Chapter 13: Moving the Tracks More Our Way
Alfonso was my ray of sunshine within the vast, dark clouds that encircled me everyday on the wrong side of the tracks. I didn’t meet him at first. It was as if, my days had to continue getting more and more depressing before I ran into him after one of the staff meeting.
It had been another long, boring meeting, where the teachers complained about the students and did nothing to work together to try and improve them. The principal talked AT the staff, but didn’t listen either to them or attempt to force a discussion about how to improve the situation. The response that most gave was one of “we have never done it that way before.” In the back of my mind, I thought, “maybe that is why your students have never improved,” but I always kept my mouth shut during those meetings, at least during that first year.
I was feeling particularly down, since I felt that what the principal was sharing could have a big impact on the school, if the staff was able to work together to make it happen. Alfonso had made some comment about how the idea would be of particular benefit for the students learning English. This had turned off a strong group of the staff since those “aren’t my students.” The principal had added that it wasn’t designed for English Learners, but if Alfonso felt that he could make it work, he was welcome to try. Unfortunately, none of the others were interested, and one teacher working alone would have a difficult time.
I was impressed with Alfonso’s dedication. He spoke English as a second language himself; and, at times, had to explain his idea more than once to some of the staff who hadn’t understood him the first time. The sad part was that Alfonso’s way of phrasing made perfect sense for someone who spoke Spanish as a first language, as many of the students of these teachers did. I wondered if they reacted similarly with their students.
I walked up to Alfonso after the meeting to talk with him about his ideas. He immediately started to talk with me in English. His eyes lit up when I answered in Spanish. Like so many others who continue to judge me by how I look, he had assumed that I could not speak Spanish. The more we talked, the more I could tell he was testing my Spanish to see how much I was really able to understand. I held my own throughout the discussion, only needing a few words of English here and there to explain myself. The key, however, was that we hit it off.
We both talked about of our frustrations to work with a significant number of the rest of the staff to fulfill the needs of the students. He had moved from Chicago two years earlier back to Modesto where his family lived. A lot of his family and his wife’s family lived in the area immediately around the school. Who better to know the needs of the community? Why wasn’t he one of the leaders of the school? Why were more teachers not willing to work with him?
Alfonso, it turned out, was not a pusher. He always had fantastic ideas and was capable of understanding what the students needed and modifying what he was doing to provide it. His students always outperformed others across the district in testing and other measures of academic succss. He would not push his ideas onto others, however. He would talk with them about what the issues were, but if they did not want to make the effort to change to meet the needs of the students, he felt there was nothing that he could do. “Tiene que venir de ellos. It has to come from them,” he would tell me when we would talk about how the staff had shot down another positive suggestion. Unfortunately, a large portion of the staff and the most vocal among them fell under the pobrecito philosophy.
“This is just our school,” I heard all the time. The expectations, because it was “just our school” were very low. Even at districtwide meetings, you would hear comments from other teachers about how they had “put their time in at” the school, but were now able to really teach. I thought that I was really teaching, because I was there. It was where I was most needed. Many of the teachers at the school, didn’t want to work hard, and knew, because it was “just our school,” they didn’t have to. Some showed up minutes before or, at times, after their students, and left again as soon as they left. I would arrive at 7 AM, an hour and a half before school; stay until 5 or 6 PM; and still feel as if I hadn’t finished everything. Alfonso’s was one of the few cars that would show up and leave at the same time as mine.
Alfonso became my mentor. When I was frustrated about how something was working or not working at the school, I would meet with Alfonso to talk about it. He had the long term perspective that I lacked, having taught for 11 years in México and 7 in Chicago. He could distinguish between those things that were bothersome but would pass from those that would last. He had much more patience than I in making necessary changes. I would want to move all of the negative teachers to another school, while he realized that wasn’t possible.
He was able to convince the principal, eventually, to make some changes that greatly helped the students. Before Alfonso’s arrival, children could bounce back and forth between bilingual and non-bilingual classes each year. Alfonso’s gentle prodding convinced the principal that the program needed time to be successful. You can’t keep a child in a bilingual program for a year, move them to a non-bilingual one the next because they spoke more English, and then move them back the third year because they weren’t successful with only English and no support. You have to give the children time to be successful before you transition them from a bilingual classroom, and then you still need to provide them support. We were able to create a series of effective teachers who would teach the English Learners. Most important of all, the teachers within that series began to work as a team. The Kindergarten teacher worked a lot with the 1st grade teacher, who worked a lot with me teaching 2nd. I, in turned, worked a lot with Alfonso, who taught 3rd, etc. all the way up to 6th grade.
We felt that we were successful in what we were doing. Children were learning and parents were happy. They were so happy in fact, that we began to have a lot of parents bring their students to the school just to be in our program. One year, 25% of my class lived outside of the area. The same was true with teachers. We had bilingual teachers working to try to move to the school just to be part of what we were doing.
It was also because of Alfonso’s leadership that I got involved with the California Reading and Literature Project. The project was designed to take potential leaders and develop them in a summer program to improve literacy across the state. Alfonso and I got involved with the Spanish Language version since we were bilingual teachers. Because teaching in bilingual classrooms has always been very political (there has always been a lot of people against the theory of developing English while building on the primary language), all of the participants did provide a lot of support for each other on top of the learning within the seminars. Some of us still communicate now 15 years later. The main structure of the seminars was to develop literate adults, who would not limit their own development as life long learners. We spent a lot of time reading and discussing adult literature in Spanish in addition to discussing effective teaching strategies. My comprehension and use of Spanish continue to broaden as I now immersed myself in university level Spanish. Now, I wasn’t limited to talking about lápices and cocinas (pencils and kitchen); I could discuss rimas asonantes, los noventayochentistas and protagonistas (assonance in rhymes, the literary movement in Spain starting after the loss of the Spanish-American War and the loss of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, and story protagonists).
The more I developed my Spanish language abilities, the more I found myself speaking even more Spanish. Except for the 45 minutes a day of English Language Development, I would speak only Spanish in my classroom. Any communication that I had with parents was in Spanish as well, as all of my students were from Spanish speaking families. All of my friends at work, including Alfonso, were native Spanish speakers, so that was all we spoke. At home, so that the boys would be bilingual, we tried to speak Spanish all of the time as well. In spite of the fact that I had spoken English for so many years, I started to develop an accent in my native language. More and more people would ask me where I was from, NOT when I was speaking Spanish, but when I was speaking English. I couldn’t hear any differences in how I was speaking English, but I heard the same question repeatedly: “Where are you from? Your accent is so interesting.” My response would be that I was from the far off country of Lodi.
Spelling in English is a totally different manner. I had always been a good speller in English from reading and writing so much. Now that I had learned to read and write in Spanish, a phonetic language, I couldn’t spell in English anymore. I found myself repeatedly looking for a dictionary or using the spell check to find the spelling to what used to be easy words like carcass, thorough, and divide (hopefully, I’ve spelled them right here). Is it license, lisence or maybe its licence?
Alfonso and I took back what we had learned in the literacy project and tried to apply it at the school. We were recruited because of our involvement in the project to be part of a language development project for the district. It had a LOT of potential. We spent a lot of time and energy with other teachers from different schools. The program got a lot of interest from other school districts. Unfortunately, a school district is not the ideal place to develop a commercial product. This is especially true in a district that “allowed” bilingual education only because state law said they had to. Spanish Language Development was definitely not a priority for the district, even if it helped the students to improve their literacy abilities that could later be transferred to English.
We tried to get more teachers at our school involved with the types of ideas learned in the literacy project, but that involved a time commitment that no one else seemed willing to give. The two of us ended up leading a similar group of teachers the following two summers, but we had two strikes against us. The first was that the teachers in the group didn’t have a view to making long-term difference. They had signed up to get class credit to increase their salary. When Alfonso and I planned, continuation meetings to talk about results, updates, etc. in their schools, he and I were the only ones that showed up.
In addition to that, we had a large political atmosphere working against us. There was push by some in the state to eliminate bilingual education. A statewide proposition put together by a wealthy businessman in California painted bilingual education as a money drain and waste of time for students. In spite of the vast amount of research that pointed to the contrary and the local successes that we were having, it was a hard sell to the average voter that continuing to teach in Spanish had long terms benefits to learning English. The proposition passed, leaving the Spanish Language Literacy Project with no way of continuing.
Over the years, Alfonso and I would continue to develop a friendship that was deeper than any I had had with anyone other than with Maria. We worked together to create some extremely positive things; and began to change the picture that the community and others had of the school. Unfortunately, we were up against some very powerful influences that did not want the school to look good. I can’t say that we were entirely successful, but we did push things in the right direction to get the school to the “right side of the tracks.”
It had been another long, boring meeting, where the teachers complained about the students and did nothing to work together to try and improve them. The principal talked AT the staff, but didn’t listen either to them or attempt to force a discussion about how to improve the situation. The response that most gave was one of “we have never done it that way before.” In the back of my mind, I thought, “maybe that is why your students have never improved,” but I always kept my mouth shut during those meetings, at least during that first year.
I was feeling particularly down, since I felt that what the principal was sharing could have a big impact on the school, if the staff was able to work together to make it happen. Alfonso had made some comment about how the idea would be of particular benefit for the students learning English. This had turned off a strong group of the staff since those “aren’t my students.” The principal had added that it wasn’t designed for English Learners, but if Alfonso felt that he could make it work, he was welcome to try. Unfortunately, none of the others were interested, and one teacher working alone would have a difficult time.
I was impressed with Alfonso’s dedication. He spoke English as a second language himself; and, at times, had to explain his idea more than once to some of the staff who hadn’t understood him the first time. The sad part was that Alfonso’s way of phrasing made perfect sense for someone who spoke Spanish as a first language, as many of the students of these teachers did. I wondered if they reacted similarly with their students.
I walked up to Alfonso after the meeting to talk with him about his ideas. He immediately started to talk with me in English. His eyes lit up when I answered in Spanish. Like so many others who continue to judge me by how I look, he had assumed that I could not speak Spanish. The more we talked, the more I could tell he was testing my Spanish to see how much I was really able to understand. I held my own throughout the discussion, only needing a few words of English here and there to explain myself. The key, however, was that we hit it off.
We both talked about of our frustrations to work with a significant number of the rest of the staff to fulfill the needs of the students. He had moved from Chicago two years earlier back to Modesto where his family lived. A lot of his family and his wife’s family lived in the area immediately around the school. Who better to know the needs of the community? Why wasn’t he one of the leaders of the school? Why were more teachers not willing to work with him?
Alfonso, it turned out, was not a pusher. He always had fantastic ideas and was capable of understanding what the students needed and modifying what he was doing to provide it. His students always outperformed others across the district in testing and other measures of academic succss. He would not push his ideas onto others, however. He would talk with them about what the issues were, but if they did not want to make the effort to change to meet the needs of the students, he felt there was nothing that he could do. “Tiene que venir de ellos. It has to come from them,” he would tell me when we would talk about how the staff had shot down another positive suggestion. Unfortunately, a large portion of the staff and the most vocal among them fell under the pobrecito philosophy.
“This is just our school,” I heard all the time. The expectations, because it was “just our school” were very low. Even at districtwide meetings, you would hear comments from other teachers about how they had “put their time in at” the school, but were now able to really teach. I thought that I was really teaching, because I was there. It was where I was most needed. Many of the teachers at the school, didn’t want to work hard, and knew, because it was “just our school,” they didn’t have to. Some showed up minutes before or, at times, after their students, and left again as soon as they left. I would arrive at 7 AM, an hour and a half before school; stay until 5 or 6 PM; and still feel as if I hadn’t finished everything. Alfonso’s was one of the few cars that would show up and leave at the same time as mine.
Alfonso became my mentor. When I was frustrated about how something was working or not working at the school, I would meet with Alfonso to talk about it. He had the long term perspective that I lacked, having taught for 11 years in México and 7 in Chicago. He could distinguish between those things that were bothersome but would pass from those that would last. He had much more patience than I in making necessary changes. I would want to move all of the negative teachers to another school, while he realized that wasn’t possible.
He was able to convince the principal, eventually, to make some changes that greatly helped the students. Before Alfonso’s arrival, children could bounce back and forth between bilingual and non-bilingual classes each year. Alfonso’s gentle prodding convinced the principal that the program needed time to be successful. You can’t keep a child in a bilingual program for a year, move them to a non-bilingual one the next because they spoke more English, and then move them back the third year because they weren’t successful with only English and no support. You have to give the children time to be successful before you transition them from a bilingual classroom, and then you still need to provide them support. We were able to create a series of effective teachers who would teach the English Learners. Most important of all, the teachers within that series began to work as a team. The Kindergarten teacher worked a lot with the 1st grade teacher, who worked a lot with me teaching 2nd. I, in turned, worked a lot with Alfonso, who taught 3rd, etc. all the way up to 6th grade.
We felt that we were successful in what we were doing. Children were learning and parents were happy. They were so happy in fact, that we began to have a lot of parents bring their students to the school just to be in our program. One year, 25% of my class lived outside of the area. The same was true with teachers. We had bilingual teachers working to try to move to the school just to be part of what we were doing.
It was also because of Alfonso’s leadership that I got involved with the California Reading and Literature Project. The project was designed to take potential leaders and develop them in a summer program to improve literacy across the state. Alfonso and I got involved with the Spanish Language version since we were bilingual teachers. Because teaching in bilingual classrooms has always been very political (there has always been a lot of people against the theory of developing English while building on the primary language), all of the participants did provide a lot of support for each other on top of the learning within the seminars. Some of us still communicate now 15 years later. The main structure of the seminars was to develop literate adults, who would not limit their own development as life long learners. We spent a lot of time reading and discussing adult literature in Spanish in addition to discussing effective teaching strategies. My comprehension and use of Spanish continue to broaden as I now immersed myself in university level Spanish. Now, I wasn’t limited to talking about lápices and cocinas (pencils and kitchen); I could discuss rimas asonantes, los noventayochentistas and protagonistas (assonance in rhymes, the literary movement in Spain starting after the loss of the Spanish-American War and the loss of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, and story protagonists).
The more I developed my Spanish language abilities, the more I found myself speaking even more Spanish. Except for the 45 minutes a day of English Language Development, I would speak only Spanish in my classroom. Any communication that I had with parents was in Spanish as well, as all of my students were from Spanish speaking families. All of my friends at work, including Alfonso, were native Spanish speakers, so that was all we spoke. At home, so that the boys would be bilingual, we tried to speak Spanish all of the time as well. In spite of the fact that I had spoken English for so many years, I started to develop an accent in my native language. More and more people would ask me where I was from, NOT when I was speaking Spanish, but when I was speaking English. I couldn’t hear any differences in how I was speaking English, but I heard the same question repeatedly: “Where are you from? Your accent is so interesting.” My response would be that I was from the far off country of Lodi.
Spelling in English is a totally different manner. I had always been a good speller in English from reading and writing so much. Now that I had learned to read and write in Spanish, a phonetic language, I couldn’t spell in English anymore. I found myself repeatedly looking for a dictionary or using the spell check to find the spelling to what used to be easy words like carcass, thorough, and divide (hopefully, I’ve spelled them right here). Is it license, lisence or maybe its licence?
Alfonso and I took back what we had learned in the literacy project and tried to apply it at the school. We were recruited because of our involvement in the project to be part of a language development project for the district. It had a LOT of potential. We spent a lot of time and energy with other teachers from different schools. The program got a lot of interest from other school districts. Unfortunately, a school district is not the ideal place to develop a commercial product. This is especially true in a district that “allowed” bilingual education only because state law said they had to. Spanish Language Development was definitely not a priority for the district, even if it helped the students to improve their literacy abilities that could later be transferred to English.
We tried to get more teachers at our school involved with the types of ideas learned in the literacy project, but that involved a time commitment that no one else seemed willing to give. The two of us ended up leading a similar group of teachers the following two summers, but we had two strikes against us. The first was that the teachers in the group didn’t have a view to making long-term difference. They had signed up to get class credit to increase their salary. When Alfonso and I planned, continuation meetings to talk about results, updates, etc. in their schools, he and I were the only ones that showed up.
In addition to that, we had a large political atmosphere working against us. There was push by some in the state to eliminate bilingual education. A statewide proposition put together by a wealthy businessman in California painted bilingual education as a money drain and waste of time for students. In spite of the vast amount of research that pointed to the contrary and the local successes that we were having, it was a hard sell to the average voter that continuing to teach in Spanish had long terms benefits to learning English. The proposition passed, leaving the Spanish Language Literacy Project with no way of continuing.
Over the years, Alfonso and I would continue to develop a friendship that was deeper than any I had had with anyone other than with Maria. We worked together to create some extremely positive things; and began to change the picture that the community and others had of the school. Unfortunately, we were up against some very powerful influences that did not want the school to look good. I can’t say that we were entirely successful, but we did push things in the right direction to get the school to the “right side of the tracks.”
posted by Richard Braun | 9:14 AM
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