Andrea Wasawas

Andrea Wasawas is the Community and Outreach Lead at Coastline College’s Intercultural Resource Center. In this interview she shares her own family’s immigration story, and the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on students here in Orange County.

KEYWORDS: Filipino Americans, Philippines, COVID-19, students, college, distanced learning, support,

Interview Transcript

So I came to Southern California when I immigrated here from the Philippines. And then I lived in L.A. for the longest time, and I recently moved out to Santa Ana because of my current job. I moved here, I think, around 2000. And I was around seven years old. I actually, the funny thing is, I didn’t know why we were leaving, all I remembered was my mom was just saying that we were going to go to Disneyland. So I was like, “Yeah, sure.” And then, next thing you know I enrolled in school, and then I started living here. And then I didn’t really know what was happening. So I remember not wanting to leave, but because we were traveling I thought that was the reason why. But later on, my mom told me that we were leaving just because of better financial stability here, better job opportunities, and just life in the United States was a lot better, which is why she really wanted to move here.

[How has COVID Affected Students?]

So at least for the students that we work [with], one of the challenges with COVID-19 is for students to transition from in-person to online learning. I think one, it was difficult for a lot of students just because they don’t have a lot of space, personal space, for them to do work. I know there’s a question I had about if folks live in multi-generational households. But definitely the students that we work with, like they have multiple families living in one home. And so, one: finding a space to do work and to do their schoolwork at home is hard. Two: just having the privacy for them to do it is also really hard just because when they’re home, a lot of our students have multiple roles, like being the caregiver, like being an older sister, older brother who have to teach their like their siblings, like how to navigate classes because that’s something parents don’t really know how to do. One thing that I had to make adjustments with, especially when working with students, is I had to make sure that I’m also giving students the flexibility and time to continue to finish the work that they’re doing. So I have student staff that I supervise, and so something that I have to be mindful of is that at least some of my students didn’t really have good stable internet access, that they were working from their phone, they had really slow laptops. And then even just like productivity at home isn’t going to be the same as being productive in person. So one, our college provided loaner laptops for our students, and then also the grant that our research center was funded [through] also provided us with additional laptops. And then they also provided webcams and headsets for students to use. So that really helped them with technology. I think they were also providing Wi-Fi hotspot[s], which was really important for a lot of students. But if not, they gave them resources—I think at that time Spectrum was offering a 60-day free internet service. So when our college started compiling the different resources that can be found related to food, related to mental health, and things like that. 

[Final Thoughts for the Community?]

So I guess one of my hopes for, at least my students, is that I hope that they continue to—because part of my role is also being a leadership lead—and so I hope that they continue to want to build stronger community with community organizations. Because I know that sometimes when you’re in school, you kind of just focus more about the resources that you have on campus. So you don’t really build a network, or you don’t really build rapport with other community orgs. And so hopefully in the work that we’re doing right now, it encourages our students to go build relationships beyond what they have on campus. One thing that COVID-19 has brought is to AAPI so that they’re starting to feel that sense of discrimination against them. And I think COVID-19 has made that more known and more prevalent, but I think because of that we a lot of AAPI folks are able to kind of share experiences with Black folks and the Black community and the struggles that they’re going through.

Interviewers: Fatima Nunez and Keziah Kate Ugalde

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