At the end of the day, Rolando and Luis appeared in my room. Luis translated and explained that the

I probably would have met Ramiro somewhere along the line if I had not known Luis Estrada but that is a hypothesis contrary to fact. The fact is Ramiro s story begins with Luis and Luis s story begins with Forest Hill High School.
When I returned from Japan in 1990, I began to teach at Forest Hill High School and experienced my worst case of culture shock returning to the USA and its educational abyss. I thought everyday of quitting that first semester and first year and second year and .... But two forces of nature stronger evenflo travel system than me kept me coming back everyday Jeff Ruskin and inspirational students.
A moment of peripeteia occurred the first semester in Algebra II when in a moment of either desperation or clarity I shut off the overhead and asked the class, "What gives here? I have never been in a school where all the students hate the teachers, all the teachers hate the administration and everybody seems to hate everybody evenflo travel system else?"
What followed was a wonderful and honest conversation on the cultural milieu of a school in midst of transition from the flag ship, academic, white school of Palm Beach County, to the melting pot of America. Could that conversation be measured on a quantitative scale of wonderfulness? Maybe, but if not, then consider that for homecoming one class built their float as a Japanese torii gate and said that was for me. Forest Hill High School was quite a homecoming from Japan. Indeed Forest Hill was really a more international school evenflo travel system than Hokkaido International School.
evenflo travel system What made it possible to survive evenflo travel system there is multifaceted. Certainly evenflo travel system my fellow teacher Jeff Ruskin was one of the biggest factors. Another significant factor was that I did not want to be there and therefore if I got fired for doing something, I did not care. This made telling the truth oh so much easier. At the end of my first year at FHHS several teachers were put on the excess list if it were necessary to drop teachers due to declining enrollment. I was told I was not on the list but Jeff and Randy were. I said to the administration that that choice evenflo travel system was stupid those guys wanted to be at Forest Hill and I did not. They said to me I was too valuable for the school. That s irony.
During the 92- 93 school year I taught one pre-algebra class along with Algebra II and honors physics. I called it my orphan class because that is what it was in the schedule and it seemed evenflo travel system those were the students in the class orphans from another country.
English was a second language for many if not most; and academic expectations, though never officially stated, were not high one was to try to show sufficient learning gains. In that class as a freshman was Luis Estrada. He sat in the back next to Rolando. Both spoke Spanish but Luis was learning English very quickly and could help Rolando. Unfortunately Rolando showed little interest in learning English or algebra.
One morning Rolando was studying his notebook with a hither to unprecedented intensity. His eyes were so fixed on his notebook that he did not notice me slowly drifting to a hovering position above his desk. There supposedly hidden from my view was a copy of Playboy . Slowly Rolando realized the class had grown quiet; his eyes left Miss October or whatever other pumpkin breasted centerfold adorned that month. He looked up and I took the magazine.
At the end of the day, Rolando and Luis appeared in my room. Luis translated and explained that the Playboy was not Rolando s but he had borrowed it from some older boys who would beat him up if he did not return it. I said I would return it at the end of the following day if he were still alive, but first I had to finish reading it, and second, the perils of facing those older boys was his punishment. When Luis finished translating, Rolando smiled and said in English, "Okay."
Rolando did get the Playboy back but his academic interest seemed to peak on that day and I did not see him around much anymore. Luis on the other hand returned more and more as long as I helped him in math or English or anything academic. His interest in learning was insatiable.
Luis wound up in my honors trigonometry class as well as honors physics. In his senior year he took AP Physics. Eventually Luis went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received his engineering degree in aeronautical engineering.
Early in that senior evenflo travel system year, 95- 96, Luis came to my room and said, "Mr Greydanus, this is my friend Ramiro. Ramiro, this is Mr Greydanus. Whatever he says, you do." And that is how my four year interaction with Ramiro began.
Ramiro was from Mexico. He had come in his fifth grade year to the West Palm Beach area. His mother had pocket change in her purse at the time. A fact that Ramiro told me and his high school counselor only after he had graduated valedictorian and received his full scholarship to Cornell University is during that fifth grade year he received all F s on his report card. No one had taken much interest in a poor, small immigrant kid from Mexico.
When Luis and Ramiro came to my door, I told them to go to guidance and get a print out of Ramiro s schedule evenflo travel system and return. This was the first test to see how willing Ramiro was to do "whatever he says."
Ramiro never objected. In fact he never objected to any suggestion I made. Ramiro took geometry, pre-calculus, honors physics, and AP Physics with me during his four years at Forest Hill. He also took every dual enrollment course evenflo travel system at the community evenflo travel system college he could squeeze in. Frequently my wife Mary would shuttle him between FHHS and PBSC or after that to home. He lived in the library and read and read and read and not Playboy .
In Ramiro s sophomore or junior year I told him that he was getting out of shape, in fact he was getting pudgy and needed to start running. So Ramiro joined the cross country team. Just this summer Ramiro completed a half marathon he has not stopped running.
When Ramiro was considering which college he would attend, he considered Calvin College and Cornell University the most. Cornell and its local alumni association came through with more than a complete package. They also bought him airline tickets and clothes for the cold of Ithaca, New York. When Ramiro left West Palm Beach, his picture was prominently featured in the Palm Beach Post. His mother barely could comprehend evenflo travel system where her son was going but she did realize it was all good.
Two immigrants who came from little to achieve much are my heroes. It is a story I have seen repeated in Palm Beach County over and over again. Certainly there are the Playboy viewing students like Rolando, but Playboy s appeal transcends ethnic boundaries.
Luis and Ramiro are my heroes. I doubt that I could have achieved what they did if I had come from a similar situation. I don t even think I could run a half marathon. And I doubt that I would have survived at FHHS without their inspiration and that of many, many students like them.