The topic that I have chosen is the influx of Hispanic people into the suburban areas surrounding Hanover, Pennsylvania. This phenomenon is occurring not just in Hanover but also all across South Central Pennsylvania in recent years. It is driven primarily by the employment opportunities that have become available in the local area, namely factory employment. The growing number of factories located in Hanover has created an increased demand for both skilled and unskilled laborers and the Hispanic population has moved in to fill these positions as they generally provide a relatively cheap source of labor for the factory owners, as well as a source of reliable employment for Hispanics. This influx in Hispanic population has also triggered several …show more content…
The Hanover area is home to both the South Western School District, as well as the Hanover Public School District. I myself attended South Western School District, and while I was a student there I witnessed firsthand the increased number of Hispanic students that moved into the district every year. By the time I arrived at the high school level, the classroom curriculums were already being altered to account for Spanish speaking students, and the lesson plans were being adjusted as to accommodate this newly found need for more Spanish to be spoken in the classrooms. The administration began to include Spanish enrichment programs and the handbook was published in both an English and Spanish version. When the district was interviewing new teaching candidates, it was required that they had some bilingual training, several years of college level conversational Spanish at the very least. This was necessary in order to effectively communicate with both the Hispanic students as well as their parents, who generally spoke even less English than their children do. And more teachers were being hired in order to accommodate the ever increasing number of students enrolled each year. You heard much more Spanish being spoken in the hallways, and most students generally spoke in a combination of both English and …show more content…
The facilities were not large enough and needed to be expanded to accommodate the larger number of patients flowing in and out on a daily basis. The staff also needed to be expanded to properly care for the increasing population. More medical patients were being transferred to the larger and more well equipped hospital in York city than ever before because the local hospital simply couldn’t house the large number of patients. The Hanover hospital also needed to be improved so that it would be more accessible to Spanish-only speaking patients. For example, every sign hung in a hallway or outside of a doorway now features both English and Spanish instructions. The hospital staff is also encouraged to take Hispanic language courses, and they place a large emphasis on multilingual skills when interviewing applicants for nursing positions, similar to the aforementioned screening of teaching applicants at the local high school. The hospital has also had to slightly alter it’s policies in the way that they deal with patients who don’t have any insurance, namely illegal aliens. They have adopted a policy where treatment will not be refused and they have developed several types of payment plans in order to make their treatment affordable with their lack of insurance, and or