Montes, Jessica

Hello fellow Chicana/o Studies M175 peers! My name is Jessica Montes and I am a third year English major, Chicana/o Studies minor, and Education Studies minor. My current post-graduation plan is to attend graduate school and become an preschool/ kindergarten teacher in low income communities and help children who may mot have the adequate resources to begin their education successfully. I realized my career goals last year when I worked for Jumpstart and was a TA for a preschool classroom and fell in love with the environment, rich curriculum, and the young infants who were eager to learn.
I grew up in Huntington Park, CA in a community with 95%+ Latinos and not much racial or cultural diversity. When I came to UCLA, I was exposed to students of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds and for the first time in my life I felt like a minority. This initial feeling of alienation from the majority lead me to appreciate and embrace my culture, heritage, language and customs as a Mexican-American. More importantly, I have gone through the consciousness and awakening to consider myself a proud Chicana, an individual committed to empowering fellow Chicanas/os and combating against educational, political, structural, social and any other form of injustices. This is the reason I am in this class, I have read literature about the Chicana/o struggle but have not come across visual forms of activism. I hope to learn of the ways in which artwork and visual formats can convey similar messages and work to empower and inform the Chicana/o community.