Student Overcomes Injustice in Education

When Daniel Moreno was 6 years old, he lived in fear. He wasn’t afraid of bullies on the playground. He was afraid of bullies of a different sort. Teachers at Moreno’s Catholic elementary school in the dusty south Texas border town of Laredo in the 1960s enforced an English-only policy, leaving Moreno scared and bewildered because he spoke only Spanish.

"They made us feel inferior," Moreno recalls. "On the first day of school I was terrified. We couldn’t speak Spanish on the playground or anywhere else for that matter." Even though Moreno’s parents were bilingual, the predominant language at home was Spanish.

His experience that day on that small playground marked him.

Although Moreno—a third-year part-time law student and student bar association president at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego—wants to effect change in the health care industry, he’s also passionate about bilingual education and overcoming the hurdles Hispanic students face. He wants to help, and he is going to use his law degree to do it.

"I never intended to go to law school," Moreno says. "It was the last thing on my mind. But after all my experiences dealing with minority issues and living through the aftermath of the problems my wife encountered as a minority female physician, I decided to go."

His wife, Marķa Baltierra, a native of Mexico City, encountered problems because of her minority status and outspoken advocacy for patient rights. She was an emergency room physician assigned to rural, low-income areas in Appalachia. In those hospitals, Moreno says, all too often ethnic minorities don’t get the respect they deserve from other professionals.

Moreno earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at UCLA with the intention of becoming a doctor. He attended medical school for two years but was forced to leave due to the heavy financial burden. He then became a fifth-grade bilingual public school teacher in Los Angeles.

Moreno helped students make the transition from limited English proficiency to mainstream classes. It was during this time that Moreno realized Spanish-speaking students were still being made to feel like second-class citizens. Teachers would take away students’ Spanish books to try to force them into the mainstream, Moreno says. School policies such as California’s Proposition 227, which limits bilingual education, make native Spanish-speaking kids feel unwelcome, he adds.

"We don’t want minority kids to feel inferior or lose their self-esteem because their native language is Spanish," Moreno says. "These problems of low self-esteem and self-doubt begin in elementary school because it is such a critical stage in a child’s mental development." As a result, Moreno and his wife home school their 6-year-old daughter, Dominique.

As a law student, Moreno is still trying to make a difference in the lives of Hispanic students. Instead of helping native Spanish-speaking elementary school kids make the transition to English-only classes, he is helping Hispanic law students make the transition to law classes. Moreno is president of the California-Hawaii region of the Hispanic National Bar Association Law Student Division, a region that includes 20 ABA-accredited law schools.

"Hispanic students are faced with some very complex issues when they go to law school," Moreno says. "That’s why HNBA is trying to make students feel welcome."

At the local level, Moreno says, the La Raza Law Students Association chapter at his law school tries to facilitate the difficult transition into law school by providing new students with study aids and answering questions about their roles as students.

"We can’t take tests for them, but we can help with other areas like finding them an apartment," Moreno says. "Sometimes the little things can be the most stressful. We try to help."

While Moreno sees his role in the La Raza Law Students Association and the HNBA as actively helping Hispanic students, he says his role as SBA president is much broader. "An appropriate role for the SBA is to show we are inclusive," Moreno says. "We need to make all groups of people feel welcome." •

James Beasley

James Beasley is a second-year student at the University of Denver College of Law.

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