My life has been dotted and marked by teaching and, of course, learning.  My mother guided my sister and me in the correct ways to harvest fruits and vegetables starting at age 5.  I unexpectedly got a lifeguarding job at the tender age of 14 when someone didn’t show up, and the pool was open to hundreds of expectant summer swimmers.  After college, I very unsuccessfully tried to teach French I to high school students, mostly boys who had failed French 1 twice before.  

I left that job after one year promising myself never to teach high school again.  A few years later my passion for nutrition and wellness led me to start a business with Shaklee products, a company whose mission and passion matched my own.  For the next 15-20 years, I promoted good health practices and supplementation by sharing my knowledge either to individuals or to small and large audiences.

Then came a formidable right turn.  Because of the bottomless need for extra income with two children entering college, I decided to go back to teaching, but please (Dios mio) not to high school but to Adult Education and help in the program NEDP assisting adults to obtain a regular high school diploma based on 64 completed tasks.  From there I substituted one fateful night in an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Adult Program. The rest is history. For me.

During that first night and a subsequent few others, I felt like a fish that had found water.  My supervisor remarked rather forcefully that this is what I should be doing with my life. An ESOL teacher.  Ummmm?

From there I went to full-time teaching, first to 8th grade for 8 years, then to 19 challenging and fulfilling years as chairman of ESOL program at Hylton High School.  Hylton had not previously had a program so I could innovate with my ideas, culled from George Mason University’s Bilingual Education Graduate program and my recent degree.  Without the support of a forward-thinking principal in Rob Benson and a brilliant Guidance Director Bob Atkins my ideas on how to elevate the ESOL program above the standards currently prevalent in Prince William County would not have seen the light of day. Hundreds of graduated ESOL students and I thank them for their limitless assistance, enthusiasm and support over those formative early years. 

That program became so successful that it prompted two singular events:

In the mid 2000’s the Virginia Department of Education came to Hylton to monitor the administration of the end of year Standards of Learning (SOL) tests in World History.  The State representatives were incredulous and suspicious about the results of the previous years. World History scores for ESOL students surpassed those of mainstream students, averaging in the mid 90% pass rate.  Their findings after monitoring were completely inconclusive, charging that something strange was going on, disbelieving that it could be an innovative program design and structured, knowledgeable teaching protocol.  

The second event occurred several years later in 2008-2009 when the NY Times sent a reporter to cover how the political unrest in Prince William County, VA was affecting ESOL students in public schools.  The Central Administration of Prince William County Schools sent the reporter Ginger Thompson to Hylton High School where she spent over a year integrating herself into the academic and personal lives of the students.  In my humble opinion, Ms. Thompson could not find a negative in the design, administration, execution, and results of the program so the story in the Times (Where Education and Assimilation Collide: March 14, 2009) was a bizarre attempt to incite controversy and drama where none existed.  

The ultimate defense of the program exists in a statement of the obvious:  high schools by nature include many subset student groups and cliques. Students instinctively segregate themselves as a way to cope communally with high school.  And statistically, if the stated goal of high school is successful graduation, the graduation rates at that time of the ESOL program for over a decade exceeded the rate of mainstream students and always exceeded 90%.

However, Central Administration at Prince William County regarded the news article as not complementary, less than favorable, and I became over the years persona-non-grata.  Many years later, and many changes at the helm of the Hylton Guidance Department, brought a Guidance Director who did not support the design of the program. As changes to the design started to chip away at the initial formative principles, the strong successful results in the SOL tests (mandatory for graduation) were impacted.  Scores went down and the State of Virginia Department of Education could relax. As my friend at a neighboring middle school observed, “At our school, we had 100% fail rate of our ESOL population in the SOL tests. No one from the Department of Education came to figure out why or guide us as to how to fix it.”

In June 2017 I decided it was time to retire from public school teaching and start a new chapter in my life.  In my MEMOIRS section, I explain in some detail how I decided to live in Mexico City. Also included in that section are other memoirs like the incredibly subtle and beautiful cultural differences in my new home.  Additionally, very important to me are the reminiscences of the unforgettable students I have had the privilege of knowing and teaching over the eighteen years at Hylton High School.  And not to be forgotten in the Memoirs section (Bad Mother) are just a few stories (right now) of my most challenging and rewarding role in life, that of mother. 

As every teacher knows, you learn so much when you are teaching. In like manner, you grow exponentially as a person when a little one calls you mother.