Teacher Stories

A Brother Moves On

I woke up at 1 in the morning to the sounds of geese, roosters and dogs crying. My brother Adrian called me at 1:20 a.m. to tell me that our brother Alan Anthony Delgado died this morning at 1 a.m. He died after a long battle with MS. He was 36 years old. He was an all-american kid with a big smile and a bigger heart. He had what we called that 'Luke" smile and attitude of the character Paul Newman played in "Cool Hand Luke". He was handsome like our dad. Girls swooned when he was in school. Yet, he was the consumate gentleman. He was a natural leader and good friend. He liked attending to details in his relationships. As a young person suffering with a progressive terminal disease, he showed more courage and dignity than any person I have known. in progress....

"The Twinkle in His Eye"

The Twinkle in His Eye

On Friday, Martha Zepeda, our Kindergarten teacher and her trusted co-educator, Ruth Solis went on their bi-weekly student house visits. What was to be a "routine" visit turned into a "Lazarus" event for a man in the winter of his life. What was a shadow became carnate. The old man, who was in his seventies, entered the conversation between his grandson's teachers and parent by asking if his grandson was as quiet at school as he was at home. With that question, his own silence was broken, as the man began to eventually speak of his journey on this Earth. Martha and Ruth's genuine interest in his story, motivated him to talk of life, music, friends, tragedy, opportunities lost, and his present precarious health condition. He recounted a song that a gifted but down and out composer friend gave him. A sad song which locally was so popular in his pueblo that he always was asked to sing it at social functions. Martha not only wrote down the lyrics but brought out a cassette player to record the man singing "his" song. As "we" know, "Our" Mexican sad songs can make even the coldest stone cry. By the end of the visit, he had been transformed! They could see the twinkle in his eye. He had been listened to, validated, appreciated and affirmed. When they recounted the story, both Martha and Ruth had this special aura about them. It was if they had been in the presence of something beautiful which produces awe and where words fall short of describing the event in its fullness, the sacred. In so many words, Ruth was correct in saying afterword that Martha has a gift for putting that twinkle in one's eye.

Kindergarten Clausura

On Wednesday, Martha Zepeda and I stayed until around 6:30 pm. selecting the last digital images of the year for the Kindergarten slideshow. After selecting some 20 more images, we previewed the show. With the last image, the song No Basta by Franco de Vita finished! Perfect! It must be great Karma, I could only smile as Martha told me, "see what I mean about this classroom!" Another minor miracle in a long string of them. Thursday morning, I burned the presentation project folder onto a CD, five minutes before the Kindergarten closing ceremony. I loaded the CD into my trusty iBook and the damn presentation didn't work as it was supposed to. The presentation was missing 30 plus images and didn't keep the image order intact. I thought I had all the source images in my project image folder. I didn't. I quickly asked Ruth Solis, if I had some time to fix the presentation before the slideshow was to start. I had maybe 20 to 30 minutes. I got two 6th grade students to man the digital camcorder, while I ran downstairs to come up with a damn fast solution. Using Gluon's free PresenterActive application, I decided to export the original slide show on the desktop as a Quicktime Movie.It took about 8 minutes to make the quicktime file and burn it onto a CD. Right away, I burned the two MP3 songs that played behind the slideshow. That took about 5 minutes. I did a quick test on my iBook. It was golden. Another minor miracle. I ran up three flights of stairs with both CD's in tow. I didn't know that the Kindergarten children just finished the last of their ten songs! As soon as I entered the gym, Martha Zepeda said,"Mr. Delgado, are you ready?" Yes, I was! I connected the iBook to the LCD projector and gave the music CD to Martha, who plopped it in the CD boom box. Bam! The slideshow, with Carol King's Child of Mine and No Basta! playing in the background mesmerized the audience of parents and students. One of my camera boys said that the slideshow was so sad. "A lot of mother's were crying." I have to say that I felt my tears falling , again! I guess watching children grow from the start of Kindergarten to the end the school year is remarkable. One sees a slice of all the hard work and care that these teachers and aides provide their students on a day to day basis. It is the most rewarding project that I work on. It is very simple tech wise but the selecting of the 132 slides with accompanying stories provided by the Kindergarten team provides me a rich background that I am very, very privileged to hear. In between the humor and the laughter is the observation of how much each child grew that year. If I had the opportunity to go back to Kindergarten as a child, I would love to go to Whittier School! To play on a phrase, "these teachers cook the soup that warms the soul!"

This is a experimental mutli-author blog built to publish teacher stories. You know the stories that you do not find in the national or local media.