She has a wide smile that stretches from ear to ear, showing most of her teeth. Her eyes full of joy, sparkle as if they were one of the stars, lighting up her entire face. Her nose lies perfectly in the center of her face. Her hair is dark but flows like the ocean. Happiness is what she represents, like the sun out on a shiny day. Despite all that happiness in her face she was dealing with a lot deep down.

A former teacher at West Leyden High School, Leslie Lopez, dealt with a variety of dilemmas throughout her life such as anxiety and cultural differences. She says, “My parents didn’t know English very well and my older brother had to help them a lot by filling up forms like a lot of paperwork. We have helped them figure out the system for making appointments.”      

Ms. Lopez was raised in a Latino household. Both her parents were born in Mexico. Since she was little she was thought to navigate through the system of life. She explains, “I also feel like it made me like more responsible,” she continues, “but I think just like having to help my parents like ‘adult’ here in the States was hard and like being first generation going to college having to figure that out in like paying for and FAFSA all that stuff like Mom did really know how to help me like she was very supportive but I had to basically like figure it out myself.” As she got older she attended college at ISU:  “It was like such a white space where I was like oh my gosh I’m the only person of color in this class. I would hear people in that same class, where I was the only person of color, say ‘ISU is the most diverse place ever’ and I remember being like “what?”  

She grew up in various places and attended West Leyden High School, where she felt at home with diverse differences. However, when she got to college, she finally encountered a diverse culture and felt out of place. 

“In high school I dealt with a lot of anxiety and also depression, and that was hard for me,” she said.  She further describes how anxiety was one of the biggest challenges she went through:  “I had all my friends who were always happy and always feeling like nothing was ever wrong.”  She describes feeling that anxiety was over taking her: “Trying to figure that out was not fun for me and knowing I needed help but being frustrated was hard. I’m a person who’s not patient where I need to figure something out right away and that was something that I had to take time.”

Now Ms. Lopez is one of the brightest teachers in West Leyden. She says, “Now I’m a professional and I’m in my career but I still think that’s probably one of my biggest obstacles but I’ve learned a lot.”