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pions some of whom are here today brave manuel carmen marcos amanda ed maria to genie and hector zavaleta who are not here today but have devoted the past fifty years to protecting civil rights in closing i thank the arizona dr martin luther king jr celebration committee for this beautiful morning and from the bottom of my heart i thank the phoenix human relations commission and the city of phoenix equal opportunity department for their courage in presenting this award which hope is the first step in breaking the silence about these children these future lawyers engineers teachers doctors they are here they are here we need to listen to their dreams and we need to act to make those dreams a reality an acceptable immigrant june 20 2009 in dream act immigration social security number 5 comments i spent most of today with a resilient young woman a former student who is trying to do what she can to pursue a nursing degree several scholarships in hand she is still short 5 000 a semester she lacks the nine digits of a social security number that would make it possible for her to find a part time job to help make up the difference the nine digits that would enable her to apply for a driver s license so she could drive across town to attend college she tells me she s washing dishes and that her mother s on anti depressants from mexico she tells me she married an american without realizing that it wouldn t help she d still be at the back of the line except there is no line for kids like her in reality she d have to go back to mexico a country she doesn t know because she left it when she was a baby she also tells me that her parents can t make the house payments any more and i tell her to hang in there hang in there it s an inexcusable situation in america in 2009 it s obscene here i sit an immigrant myself a lucky white one with freckles the pre requisite red in my hair and the remnants of a county antrim accent shared by the likes of liam neeson from the little country that could and did with its riverdance its bono the cranberries the chieftains sinead o connor oscar wilde george bernard shaw james joyce sean o casey seamus heaney van morrison yeats for god s sake land of nobel prizewinners and women with tempers as wild as the sea even here in arizona where the very idea of america seems to be unraveling with its anti immigrant atmosphere it seems that everybody s irish on march 17th i m bemused by the sight of plastic paddys washing down corned beef and cabbage with their mugs of green beer on a windy march afternoon not a decent pint of guiness in sight corned beef who eats that seriously who eats corned beef and cabbage it s as american as lucky charms cereal or irish spring soap not that we irish don t have our own issues i don t recall a halloween from my childhood when my mother didn t produce an apple tart baked with a ring inside to get the ring was a sure sign that you d marry likewise there was the widely held belief that if you peeled an entire apple and threw the long peel over your left shoulder it would land in the shape of the initial of your future love but i digress the only beef i ever had back home was far from corned we had the best of sirloin from stewart s butchers a place with sawdust on the floor and young butchers in black and white striped aprons the only cabbage we ever had was fried with a bit of good bacon from golden s shop we never had cabbage on st patrick s day that was a religious kind of holiday where it wasn t uncommon to see shamrocks wilting in the buttonholes of suits our neighbors went to mass all 11 of them as i recall and the protestants really didn t bother with the holiday at all admittedly it deteriorated into a bit of a pub crawl when i was older at teacher training college in belfast we d head to byrne s pub on the ballymena line trying not to think of the publican who had been shot to death in that very place his wife mrs byrne pulled out all the stops on st patrick s day with an irish stew reminiscent of the kind of thing you d expect maureen o hara and john wayne to scarf down between takes of the quiet man lamb onions carrots and potatoes bland to the american tastebuds i m sure but for us when it was combined with an aromatic turf fire a hot whiskey and big mickey in the back bar playing the lonesome boatman on the tin whistle it was big and bold in flavor and we could understand why so many americans loved our country which is why i m a little bitter tonight i m thinking of an aspiring nurse a beautiful intelligent young woman whose parents carried her across the border when she was a few months old a young woman who pledged allegiance to the flag of these united states every day at school a young woman who now volunteers at hospice of the valley who likes to help others from children struggling with their abcs to friends with babies a young woman who is out of luck on all fronts i can t help her i can only feel guilty that i married an american long before the laws changed simply put i d overstayed a work visa following a stint upstate new york as a camp counselor i got married the rest is history i m still a citizen of ireland with a green card in my wallet and will remain as such until the dream comes true for those kids who have worked so hard to be all they can be in and for america until the dream act passes i cannot hold my hand over my heart in deference to the flag of a country that doesn t embrace children those without social security numbers and those who are trying to fulfill the dreams of their parents who want only the very best for them as i prepare to open this new school i make a mental note that good citizenship will not be a criterion for success on a report card i won t lie to the kids but i ll remind them that this america that we aspire to this dream we share is held aloft by an immigrant spirit proud and undaunted harvard crimson june 15 2009 in first generation college leave a comment six months into this new chapter and the summer time nervousness is kicking in i should know better having worked in charter land since 1995 it s june and we have 140 freshman students on our estimated count list unlike traditional public schools so much of what is done in charter land requires projections best guesses of how many kids will actually show up on opening day huge leaps of faith from time to time i ve been in this situation before june 2004 when i d hired an entire faculty without one freshman student on the list i cast the recruitment net far and wide showing up at swap meets churches july 4th celebrations wearing a t shirt emblazoned with free college ask me how if i noticed a group of kids hanging out at the mall or at a bus stop i would descend upon them with brochures and a barrage of questions about where they went to school were they happy there were they interested in an exciting new opportunity for urban youth in phoenix i recall buying a mattress and while supine on a firm queen i asked the salesman if he had any high school aged kids who might want to attend my school i bought the mattress the kid enrolled charter school principals understand this behavior traditional school principals not so much not having to wear the many hats of superintendent assistant superintendent for curriculum assessment finance development as well as nurse chauffeur substitute teacher development director test coordinator fundraiser and maker of forms traditional principals enjoy an infrastructure without which most charters operate but this time i have support and infrastructure in place i m hiring slowly so far i have four faculty each inspirational and eager to make history with this new charter along with a student success liaison who s helped with recruitment and extra curricular programming i have a custodian a secretary and a beautiful campus classrooms equipped with smart boards students with laptops waiting and last friday our outdoor seating was installed and reminded me of why we re here the outdoor seating is the color of crimson the color of harvard i d decided that if we were going to be a college prep school we really should be preparing kids for the best of college the best of colleges so i opted for harvard crimson as our school color one of the perks of being in a charter school before you ve hired anyone is that you get to make these big decisions all by yourself the logo the school colors the schedule i m contemplating a variety of schedules so far one for 140 kids with four teachers one for 140 kids with five teachers which means they ll get electives one for 200 kids with 8 teachers i wonder sometimes if i was wrong not to recruit 10th graders but i know that s the nervousness talking to be true to our mission it is best to begin with freshman kids and we ll grow a culture of teaching and learning together back to harvard several weeks ago i met with a family whose 14 year old son told me that it is his dream to attend harvard he spoke quietly informing me that he didn t want to sound big headed as if this dream was too good for him and in my hands was one of those big fat teachable moments that keep us all doing what we do i pointed out our crimson marquee our crimson logo our crimson outdoor tables and asked him if he knew that we shared the colors of his dream school no he didn t but he got it he understood that at the intersection of 38th and maryland avenues we are in the business of going after big dreams by empowering rather than enabling kids who might not otherwise think they can share their dreams of harvard out loud with pride and in spite of all the panicking about whether we ll make the projected enrollment or what the master schedule will look like and how we ll get the textbooks ordered before july 1 and the curriculum in order for august 11th i m back to the real work making college education a reality summer reading june 5 2009 in summer reading leave a comment i was one of those children who preferred staying inside with my nose stuck in a book to watching television or playing on the field outside our house on the dublin road i borrowed books from the north eastern education and library board van that parked around the corner every couple of weeks the newspaper boy a lanky hugh mcgarry delivered a variety of magazines the twinkle when i was little and then later the bunty the judy the jackie the mandy a ll very girly my little brother on the other hand got comics the beano and the dandy superman and spiderman every christmas santa claus would leave a selection of annuals for us hardback compilations of the comic s best features i m quite sure i could find these if i crawled into the attic of my parent s house in ireland too i d probably find several guiness books of records as well as the leather bound set of the encyclopedia britannica which had been purchased by my parents from a door to door salesman circa 1970 add to this print rich environment three black and white tv channels from which to choose ulster television bbc1 and bbc and you have my recreational options as a child later expanding to include channel 4 its color commercials and edgy content pushing the envelope i always had books in my bookcase including some that never made it back to the library if truth be told admonished by my mother s neither a borrower nor a lender be it never occurred to me to borrow from or loan books to my friends the adventures of nancy drew kept me up at night and when i had chickenpox nancy and her ilk kept me from going insane with boredom my mother still remembers being barely able to feed my reading habit during the weeks i was home from school i d beg her to go into town to eason s bookshop to bring me more books which she did without fail thanks to the prolific children s author enid blyton i was never without company my best friends were her famous five and her girls who attended the posh boarding schools st clare s and malory towers written in the late 1940 s i m quite convinced her books would be lambasted today as politically incorrect and sexist reinforcing class and gender stereotypes but they provided hours and hours of delight and pure escapism for a working class girl in northern ireland i just can t bring my enlightened self to criticize enid blyton that would be sacrilege given all of this it never occurred to me that any of child of mine would consider reading a chore i m alarmed to find myself cajoling and bribing my daughter with the promise of a new electronic game if only she would read for 20 minutes even more alarmed to realize just how little she has read in her young life unthinkable to me she has an expansive vocabulary words gleaned not from a copy of dicken s old curiosity shop delivered to me by santa when i was 10 but from the nintendo ds a game cube a wii an i touch the books painstakingly collected by me over the years sit untouched in their bookcases there will be i m quite confident no deep conversations with my daughter about the heroines of thomas hardy s novels we don t go to church so she won t grasp all the biblical illusions in the plays of shakespeare or the poetry of t s eliot that is of course if she ever encounters these brilliant works her teachers sadly have done little if anything towards helping me establish our very own mother daughter book club around the kitchen table i realized this morning while she was applying cherry crush polish to my toenails that my daughter has just completed the 6th grade having read a grand total of two books huck finn and the cay and an abridged version of the odyssey along with her gifted classmates she has watched the movie versions of huck finn hatchet and the odyssey she tells me with some regret that they were supposed to watch coraline but the teacher ran out of time they did however have time to watch mulan the prince of egypt and the delightful fern gully almost conspiratorially she tells me that when her teacher forgot to do something or when the copier was busted the class watched planet earth better yet they got to see the entire series while her teacher played on her computer further she tells me that the highly acclaimed planet earth is divided into several parts devoted to the jungle the deep sea the desert plains and the arctic conveniently each of these can fill almost an entire class period as i replay the last year in my head i recall with some irony that when the country was in the middle of a historic presidential election my daughter s class was immersed in the opening chapters of the new social studies textbook covering egypt and greece when president obama was being sworn in my daughter was running around her campus in a toga crafted by me from a white sheet and a piece of rope when the country was in the grip of a massive financial meltdown my daughter was learning about what the pharaohs ate for dinner not wanting to be the parent from hell and trying not to wear my principal s hat i had broached with her teacher the possib...
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