When I graduated from college in
1971, my dream was to teach for a year, maybe a year and half, in a local high
school and save my money, then I would go get my doctorate in Spanish and teach
in a college. I would travel during the summers to all the Spanish-speaking
countries of the world and become world famous for my studies.
I had a teaching assistant job
offer good for two years at UT Austin and the promise of a Ford Fellowship.
Everything was set in place. I just had to get through the next eighteen
months.
My mid-year teaching assignment
was in a high school in the deep south side of the city. I was to teach junior and senior Spanish and
English. Since the neighborhood was
mostly Latino, so were the students. No problem, I thought. I was from that neighborhood. I was Latina.
It would be a piece of cake.
These were kids about to
graduate, so they didn’t give me much trouble.
My biggest problem was my age. I
was twenty-one and my students were ages 16-21, so I looked too young to be
their teacher. My second biggest problem was that everything was fine as long
as I didn’t expect the kids to do any work.
If I read to them, they listened
and answered questions, but if I asked them to read on their own very few
followed through. When I called on kids
to read for me, the same handful of students would volunteer, but if I called
on others, they refused and the same handful of volunteers would intervene and read
to the class.
I became suspicious and one day
announced that each student would be required to read one paragraph out loud
for me as a test grade. I started up one
row calling on students. Some refused belligerently and others got violent. Nothing
I said calmed them down so I required them to see me privately, before or after
school.
It did not take me long to
discover what was wrong. Most of the kids were illiterate. Handfuls were
reading on a pre-primer or primer level.
I was shocked.
I had gone to a neighboring high
school. I had always been in advanced
classes so my circle of friends were “the smart kids.” I never realized how lacking the school
system was back then for the kids who had learning disabilities. Those who made
it to the eleventh and twelfth grade had been passed on or had dropped out.
I was saddened by the fact that
there were hundreds if not thousands who would “graduate” from high school but
would not be able to read more than their name.
I kept on saving my money for
graduate school but in the meantime I studied all I could on my own about
teaching older students to read. The deadline to take advantage of my UT
teaching assistantship and my fellowship came and went, and I continued to
teach in the same old school district. I transferred to a nearby junior high
and took a job teaching remedial students.
Maybe if someone started with students who were a bit younger, they
would not end up holding a useless diploma.
I got my graduate degree in
reading. I got a job as the reading
coordinator for that same school district, and for five years I helped develop
a reading program with twenty-two top-notch reading specialists who served four
middle schools and two high schools. They
did awesome work.
I transferred to another school
district after that, but by then remedial reading programs in secondary schools
were sprouting all over the nation. It pleased me to see more and more
accountability towards high school graduates.
I never got my doctorate degree
in Spanish language and literature. I
never traveled to the many Spanish-speaking countries of the world. I never
became a world-famous college professor, but there is a large group of adults
who are able to read because I traded one dream for another.
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