Key Words: Sycamore Elementary School, Mexican American Education
[Tape 1] Dorcas Turner taught first, second, and third grade Mexican children at Sycamore Elementary School from 1925 to 1927. Turner was born in Mexico in 1900 when her father was serving as a printer and a publisher for the Quaker Church in Tamaletas, La Victoria, Mexico. She moved to Southern California in 1906. When she was twenty-five years old, she was offered a job at Sycamore Elementary School because she could speak Spanish.
Turner described the segregation at Sycamore Elementary School between the Mexican and white children. The Mexican children were taught in “bungalows” that were set up in the corner of campus, not in the regular school buildings. The Mexican children had to take their recesses at different times than the other children. She taught with the books “that had been cast off by the other classes.”
Turner describes some of the art, music, and physical education classes that were taught to the Mexican children. She describes working with the parents of the children in her classes. Most of them worked in the citrus groves. She remembers eating dinner with the other teachers every night at the Inn.
[Tape 2] After she had taught school for two years in Claremont, she moved to Fullerton and taught Spanish in a secondary school. After she retired, she moved back to Claremont.