Thinking of Rosalia, my former student

Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

Words by Woody Guthrie and Music by Martin Hoffman

Rosalia

My husband and I always sang this Guthrie song.
Neither one of us can stop singing once we start it.....it pours out all over our teaching life.
Do you know it? If not you must learn it, very easy to play.
It's my favorite. I substitute Rosalia for the name, after my dear student from Greenfield.
She will always be so dear to me, I'd go into teaching in a heart beat if I knew I'd meet a child like she was, or an adult like she is. She means my life was well spent.

Rosalia used to say, maybe still says , she doesn't much care for people.
And her eagle eye for character in a person is razor sharp. When she was young we used to sit by my desk and chat. I'm not sure if this is acceptable to ed folks now. I intuited at the time that she was a child out of time and when we talk now there is no difference at all, none. We are both connected and able to love one another through time and space. She was awesome in math then, fast, really good at spotting jackasses if you'll pardon the expression, a child that wrote and did all things in school world beautifully but had a clear idea of the different realities. Hers and Anglos. Understood life. And she taught me a good bit about the cultural realities for a child born to immigrant field workers living in California. She is so phenomenally beautiful I always figured she descended from royalty. At least for sure those that were modeled in marble by the Greeks. Rosalia was in many ways like a Flemish painting reborn. Living art.

I remember her talking to me once as a nine year old about the health of her parents. Life took a toll on them. About that moment another child's Dad came to the door to collect his son. He looked like the granddad so I said something to her about this. She said, "No, he's about 35 and looks 60". And this is the part I wrote down in my notes, she said explaining to her dim witted teacher, "He's been working in the grapes picking so he's aged ten times faster, it would kill most people what he has to do." And that was what she could see and explain at age nine. Imagine her now approaching thirty. Oh, I wrote in my notes then, look at the truth once in awhile Sarah.

The field work in CA is so difficult it ages people exponentially.
Did you know that one day she and I were out in the big yard playing and were sprayed overhead by the planes.? Happened. I drove out to one of the vineyard fields another time with Jack to just look on a Saturday. Field workers wear scarves over their faces and wrap up, even in the sun-always. As we were sitting there a plane swooped down spraying them and the fields. Is it any wonder my best friends mom in law died of brain cancer after years working the fields? Is it any wonder that a good friend developed lupus, is it any wonder that another good friend's sister died of a rapid horrible de-generative nerve or muscle disorder? No, it's no wonder at all. And school kids get sprayed. Or at least they did then, when the wind carried.

So how is it that I think of Rosalia as so far from this memory place, she's now living in another part of the country, married working in a law firm....Rosie knowing the lessons learned of beginnings in California fields. I ask myself the question , where is my mind? Like the song I keep hearing in my head another tune running around along with Woody tonight. Today a teacher said of one immigrant child in my class a phrase she oft repeats, "You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh@&." She's just been rewarded at our school with a teaching award recently.Very good at implementing mandates. No matter, just did it. I really believe if they mandate us in chicken feathers , she'd organize the doing. For me there comes a place of asking why. She used to say pick your battles but never picked them and I think moved on to other expressions. And she goes daily. And I ask myself the question, "Where is my mind?" I'm singing it actually in my head.

Rosalia was and is a fine piece of porcelain, exquisite. She said to me once, not so very long ago..."I was taught nothing I needed in high school. Not at all ready to do this work." All I ever think about was how capable and ready she was to learn in 4th grade when she was my student for a year....capable of anything. Jack brought home a term for me "dream killers" from someone he saw in a conference discussing teachers that the presenter a woman administrator felt destroyed children-she a Principal that ran a successful school...in a ghetto. This was the term she coined to describe some few teachers who see chicken sh%$ and get teaching awards from leaders who aren't aware enough of the repercussions of honoring this. They can't see the Rosalia's all around us. And they honor the dedication of one who never believed. To this my Rosie would say, "People are stupid." Because she surely saw through it all by nine.

But somewhere out in the world tonight a bright fire is burning inside the heart of a young champion among us, she is a shining example of the best in all of us. Strong, beautiful, honorable, fair , unflinchingly honest, able to think. A child that grew to love to read, to hold onto and value independent thought. A child I taught who managed to make my life one terrifically better place for her being. And I ask myself the question...where is my mind? And I ask myself the question....where is my mind? I am thinking of you Rosalia and thinking of the education of children just like yourself......a child of my life carrying me into the future with the potentials of infinite truths. I ask myself the question where are we now?

Found some Woody Guthrie Lesson plans.
Here is a good set from American Master's.
This seemed cool too.
This one is a mapping one.