Cultivating new readers finds new meaning

There are coffee cups all over this ranch. But I'm not going to discuss that this month except to say all is well out here; feeding cows hay. This is not a story about cows, nor is it really about a migrant field worker. Because of the holiday season and there still turmoil in the world, I will share a lesson from an evening literacy class.

One evening to encourage an adult language literacy class of eager, motivated students, we listened to a CD of a reading, of an interview with Donald Romano, a child of migrant field workers. The class was to listen to the interview, then discuss and write questions they would ask Mr. Romano.

This lesson was to reinforce the commitment these students were making to come to class, for 13 weeks, three nights a week, for 21⁄2 hours, after completing their day jobs, which sometimes were 12 hours long. As well as enhance their language skills.

These students were advanced. Some had attended other classes. Others new to the program, maybe self-taught, wanted to improve their English for their own personal reasons. Their ages ranged from 20ish to mid-40s or 50s. It is hard to guess age after you reach a certain age yourself. But I knew from over the course of the class most were hard-working adults. Some had basic jobs in commercial kitchens, restaurants, factories, one was a degreed engineer, another had an MBA from another county.

The interview was a success story. It was meant to test students' comprehension, inference skills, increase vocabulary and keep them motivated. From the interview we learned Romano's family, one sister, mother and farther traveled a great deal following crop harvests. The work was hard for the whole family. Living conditions were bad, very bad. Romano had limited formal education opportunity until he reached high school age when his parents insisted he stay in school, where he learned quickly, graduating second in his class, and received a scholarship to go to college.

In college, Romano received a degree in engineering and met someone with an MBA from Harvard.

Romano applied to Harvard, there, received an MBA and was setting his mother up with a computer company so she did not have to pick fruit at harvest any longer.

Also in the interview it was explained how Romano was riding in the back of a pick-up truck with his father, coming home from his last summer job of crop harvesting, before college, when a semi-truck ran a stop sign, hitting the pick-up truck. Romano's father was killed. Romano said college was hard but nothing was as hard as watching his father die. But he knew his father was very proud of him and excited for him to be going to college. When the interview was over the class was silent.

The students had been encouraged to talk among themselves to come up with interview questions, but no one was talking. Edwin, a younger student, was holding his head in his hands. When called upon, he looked up, his eyes red. He said, "This it is too hard. Too sad, his father is dead."

The whole class replied the same. So there in front of class trying to demonstrate the importance of an education, hard work, and what you can get with it, the students, comprehending this interview very well, learned nothing completely replaces the loss of someone you love.

So our interview question: Mr. Romano is there something you would like to say to your father?

To all, a safe and warm holiday.