Manifesto

Mariana Figueroa, Christopher Elementary School

By Marie Milner

In Frank McCourt’s memoir Teacher Man, he ends his penultimate chapter with the words of one of his former high school students: “Hey, Mr. McCourt, you should write a book.” The first time I had a lengthy conversation with Mariana Figueroa, a first grade teacher at Christopher Elementary School in Oak Grove School District, over brunch, along with Pam Cheng, also of the San Jose Area Writing Project, I felt virtually the same way about Mariana’s story. I remember grasping her hand across the table in a restaurant in order to convey my sincerity, and saying, “Mariana, you need to write about all this. People would love to read your story!” Mariana is a modest and humble woman, so she declined to write her story herself. I did, however, convince her to share her story in more detail with me, and I’m hoping to do partial justice to that story here.

When I first encountered Mariana, she had come to the SJAWP Invitational Summer Institute to give a model demonstration for the participants in the workshop. I was a returning participant because I had been so inspired the summer before. As Mariana began her early morning presentation, she exuded a warmth that immediately drew me to what she was about to say about how she prepares her six-year olds to begin their journey toward leading literate and fulfilling lives. I recall thinking that a high school teacher, such as I, has much to learn from someone who works with the shorter folk. And learn I did.

What first impressed me was hearing that Mariana not only arranges a yearly field trip to San Jose State University for the first-graders, but that students’ parents are included in the trip. Mariana invites professors at SJSU to speak with her students and their parents in order to provide role models for their futures. The majority of her students are Latino, so she invites Latino professors in order to best engage her students and offer role models with whom they may identify. As some of her other students are Vietnamese, Mariana arranges to have translators accompany those students’ parents so that they gain access to valuable information about their children’s future possibilities in college as well.

This trip is only one of many ways in which Mariana embraces the parent community and points young children in the direction of post-secondary education. To support this philosophy, Mariana invites parents to her classroom and has special days called “author’s party” that are frequently attended by parents who come to hear budding six-year-old writers share their written work.

I work in a high school of over 2,000 students where parental involvement is rare, so I am envious of Mariana’s connection with her students’ families. She says she wants to empower students’ parents. “I want to let them know that I am grateful for all they taught my students before they entered by classroom and how I hope they will continue to work with their children. I like to think of us as a team.”

One of Mariana’s fondest teaching memories is of a six-year old boy named Daniel who seemed unreachable, and as she terms it, “out of control” in the classroom. He had invited her to his birthday party, but when she actually attended, he seemed surprised. She said from that day forth his classroom behavior became more focused, and his attitude became a more positive one. She believes this is because her attendance at his birthday celebration helped him understand that she cared about him and that he was a person worth knowing. Not only did Daniel become a happier six year old, but as a current sixth grade student, Daniel still comes by Mariana’s classroom to visit her and to read aloud to her much younger students.

As I listened to Mariana, I wondered whether this kind of dedication to youngsters is imbedded anywhere in a State teaching “standard.”

Like many educators, Mariana’s own school experiences produced some very unhappy memories, such as being ostracized for the childhood polio that affected her gait. Again, rather than allowing that experience to demoralize her, she has channeled it into a profound desire to help her students feel valued, accepted and loved. She also recalls attending a primary school in Corona, California in the 1960’s where students were sent home from school as punishment if they used the Spanish language in the classroom. (I can’t imagine facing discipline for speaking my own language.) When she was in high school in the early 1970’s, her school had arranged a college field trip. When she approached a guidance counselor for the details about attending the trip, she was told not to “get on that bus.” She was told there was a more “appropriate” field trip to a vocational school coming up that she might want to attend.

Mariana remembers the man’s ignorant statement to this day, as would we all had we heard the same silent and deadly message. To her credit, instead of allowing his particular prejudices about Latino students to embitter her, she has turned the incident into a positive experience for her own first-graders. Even at six years of age, they and their parents are essentially hearing, “Of course you can go to college if you want to, and I’m here to help you start down that path.” Mariana says, “I just want them to have what I never had.”

I asked Mariana to explain how the Writing Project has informed her own teaching by asking her what she sees as the most significant strategies to foster a love of writing in young children. She says it is important for students to have author “mentors” with whom they can connect. Because of her substantial Latino student population, she uses as much literature as she is able that validates those students’ particular cultural experiences and provides models of Latino authors. She also shares her own writing with students in order to demystify the writing process and further extend the notion that they are all family. Mariana showcases the students’ work as often as possible to give them “the recognition they deserve for their attempts.”

I knew from my first workshop with Mariana that she embraces the Writing Project’s model of writing in her classroom, but I asked her to voice how the San Jose Area Writing Project has specifically supported her in her teaching career. Her answer did not surprise me because I share her feelings about SJAWP. “You feel as if you are working with a team of teachers who have the same love, passion and sense of urgency, and will do whatever it takes to support our students, their families and each other.”

Similar to the Writing Project model, Mariana gives her students many opportunities to support each others writing, including the sharing of written work, not only with each other, but with students at other grade levels and with parents. She feels that students can thus be validated as “published authors.”

Mariana was named Teacher of the Year in 2005 by the Santa Clara County Office of Education. This comes as no surprise to me. As a 52-year-old woman, I often wish I could turn back the hands of time, but I don’t generally wish myself back in first grade. After getting to know Mariana Figueroa, I might be inclined to give first grade another whirl.