I'll take Potpourri for $2,000, Alex

* Last Thursday was Back to School Night. How did it go? Well, let's just say that when you have a room full of 50 parents and several of them seem angry with you because you have been giving A LOT of homework to their kids, and they're complaining in Spanish but so quickly that you can't quite make out the specifics of what they're saying but you can tell by the look on their faces that they're upset, it ain't much fun. But that didn't last long. Mar and I put up our shields to protect against the initial blast of discontent and proceeded to explain how what we were doing was for the good of their children. By the end, all but one parent had joined in our crusade.

I suppose it's difficult, when you're an immigrant from rural Mexico with a 3rd grade education and you live in a community where you can have all your needs met in your primary language, to see the broader perspective. Or, at least, to see things the way that I, a college educated white man from Orange County, see it. For example, each year, as students enter my fifth grade classroom without knowing their times tables or writing without any punctuation or barely being able to read past a first grade level in English, I view the situation as a dire, dire emergency. I feel the pressure right away. The whole school year is a pressure cooker for me. Every single day is a big push. I have got to help these kids catch up. One year of progress just isn't enough. I need to make them jump two, maybe even three years in just 10 months of instruction. I have that sense of urgency because I know what the middle and upper middle class fifth graders in Palo Alto are doing, and that compared to what the majority of my students are currently capable of, the gap in skills, even though they're only 9 and 10 years old, is already so big. And yet R.'s mom complains that her daughter has two hours of homework a night.


* I went to my second ever quinceañera on Saturday for one of my former students. The word comes from quince (fifteen) and años (years), a girl's 15th birthday. It is a tradition celebrating a girl's passage into womanhood. The first part was a Catholic mass consisting of two priests saying various things with short musical interludes such as this catchy tune: "A-a-a-mennnn..... Aaaa-aaa-a-a-men.... Aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aa-aa-men!" and "Hallelujah! Ha-a-a-lle-lu-jah! Ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-llejujah!" Between songs and the priests, everyone kept trying to figure out when they were supposed to stand and when it was ok to sit down. I've found this to be a common theme at Catholic ceremonies - nobody seems to quite know when it's ok to sit.

After the mass the real fun began - a huge reception at a nearby event hall with a live band, dancing, delicious food, a DJ, 300 Latinos, and a white guy. I must admit, I do take some pleasure in the inevitable looks of surprise when I bust out in Spanish.


* This from Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover."