ABSTRACT
My name is Jose Luis Rios, and I am in third grade. I have nine brothers and sisters. We live with our parents and aunt and uncle and cousins in Las Lomas…. All my relatives that I can think of work in the fields…. My parents work in la fresa [the strawberries] and la mora [the raspberries], and my mom sometimes packs mushrooms. Last year my father took me to the fields a lot during the week, too, instead of bringing me to school. I would find out I was going because he would say, “Let’s go pick strawberries now.” … My parents can’t always find work. Usually there is work in the summer, so then I help my father every day in the fields. I have to pull up the grass around the strawberries, and I pick. I have to bend over. I bend over for a long time …but sometimes it is hard and I’m tired in school on Mondays because I worked on the weekend. I also get a lot of bad headaches, so sometimes I have to leave school early or go and rest in the nurse’s office. When my father took me to the fields last year during the week, it was hard to study when I got home because I was tired. It is hard to work and go to school at the same time. (Atkin, 1993, pp. 11–15)
