I think every child ought to visit Disneyland. It really is the happiest place on earth. I have many stories about Disneyland and they will come up when I transition to high school. My first time at Disneyland was as a teacher at Montivew. I had found a new adventure and was teaching a sheltered English class to students who were learning English as a second or third language. It was fun and a huge challenge at the same time. one of the perks was to be a part of Project TALK. Project TALK was run out of the Bilingual Education Program of APS. It was an ambitious project and was the precursor to what we have today. The full description of what I was working on is in the JPEG below. We were going to the California Association of Bilingual Education (CABE). We had been to many sessions and we were “conferenced out” and were leaving late that night. As we sat at the restaurant of the Anaheim Hilton we looked over the itinerary for the day and came to the conclusion that walking across the street and going to Disneyland was a far more entertaining choice. I had an amazing time and was the biggest kid in the park that day. When I got home, luckily my daughter was only three and wasn’t as aware of what I did. If she had been a little older I would have been in big trouble for going without her.
The second part of the story is about the people I connected with and met during the conference. I got to spend a lot of time with David & Yvonne Freeman who were very big in the bilingual education area. I spent time talking about my classroom and got some great tips and advice on how to make my classroom more successful. The other brush with celebrity came at a session on teaching math. I was sitting next to this gentleman and something about him struck me as familiar. I couldn’t place him until the presenter told people to turn and introduce themselves to the people next to them. I said my name and this man just got halfway through his name before it hit me. I was sitting and chatted for an hour with Jamie Escalante, the teacher that inspired the movie Stand and Deliver. I was a little star-struck but a great conversation ensued. After a few minutes, I got up the courage to ask him the question I always wanted to know about teachers like him. I asked him in a polite way, what was it that made him such a good teacher. In one sentence he was able to give me the best understanding of teaching, I had ever heard. He said, “I just teach differently and I teach the way I learned.” I thought about it and as we talked he told me that he was successful with kids who may need a different approach. There wasn’t just one way to learn and he reached his kids on their level and their way of learning. To this day I try to approach new learning in a couple of different ways to reach more kids.
Next week is Fall Break so I will return on October 24, 2022
