Helping Kids Build Their Own Success

Alejandro Lugo spoke no English when he met Irma Valdespino in New Mexico back in the mid-1970s. He was an 11-year-old son of Mexican migrant workers who spent the first part of each school year in New Mexico, and the other part in Arizona. He's now a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"This," says Lugo, referring to his doctorate from Stanford, his master's from the University of Wisconsin, and his professorship, "never would have happened without Mrs. Valdespino. I wouldn't have survived middle school. She was non-threatening and charming and committed to her students. But the most important thing was she believed in me. She believed I could do the work."

Valdespino has influenced many lives during her 26 years working for Las Cruces schools. This spring, NEA recognized her work on behalf of students when she received the organization's Educational Support Professional of the Year Award.
Valdespino says she was "thrilled and humbled" to be recognized with this award. "I had no idea I'd receive it. There were other people in contention, and to be selected by the NEA is an incredible experience," says Valdespino, who's currently an educational assistant with bilingual programs at Mayfield High School.

Many of Mayfield's students come from Mexico. Valdespino believes it's important for society in general to respect their heritage and for these children to develop pride in their culture.

Accomplishing the latter isn't always easy, given the difficulties many students in Las Cruces-- and elsewhere--face. It can be a struggle to become proficient in English, while maintaining proficiency in their first language.

Many kids face huge additional challenges coming from single parent families, trying to find their particular place in school and the whole society, while maintaining their own cultural identity.

Valdespino believes, "Bilingual children must overcome so much, but they are survivors. They're resilient."

"I love working with children. They're part of my life," Valdespino adds. "I myself was a bilingual student. These kids are special. I can identify with them."

Sometimes life's best lessons are learned outside class. East Hartford, Connecticut, teacher David Bocchichio's selfless act of donating a kidney to the mother of three of his former students was a powerful lesson for his students. Best of all, the mother, Evelyn Arroyo, gained a new lease on life.

Bocchichio, a health and physical education teacher and member of the East Hartford Education Association, volunteered his kidney after he learned that none of Arroyo's relatives was a donor match and her prospects for survival without the transplant were considered grim.

The operation was unusual because most donors are either relatives or people who have died in accidents. Since he is a nonrelative, Bocchichio is considered a Good Samaritan donor.

"It's a heroic thing," surgeon Matthew Brown told the Hartford Courant following the operation. "It's an incredibly charitable thing to do."

Bocchichio and Arroyo gained national attention when they appeared on the Oprah Winfrey and Today shows. Connecticut Governor John Rowland praised Bocchichio's kidney donation, saying it shows that "teachers are mentors, role models, and positive influences in the lives of our children. They remind the rest of us of the goodness of mankind."

While Bocchichio finds this description flattering, he remains modest about the attention he has received. He says he doesn't consider himself a heroic figure, adding that he was unafraid of the six-hour surgery and was ready to make the donation.
"This was something I wanted to do and it was well within my capacity to do," he says. "A lot of people are concerned about the pain during the surgery. I wasn't. I'm young, strong, and in good physical condition. In fact, this was my third surgery in the past year and a half."

During his recovery, Bocchichio received "a ton of support," from his teaching colleagues. "They were thrilled. They gave me 100 percent support, before and after surgery. They made sure I've been comfortable, and they often visited or talked with me to make sure I wasn't pushing myself too hard."
Bocchichio believes character education is a big part of his curriculum and says his operation fits in well with what he tries to teach his students about "helping people and being kind and generous."

Preserving the Trails

Larry Smith hasn't exactly struck gold in Jacksonville, Oregon. But he's hit upon an idea that's reviving what had been a dying gold mine town.

Smith, an NEA Retired member, is a founding member of the Jacksonville Woodlands Association, which since 1989 has purchased and preserved trails surrounding Jacksonville.

This small town, center of what used to be a bustling gold mining trade, was one of the first National Historic Landmark Cities. The mines were abandoned 70 years ago, and like many mining towns, Jacksonville went belly up.

But now, "tourism keeps the town alive," Smith says. The woodland trails "help the town capitalize on what locals call the 'linger longer effect.' You can see the historic part of town in three hours. But we have 17 restaurants here, which isn't bad for a small town, and other businesses." All benefit from the foot traffic that the Jacksonville trails attract.

Smith credits much of the success of the trails, and the adjoining town, to his students.

A 22-acre patch of trees started it all back in the 1980s. Smith and a student, Brian Mulhollen, were walking past an old mine. "Brian's the kind of kid who's constantly coming up with ideas of how to do things," Smith says. "Walking by the mine, I said, 'There's an old mine.' And he says, 'How do we get it?'"

Smith says he was stumped but lamely suggested he go down and talk to the city manager. The 11-year-old Brian did just that. When the purchase came up for discussion at the city council meeting, Brian raised the entire purchase amount of $1,000 right there at the meeting.

Other students soon got involved. The association started looking for other parcels of land, and now it has 19 pieces of property totaling 300 acres, seven miles of trails, and a couple old gold mines, all worth about $10 million.

Dream House = Dream Lesson

Anna Denardi teaches both Spanish and math to middle school children in Guernsey, Wyoming. She enjoys both, but one advantage of her Spanish classes is that all the students are there by choice.

With math, she finds, some students come to class hating the subject.

One of her main goals has been to convince students that math is for real, not just a set of teacher-made hurdles created to trip them up.

So she developed a set of lesson plans in which her students designed and decorated their dream houses on a budget of $100,000.

"One thing they found out is that $100,000 is not a lot of money for a house," she says.

Denardi won a 1999 Presidential Award in Math and Science Teaching. The idea for the home-design project came to her when she and her husband were planning a house for themselves, and she realized that she was using all sorts of middle school math-percentages, ratios, areas, estimation, and more.

Her virtual home-design lessons have hooked many students who started out thinking they couldn't do math and didn't want to. "If this is math, I can put up with this," she recalls one formerly phobic student saying.

Students started asking her for more instruction to help them with the project. "They'd say, 'We're confused. Lecture for a while,'" De-nardi recalls. "Sometime they even said, 'We need homework tonight.'"

Denardi gives away her dream house lesson plans. The whole set takes a year to complete.
For more: Contact Denardi at adenardi@hotmail.com.

Still Teaching After All These (50) Years

Dorothy Grace Boyajian teaches a combined class of 31 fourth and fifth graders in California. Not remarkable, until you learn she's 70 years old and has taught for 50 years. "The years have gone by so fast and wonderfully. It's been super," says the veteran who has no immediate plans to retire.

Boyajian describes herself as an American of Armenian descent. She's proud of her mother who spoke seven languages, including Greek, Russian, French, and Armenian. "She was ahead of her time, a major inspiration to me, and she always valued education," Boyajian says.

Now, many years after her mother landed at Ellis Island from Armenia in 1920, Boyajian has completed 35 years at Sunnybrae School and a total of 50 years in San Mateo, 20 miles from San Francisco. She doesn't drive a car, instead riding to school with friends or finding other means.

How's she kept it up? "I love children," she says. "I love what I do each year. Each group is a new inspiration. Each child is unique in personality and way of learning."

Her best advice to new teachers? "Make sure you love kids, and that you want to do everything possible to help them learn. Find something good in every child, even the naughtiest ones. They come with their minds open, but they need to be active learners and everyone can improve. I always tell them: Good, better, best. Never let it rest."

And what does this thoroughly modern 50-year classroom veteran say about all this testing that's going on? "It's important to test, she says, "but testing's not the ultimate answer. Some kids don't take tests well.''

Boyajian has no idea how many students she's taught. But one of them found her recently. "I was in the car with a friend and a policeman stopped us. He came over to the car and said, 'I'm Brian Anderson, and you're the best teacher I ever had.'"