latino beliefs and accommodated to the community a tad bit more. There are more
resources than before as people are starting to slowly understand what it is to be in the Latino
community. This week’s readings talked about how acculturative stress in Latino youth can lead
to symptoms of anxiety and I remember having feelings of anxiety but not knowing what it
meant. I also remember seeing a lot of kids my age engaging in substance abuse, but I thought it
was them wanting to seem “cool” or wanting to “fit in’. Them engaging in substance abuse could
be for the reasons I mentioned but it also could be due to acculturative stress. Acculturative stress
was something I never thought about, but it makes sense what Latino youth go through in their
daily lives especially when they are in grade school. While I was in grade school, I remember
struggling a bit knowing how to juggle my home and school life because it felt a bit
embarrassing to talk about it with other people. Looking back if I had those conversations with
my classmates my upbringing would have been a little easier or more relatable. Though there are
a lot more resources than before I still believe there should be more help for Latino youth at
schools so there could be an explanation for why we experience these emotions. If a school is
predominantly Latino teachers should look to find ways to learn about the culture or be more
open to outside resources.
Before taking this class, I had no knowledge of acculturation so if I
had this knowledge then my experiences would have been a lot different.
