"When I was in Mexico..."

So my doorbell rang tonight, just as it was getting dark. I haven't heard my doorbell ring for quite some time. I actually answered it.

As a 5th grade teacher, you could say one of my most important jobs is getting my kids ready for sixth grade - giving them the skill set they need for sixth grade but also generally building their capacity to enjoy academic success both in the near and more distant future. In June they leave me - in my mind, they are full of infinite promise. They are young, with unlimited potential.

They are like little sail boats. I gently push/drop/kick them into the swiftly moving stream of the American public education system, hoping that I've helped make their ships a little more water tight, taught them well enough to use the sails to catch the right winds, given them enough of a map to avoid the more troublesome waters they'll soon face.

One of those seafarers, who is now in 9th grade, came back to me today. Well, not exactly back to me. I ran into him on the steps in front of our school. He and three of his buddies were sharing a 2 liter bottle of Coke in styrofoam cups. I hadn't seen him since he graduated from 8th grade last June. Sporting two earrings (one in each ear) and a rather uncharacteristically stylish looking shirt, he sheepishly grinned at me as I walked over, wanting to say hello to him even though it was already past six and I was itching to get home after a long, trying day.

When he started 5th grade with me, he had only been in this country for about a year. Too shy to speak English, afraid to make mistakes, he came to me with a silent reputation. By the middle of the year, we couldn't get him to shut up. "When I was in Mexico..." he would always say, followed by this or that story about some crazy thing that happened to him. This boy, who came in too afraid to talk in English, debated issues like abortion and religion in public schools and gave several speeches and filmed two campaign commercials to be elected President of our class. Upon the announcement of his victory, amid the clapping and whistling of his classmates, with no prodding on my part he walked across the room to his opponent and shook his hand, in English offering his congratulations on a good, fair fight. That was him in fifth grade.

Now, he sits on the steps of his old elementary school with 3 of his buddies, talking to his 5th grade teacher and drinking Coca Cola. He will finish his freshman year of high school with less than half of the credits he should have. He's already thinking about dropping out.

I could tell he needed someone to tell him not to give up. Full of self doubt and frustration, he needed someone to tell him it wasn't too late, to remind him he was still that kid full of promise who was elected the president of his class back in fifth grade.

And so I told him.