This video is a personal reflection by Amy Hernandez about her life experiences, focusing on themes of bullying, education, disability, and cultural shifts. She shares anecdotes from her childhood and young adulthood, including a significant bullying incident, her experiences with ADHD and dyslexia, and the evolution of educational support systems. The conversation also touches on cultural differences between New York and California, and the impact of events like 9/11 on communities.
This video features Amy Hernandez reflecting on various life experiences, including a formative bullying incident from her childhood, the evolution of the education system, and her personal journey with disabilities.
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This video offers a candid look at personal resilience, the impact of societal changes, and the enduring influence of early life experiences.
Really bullying. I made a your mom joke to a kid who I I he just whatever. I made a your mom joke and he punched me in the face, but like I don't know if you've ever been like hit in the nose with like a basketball. Yeah. And how like you know how your face goes like numb? Yeah. Like so this kid punched me like in the nose, my nose bled like like all over. Yeah. Um and he looked at me and was like, "My mom died last week. That's why I wasn't here." And I'm like, and nobody knew, right? Because the kid kept it really quiet. And but ever since that day, I don't make fun of people's moms unless I know them real well. You know what I'm saying? It's like, so like there were consequences before the internet, right? Where like you would talk smack and someone would like pop you in the face and then maybe you'd stop talking smack, you know? And and it's I'm not saying that that was a good thing. I'm saying that I learned. Mhm. For me, it was a good thing, but I know that that's not a thing for everybody. Yeah. Like not everybody changes their ways, right? Some people just amp it up, right? And it's the same thing with bullying with online is like, man, people get like swatted now and that's crazy. And people I just watched that the thing about the mom, the bullying one. Oh, that one was crazy. But I'm saying it's like that didn't really exist back in the day. Like cyber bullying. Yeah. it it I don't know. I think that our attention span we become more insular. That's what it is. It's we're very very into ourselves, but like but even not like because I feel like our self-esteem is trash and I feel like we put stuff out on social media that isn't like oh I have a zit or oh I have this or oh I have that you know like you don't everything is posed right. Yeah. And filtered and all of this stuff. And it's like some stuff is, you know, your friend takes a picture and you're just like, you're like just having fun or whatever. But it's like there are times when people will take a picture, you're like, "Okay, let me see it. No, I hate that. Take it." Now it's not genuine, you know? It's not in the moment. It's not a candid photo. Yeah. So, I think that it made us more like selfish in a way and Yeah. Okay. So, going back to the question about the education system um for do you think there was like significant changes kind of like um not like in diversity but like I don't know let's say like somebody who's disabled they need like accommodations. You think it was worse back then? Yeah. For sure. Because in what ways? I had ADHD, right? And I but I had what they call compensatory strategies, right? Where you compensate for other things. So I would have a teacher like I dude I had a dope teacher when I got when I got uh diagnosed with ADHD. And the psychologist was like we can give him medication which was new at the time. It would have it would have ended up being what aderall is today but even back then it was like brand new. Mhm. And so the psychologist was like, "What if we let him leave class and run up and down the hallway when he was feeling like super, you know what I mean?" Yeah. And so, and that worked. And then um I I was terrible at math. Trash at math. And they said if I could keep my math grade up then I could take uh an after school. They used to have They don't do it anymore. They used to have things called enrichment. Enrichment. Did you have that when you were in school? Uh like what do you mean? So enrichment was like an after school class that was something that you were interested in. So it might be like cartooning or art. Like we have clubs here like art club and drama club and video games and card games and that kind of stuff. It was like that but it was after school and you could sign up for it. And so it would be like Monday would be Chinese. Like I learned Chinese, right? Oh, that's cool. I don't remember any of it, but like but you know, I took like a Chinese class and then a Greek mythology class and then cartooning. Cartoon. Um one was like um slot cars or stock cars where you'd like carve them out of wood and then you race them against each other. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. But it's so they did stuff like that. They don't do that anymore. And yeah, I know with ADHD or disabilities, if you had a disability, you were just put in a classroom with like kids who were significantly disabled, like kids who like were at like a third or fourth grade level or second or third grade level and like you might just have a problem with reading, right? So they just like put everybody together who just had a disability like throw them inside a classroom. Yeah. And then maybe you'd get pulled out once a week for um some kids have speech where they would have like stutters or um they'd say like we instead of really. Oh, you know. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um so they would go to speech and they'd be pulled out for like speech therapy or they'd be pulled out for like reading therapy or for math therapy. But like if you were in if you had any sort of special needs, you were just in this general classroom. And so there weren't really specialized services. I see. At all. Yeah. So that's like a big difference from then and now. Yes. And like we got we've gotten better at diagnosing things because like when I got diagnosed with ADHD the the I think my grandmother was like he doesn't have ADHD he just likes to jump around. You know what I It's like and my mom's like um like no the doctor said he had and uh and so and I had dyslexia, right? But I just read upside down and I was better at it. Like it made my brain focus. Yeah. But the teacher thought I was doing it as like a written upside down. Um but yeah, so it's it it's definitely got we've gotten better as a society of like labeling. Um thing that I have noticed though is parents have realized that if you if your kid is just occasionally distracted, they know that the kids can get like extra time on the SATs or the ACTs if they get diagnosed with a disability. So there's this like there's like balance. Yeah. It's there's a weird thing of like the parents because parents just want the best for their kids. Yeah. And then they'll be like, "Oh, um I want him assessed for things because they want them to have extra time." You know, so it's this like weird we're in a weird place. Yeah. Is is as a culture for sure. I see that. Yeah. Right. I don't know how to like transition my question, so I'm just going to go straight into it. Sure. So you mentioned that you lost half your hearing. How how did it happen and how was it handled? Oh, it was handled really poorly. I got um I got beat up in a bathroom by these four technically five kids. One hit me in the back of the head with a bottle when I was standing at a urinal. So like I didn't even know that they were like behind me and the kid was like, "Hey." And then hit me. And then one kid Yeah, it was one kid like knelt on my back, They were trying to break. It was just it was a whole thing. It was very aggressive, very mean. Um the one kid was trying to break my jaw because he said I talked too much, which guilty. Um but yeah, he Yeah. And so what happened was I had a reputation as a bad as a not a bad kid, but like like a troublemaker. Yeah. like uh like like I was always making jokes in class and I wasn't like breaking stuff or stealing stuff or whatever. But um but yeah, I had gotten in trouble a lot and just cuz I was bored because I would do all my work like knock it all out early and instead of the teacher going like, "Hey, you can read your book." They'd be like, "No, you have to sit quietly." That kind of stuff. Yeah. And, um, it wasn't handled well because I was always in the principal's office. And so, when I went to the principal's office and said I got beat up, the first thing he asked me is, "What did you do?" Like, "Why did you cause that?" Yeah. Blaming you. Yeah. And I was like bleeding out my one ear. Um, my mouth was all messed up. I had just gotten braces, so like my whole inside of my mouth was shredded. Um, all of my clothes are messed up. Um, and yeah, so it was just it was bad. It was just all around bad. And uh, and the principal, he blamed me and then my parents went yelled at him. And then he said, "Oh, we're going to we're going to talk to the kids that were involved." Well, one of the kids' parents Yeah. just paid to have our library redone. Like he had lots of money. Yeah. And that parent came when the kid got suspended for hitting me with a bottle. He got suspended for like four days. Should have been kicked out. Yeah. And uh he got suspended and the parents said if you don't let him back, I'm like paraphrasing, but they were like, "If you don't let him back in school, um we were going to redo the gym or donate gym renovations to the school and we're not going to do that." And so they instead ended up kicking me out of the school and I got sent to Catholic school. So you were the one assaulted but you were the one kicked out, right? Because because it was just small town and this kid his his mom was a lawyer and his dad was something to do with like lumber or wood. We had like a lot of like like he was like old money like he had a BMW. No, he had So he had a BMW when he was 16. Yeah. When he was 15, he had a brand new truck that he would drive around without a license. Oh, yeah. And so like the parents just didn't care. And so they Yeah. The what came of it is they told the principal, "We're not going to donate any more money to the school if you let him stay suspended or whatever." Yeah. And my parents were like, "No, he should be expelled." And the principal was like, "Well, we think that Catholic school would be a better fit for your son." And so I got sent to Catholic school. And then that Catholic school, the first year that I started was the last year that they allowed corporal punishment. So you could get hit if like if you were talking like they could hit your knuckles with a ruler with like a wooden ruler. Could they do that in public school or No. No. No. No. But my parents signed a thing in Catholic school saying they could hit you. They could stand you up in the front of the room and like swat your butt with like um uh yard stick like a wooden yard stick. Yeah. What do you remember what year specifically it was? 98 97. Yeah. Like a So like 95 94. That's 1994 1995. Recent. Yeah. Oh, that's so recent. Yeah. And you you just got hit by the teachers. So, only one of them did it and she had a pointer with like this rubber thing on the end of it that was like so you could like point at things on your wall and she would hit the back of your hand with the thing. So, like the pointer would hurt. Um, but none of the other ones really did it. They could, but they didn't. But she was like really into it. And so she hit me twice on my hand. And then another time she went to hit me and I grabbed it and I yanked it out of her hand and I got suspended for three days. I didn't hit her. You didn't hit her back? No, I just grabbed it. I was like, I don't want you to do that anymore. So I yanked it out of her hand and she ran out of the classroom and got the principal and said, he threatened me with the thing. And all the kids in class were like, "No, he didn't. He just took it Yeah. from you. And you're mad about that." And she was like, "I get it." But like then they stopped doing corporal punishment. I don't I don't think I was the reason. I think that I was the last year that they were like, "This isn't working." So yeah. So they just stopped it. Yeah. So they would do other stuff like they'd make you like stand in a field with like buckets of water out. Oh, hell no. Like so you'd have to like hold your arms out or you'd have to like go and like clap erasers because it used to be chalkboards that we had and so you used to have to like clap erasers and like wash down their their boards. And so like they figured out other ways to like make you do stuff like dig holes like you know that movie Holes. So, I had to dig holes for rose bushes on a on a Saturday because they had Saturday school and if you were bad, you would get you'd have to show up at Saturday in the morning and they make you do a bunch of stuff like dig holes and clean doors and that kind of stuff. So, did they ever threaten you with kneeling on rice? No. What was the kneeling thing we had to do? I think it was squatting and holding books. Oh, that's what it was. I never had to kneel on rice, but like we would have to go to mass two or three times a week. And so like depending on the room you were in, like the thing that you were kneeling on might be like hard wood or it might be one of those like padded ones. Yeah. It all depends on which room you're in and or which uh pew you're in. Yeah. And yeah, sometimes you'd have to kneel on the wood for like a long time and it sucked. But like, you know, the other time I feel like I was like squatting and you had to have your hands out and have books so it was like two dictionaries. Uhhuh. And you had to hold it out and you couldn't let your hands like fall off. Yeah. Oh, that's horrible. Yeah. All right. Next question. Yeah. Um, how did you handled your or not handled, how do you navigate your newfound disability and was there like any support back then? Would you say? Not I mean I had really good teachers. Like for real, I had good teachers. Like that's why I'm a teacher is I had like I had some really amazing teachers and I had some really trash teachers. And um but the really amazing ones would be like like I learned how to lipre really early. Um I had four or five ear surgeries where they tried to fix it and it didn't work. Um but I was lip reading the whole time and then they got me a hearing aid and then [Music] like the good teachers would let me sit in the front of the room even though I was like hella annoying. Yeah. Um, they would let me sit in the front of the room because I could hear better and I could like read their lips when they were talking. Um, when I got to college, I had an accommodation where the teachers had to wear um a speaker thing where it was like amplified like it was like a microphone that they would wear, but it was like goofy. Like it was like heavy and they would have to hang it around their neck and it was like like a almost like a walkie-talkie. Yeah. And so I get that it's annoying, but I had a teacher that said he wouldn't do it or a professor that said he wouldn't do it. So I like went and complained to the disability services and I was like he's not blah blah blah. And then I put like Hello Kitty stickers all over it because the guy was like really like stick in the mud like Yeah. Um like old like 1950s style like you know and so he had to wear this Hello Kitty thing and he hated me. I don't know how I passed that class, but but yeah. No, um at school they would they just put me in the front of the room where I could like be closer to the teacher and and I just learned to lipre and that's how I navigated it. That's cool. Yeah. All right. So, when when did you move to California? How old were you? I was 20. I just finished I just got my associates degree and I was in the process of transferring to San Diego State, but I took so many remedial math classes like I was trash at math. Yeah. And like and I just struggled. Yeah. And so I had to take one more remedial math class just to get in to junior college in San Diego because before I would be admitted to San Diego State, I had like three more classes I had to take. So I took community college classes the summer that I moved. So I moved there in August of 20 2000. in August of 2000 because Yeah. It was two years. Yeah. So, August of 2000 and then I went to I started at San Diego State in 2001, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So, when you moved to California, was there like any differences between the community in like New York and California? Like kind of like changing diversity? Yeah, for sure. Um, I mean I live close to the Canadian border and so I learned French in high school and I learned French because number one you couldn't get into a Spanish class cuz all the dudes wanted to take Spanish. So, I started taking French cuz all the girls were in French and all the guys were in French. I see. I mean, I also couldn't get into Spanish, but um but yeah, so I was pissed because I wish that I had spent all of my time learning Spanish in high school when I learned French. Like, don't get it twisted, like I had my honeymoon in Paris, so like I could speak French when I was there, which was cool. But culturally speaking, um the the Mexican community in San Diego, the food, the people, the all that stuff was way different than anything because New York is very white. It was like It was white at that time. What do you mean New York? Like where I lived was like white white. Like Oh, because you lived upstate, huh? Yeah, because I lived upstate. But in the city, I would go down and you would see Asian people, black people, like everybody. everybody and uh and like Kenyan dudes and like you know and so yeah it was cool. So like you I I was exposed to a lot of different people very young but like the people that lived around me were mainly just like old white people. So and when I moved to San Diego it was like a lot of Hispanic, a lot of Middle Eastern um Arabic people that I'd never really chilled with before. So it was like a chain chain. Yeah. But it was cool. It was like learning new people, new cultures, new traditions. Like, dude, the first week I moved there, somebody gave me a like a bag of tamales, and I didn't know how to eat them. So, like the first time I ate it, I was like, "These suck." And my friend's like, "Dude, you have to unwrap it." You ate it with the wrapper. Nobody tells me. I mean, it's hard though. You can't chew it. No, you can't. And I was like, "These suck. I don't like them." Like, I was like, I was eating them like, you know how you eat uh not avocados. Uh what are those things called where they're like flower petals? You roast them. Um I can't think of what they're called. Um anyway, starts with an A. Um anchovies. No, no, wait. It's a vegetable. Uh yeah. Anyway, it'll come to me. But uh but yeah, so but I learned how to like appreciate food specifically with uh uh Indian dudes, Middle Eastern dudes, and uh the Mexican community because I I love food. Like food is like my jam. And uh upstate New York was like Italian food pretty much. It was like Italian food and fast food and that's it. So um I have a question. Do you got to witness the what is it called? The suits. Suits. Like C oo t. Suits. The you know when like kind of like chosing down the street when they were wearing suits. Oh, you mean zoot zoot suits? Yeah. Like the big like pimp suits. Yeah. Yeah. I saw cats like that. I saw we would go to car shows all the time and there are dudes that have like that are like Decked out. Decked out. And I'm like, and and you want to laugh, but like, dude, these these these, but I would see I mean, dude, like low rider bikes that were like ched out and done with like white enamel and gold and like and low riders like low riders and like people would like angle them and all that. You guys can come in. Um, but yeah, so it was wild. Like culturally speaking, like I would go down to like there was like a place called like Bario Logan where you would go down and there were like street festivals and like all this stuff and it was never anything like that where I grew up. Do you this going to be more specific? Do you see any hate crime towards any race like on the streets? Yeah, I mean I lived in a very uh like skinheavy area when I was in Elcohone. And Elcohone was wild because it was like a kind of a lowincome community across the board. And so you would have like poor white people, poor uh poor Mexican, Hispanic, Latino, Latinx. Nobody says Latin accent, but you know, but they say it. Um, and uh, Arabic people and but like everybody Can I move this? Huh? Can I move this mic? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Thank you. But yeah, so it was culturally it it was wild and yeah, I would watch people say like horrible words of stuff, but like some of them kind of get dealt with too. Like it's like again like the I would watch people get like smacked after 9/11. Uh two of our best family friends were Arabic and they owned a restaurant and we drove down on 9/11 to like hang out with them at the restaurant cuz we were like there are going to be people that like like break the windows out and that kind of stuff. Okay. So I'm going ask you a question relating to that specifically. I'ma skip your experience of 911 cuz I'm Okay. How do you saw 911? Oh, wait. Hold on real quick. You want to pause it?
