Profile: Ms. Dorantes

By Xiomara A.  

When Ms. Maria Dorantes was younger, she had to experience one of the hardest things in her life that nobody should have experienced at such a young age.

Ms. Dorantes, a Spanish teacher at CATS, shared a personal story by explaining that one of the hardest things that had impacted the most in her life was her mom’s death.

She said, “at the  age of 14, right when I started high school my mom passed away.”

Not only impacted her personal life but also her academic one too by her starting to act differently with her family in so many ways by “internalizing emotions” she said. 

After her mom passed away she tried to continue with her life but since she was the only child and her mom was the only parent “they had to take me into foster care for like, maybe two months. So I wasn’t in an unstable environment for a really long time,” Ms. Dorantes said.

Finding custody for someone to take care of her was really hard and at the same time Ms. Dorantes was feeling lonely because she had a lot of things going on her mind. She said, “I wasn’t really processing the information, how I was like in a, in a very healthy way. It was more like very confused, very numb “. 

The only thing that helped her at that moment was when Ms. Dorantes was placed with her family members that lived here in the United States and they helped her feel a little bit more comfortable and also talking about how her mother not being here with her anymore was gonna impact her in all aspects.

Ms. Dorantes also explained how in her head she was still going to school and doing all her assignments she said, “I wasn’t physically like processing it. I guess it was too traumatic for me to experience it because I was there when she passed away and I was like not aware of it and not accepting it.” 

When asked about how low things have become in her life, she said that when she was getting into the custody portion of it, she had to go to court and had to go to every single court date (meaning that she had to miss a lot of school) and that school wasn’t prioritized at the moment.

Ms. Dorantes also said, “I was forced to have a therapist at the school.” She explained how weird was the idea to have a therapist because of the stigma around mental health in Hispanic households is still very prevalent. Her family didn’t actually push her to keep in therapy and neither did the psychologist. It was just like she’ll get over it. 

However, Ms. Dorantes said, “I was an honors student and I graduated even in college with honors.“ She talked about how her grades became really low after everything she went through and also how teachers were empathetic towards what was happening, but they were maintaining the rigor.

They were giving her extra time to finish the work and it was even finish it or finish it. She used to remember how her mother used to tell her to go to school because she didn’t want for her daughter to have a job and work for long hours, she really wanted Ms. Dorantes to have her college degree, “So keeping that in the back of my head, I was like, if my mom were still here, I still need to get my things,” she said. 

Her mother wanted her to be a nurse but after what she experienced with her at the hospital and being there for the whole experience she said, “That traumatized me, I don’t like going to hospitals because of what happened.”

She explains how well she connects with kids and how she tried teaching in college and ended up liking it. “So I tried out teaching and I really liked it when I was in college. In the back of my head I was like, this isn’t what my mom would want.” So she continued with that and she started to think that her mom would be mad because she would be a teacher.  But at the same time it wasn’t what her mom wanted, it was what she wanted and Ms. Dorantes also explained how her mother is not here anymore so she can’t choose for her but she did make her keep continuing school. 

However, Ms. Dorantes said that if she could go back and talk with her younger self she would tell her to be kinder, that she’s very to put too much pressure on herself. If things are meant to be, they’ll find their way and, and it’s hard but like everyone is really hard to themselves. She also said, “So just in general, just be kind, just be kind to your mind, be kind to your body.”