Chapter 11: From a Totally Different World

Coming back to the US was a definite experience for me. All of my friends wanted to know how everything was in Colombia. I couldn’t easily explain it, however.

“It was . . . like . . . uh . . . well . . . there were . . . hmm. . . . They spoke Spanish.” That was about as good as I could do to explain it. It is not as if I didn’t have a good vocabulary. I mean, I am only a graduate from UC Berkeley. It is just that EVERYTHING was just SO different. It was as if it was a totally different world. I couldn’t find a way to sum up all of the differences in a few sentences.

All I did know was that the experience had changed me. I was now convinced that I wanted to work in schools that were “on the wrong side of the tracks.” I now had enough Spanish where I considered myself fluent, even though I still had a lot to learn, so I knew that I wanted to teach in a bilingual classroom to take advantage of my skills.

I was luckily able to get into a teacher training program at UC Berkeley where the focus was, and still is, to create leaders that are able to do “whatever it takes” to help the students be successful in school. The luck came into play because graduate schools tend not to choose students that have attended the same school as an undergraduate. The program was a perfect fit for me, however, since it had a developmental focus. That was a lot of what I had studied as a psychology major. The program lasted two years, a year longer than most teacher training programs, but the graduates came out with a Master’s Degree and a much better preparation for the classroom than most. Instead of the typical one or two classroom placements (where the students do student teaching) lasting eight weeks, if that, I was sent to five different schools and grades, lasting from nine to fifteen weeks.

On top of the length of the placement, each of the schools was very different. I went to a very well off school close to campus, a school with mixed affluence far from campus, a poor school closer to campus, a new school a medium distance a way, and a school primarily for children of college students and professors walking distance from the campus. I did my student teaching in a Kindergarten, 6th grade, 4th grade, 5th grade and finally 2nd grade classrooms each supervised by very different types of teachers, only one of which had graduated from the same program. I am still convinced that I started teaching much better prepared than any first year teacher that I have seen because of this diversity of practice experiences.

I’m sharing all of this, though, not as a commercial for the program, but rather to give a little background to another formative experience for me in my conversion to what I am today. We were a small group in the program: only 13 future teachers. One had actually graduated with me from the Psychology Department, but I had never met her before starting the program. We had taken a lot of the same classes, but because of the size of the Berkeley campus, we had never crossed paths.

One warm fall afternoon, before starting our longest placement, where we would take over the class and teach solo without the presence of the other, master teacher, we were out in one of the fields on campus playing frisbee. This was a normal activity, since, being a small group, we spent an awful lot of time together in and out of class. Frisbee seemed like an easy enough activity, especially for someone like me who played a lot of basketball, football, soccer even ultimate frisbee (played sort of like soccer, but with the flying disk as the ball) and other strenuous activities like that. What could possibly happen while just throwing the frisbee back and forth?

I found out quickly what could happen as I jumped up to catch the frisbee under my legs. I made the catch with no problem; it was the landing which gave me problems. I guess that I didn’t pull my right foot back underneath me quick enough and landed with my weight on the inside of the leg and my knee. I heard a “SNAP” and collapsed down to into a lump on the grass in severe pain. The others thought that I was kidding around, but I was serious. A pay phone was quickly found (this was definitely before the influx of cell phones into everyone’s hands or pockets); and María and an ambulance were quickly called.

After the various exams, X-rays, pushes, pokes, twists and turns and referrals to specialists, it was finally determined that I had torn some ligaments in my knee. I quickly became quite proficient in the language of arthroscopic surgery, ACL, LCL, and meniscus, none of which I had heard of before my accident. Just in case you are fortunate enough to not know what they mean, arthroscopic surgery is where a miniature camera is placed inside of your body in order to facilitate the surgery without having to completely open up your leg (which left two-inch scars instead of eight-inch ones). ACL is the Anterior Cruciate Ligament. It is the rubber band like substance that holds the bones of your leg together in the middle of your knee. It is also the ligament that is most likely torn by weekend warriors trying to relive their youth while playing sports. The LCL is the Lateral Collateral Ligament, which is a similar substance on the side of the bones of the leg. The meniscus is the spongy like substance that lies between the area where the two bones of the leg grind into each other. It also receives a lot of damage by older people playing sports.

While playing the extremely strenuous sport of throwing a frisbee back and forth, I had completely torn my LCL, partially torn the ACL and damaged some of my meniscus. I now had the privilege of being able to brag that I had survived football, basketball, baseball, only to be permanently injured myself by playing frisbee. I could just imagine sitting in a bar sometime in the future sharing “war” wounds with other men.

“Yeah, there I was running for the winning touchdown,” someone would share. “I was being tackled by 5 members of the meanest defensive linemen you’ve ever seen. All of a sudden, I heard a snap and I was down.”

“Well, I went up for the winning dunk,” another would add. “And I came down on top of the center almost the size of Shaquille O’Neil and heard the snap of my leg.”

“Oh yeah!” I would chime in, “ I was playing frisbee and came down wrong and heard this snap.” Oh boy! They would all be impressed by that!

The worst part of it all was the recovery. If I had broken my leg, I would have been in a cast for a few weeks. I could have gotten everyone to sign my cast. It would have been cool! But no, the recovery from arthroscopic surgery was 10 to 12 months. I would be on crutches for 3 of those months (all during my student teaching). Plus, there was no cast to get signatures and almost no one had ever heard about ACLs, LCLs, meniscuses or any of that. I would have to spend the entire time explaining the inner workings of my knee and repeating AGAIN and AGAIN how I had screwed it up.

By the time that I finally showed up to my classroom placement, I was way behind everyone else from my group. They had all started their practice at the scheduled time, when I was having surgery and beginning my recovery. I ended up having to do a good portion of mine between the two semesters, when everyone else was relaxing at home or visiting friends and family. I was able to spend some time close to Christmas with the students, something that no one else was able to do since the semester ended at the beginning of December. I was very touched by what a lot of the students did to show their appreciation to both the “regular” teacher and to myself before going on their two week winter break. We each got multiple gifts from the children, most of which were handmade either by the students or by their parents.

This was my one and only bilingual placement, since, at that time, the program did not normally offer anything along those lines. Now, with all of the attention (politically and otherwise) towards English Learners, each of the future teachers in the program has to be in at least one classroom with a large portion of English Learners. I was placed at a school called “La Escuelita,” the little school. It was actually the first bilingual school in Oakland, started by a group of parents (including my master teacher) who wanted their children to be able to maintain Spanish while learning English. It was a magnet school at the beginning in the 60s, but by this time, it was a neighborhood school bringing in students only from the immediate neighborhood. The atmosphere at the school was tremendous. In spite of being what in Oakland is termed a “flatland” school (the wealthy schools are all in the Oakland hills while the poorer, urban ones are all in the “flatlands”), there was a feeling of family amongst all of the teachers. They were all on the same page about the importance of education and how to impart it to the students. The feeling of family extended to all of the students; and the teachers worked together to provide the best education possible. It was as if, the teachers were reflecting the social environment that I had come familiar with by being around María’s family where the group, and not the individual, was the most important. It was very refreshing.

The vast majority of the class were native Spanish speakers, but there were 3 Asians and the typical (for Oakland at that time) “token” Afro-American. I say “token” since this student’s needs were very different than those of the rest of the class, but he was still placed in the class. This happened in classrooms across the district, even in earlier grades where the majority of the instruction (except for English Language Development) was either in Spanish or Chinese. The class I was teaching was a 4th grade classroom, where Spanish was used to support the instruction, but the majority was in English (at a level that was comprehensible to the students).

One of the things that most impressed me at the school, was how the teachers worked together, sharing students in order to better meet the students’ needs instead of forcing the students to meet the teachers’ needs. With a bilingual classroom, the students needed to develop their English, but there were a lot of different levels within the classroom, including the Afro-American student. It would not have been possible for one teacher to teach English Development to all of the students at the level they needed to be developed. The solution turned out to be simple enough.

All of the 4th-6th graders were assessed in English to see at what level they comprehend and produced. They were then grouped and assigned to different teachers. My master teacher and I were left with the least proficient English speakers, another teacher with a middle group and a third with the highest level. Another teacher taught an introductory Spanish as a Second Language (SSL) class for native English speakers, another taught an advanced class of SSL and a third taught story telling. The students were divided between all of the teachers based on their ability and needs. Yes, it did require a little more work on all of our parts to assess the students and share grades, but the students were all able to get their needs met and develop their language skills either in English or in Spanish. Our limited English speakers were able to flourish and develop their skills without being intimidated by more fluent speakers. At the same time, those more fluent speakers did not have to be bored with a level of English way to easy for them. Other native English speakers were able to pick up conversational Spanish which, later, they were able to use to communicate with their classmates and neighbors.

I was greatly impressed by how well this system worked and how it added to the sense of family at the school as a whole. I tried in later years to replicate it, but without the buy-in from enough other teachers, it was not easy to do. I would continue to strive to create a sense of family within my classroom and at times with a few other classes. I had seen how well in worked within families and now within the classroom setting, so I knew that I wanted to continue it. The challenge for me would be to turn around and explain the importance of doing it to others to whom the idea was as if it was from a totally different world.