The Professor Is a Dropout 军加皮念什么
抱的笔顺Preview
After being mistakenly labeled “retarded” and humiliated into dropping out of first grade, Lupe Quintanilla knew she wanted nothing more to do with formal education. Life as a wife and mother would satisfy her-and it did, until she saw her own children being pushed aside as “slow learners.” Driven to help them succeed, Lupe took steps that dramatically changed her life.
Words to Watch
radical (16): extreme
plant (29): a person put somewhere to spy
renowned (36): famous
伤感背影图片The Professor Is a Dropout
Beth Johnson
1景观树种
地磁异常 Guadalupe Quintanilla is an assistant professor at the University of Houston. She is president of her own communications company. She trains law enforcement officers all over the country. She was nominated to rve as the U.S. Attorney General. She’s been a reprentative to the United Nations.
地理学科核心素养 That’s a pretty impressive string of accomplishments. It’s all the more impressive when you consider this: “Lupe” Quintanilla is a first-grade dropout. Her school records state that she is retarded, that her IQ is so low she can’t learn much of anything.
How did Lupe Quintanilla,“retarded” nonlearner, become Dr. Quintanilla, respected educator? Her remarkable journey began in the town of Nogales, Mexico, just below the Arizona border. That’s where Lupe first lived with her grandparents. (Her parents had divorced.) Then an uncle who had just finished medical school made her grandparents a
generous offer. If they wanted to live with him, he would support the family as he began his medical practice.
Lupe, her grandparents, and her uncle all moved hundreds of miles to a town in southern Mexico that didn’t even have paved roads, let alone any schools. There, Lupe grew up helping her grandfather run his little pharmacy and her grandmother keep hou. She remembers the time happily. “My grandparents were wonderful,” she said. “Oh, my grandfather was stern, authoritarian, as Mexican culture demanded, but they were also very kind to me.” When the chores were done, her grandfather taught Lupe to read and write Spanish and do basic arithmetic.
When Lupe was 12, her grandfather became blind. The family left Mexico and went to Brownsville, Texas, with the hope that doctors there could restore his sight. Once they arrived in Brownsville, Lupe was enrolled in school. Although she understood no English, she was given an IQ test in that language. Not surprisingly, she didn’t do very well. Lupe even remembers her score.
“I scored a sixty-four, which classified me as riously retarded, not even teachable,” she said. “I was put into first grade with a class of six-year-olds. My duties were to take the little kids to the bathroom and to cut out pictures.” The classroom activities were a total mystery to Lupe—they were all conducted in English. And she was humiliated by the other children, who tead her for being “so much older and so much dumber” than they were.
After four months in first grade, an incident occurred that Lupe still does not fully understand. As she stood in the doorway of the classroom waiting to escort a little girl to the bathroom, a man approached her. He asked her, in Spanish, how to find the principal’s office. Lupe was delighted. “Finally someone in this school had spoken to me with words I could understand, in the language of my soul, the language of my grandmother,” she said. Eagerly, she answered his question in Spanish. Instantly her teacher swooped down on her, grabbing her arm and scolding her. She pulled Lupe along to the principal’s office. There, the teacher and the principal both shouted at her, obviously very angry. Lupe was
frightened and embarrasd, but also bewildered. She didn’t understand a word they were saying.
罗伯特霍里
“Why were they so angry? I don’t know,” said Lupe. “Was it becau I spoke Spanish at school? Or that I spoke to the man at all? I really don’t know. All I know is how humiliated I was.”
When she got home that day, she cried mirably, begging her grandfather not to make her return to school. Finally he agreed.
From that time on, Lupe stayed at home, rving as her blind grandfather’s “eyes.” She was a fluent reader in Spanish, and the older man loved to have her read newspapers, poetry, and novels aloud to him for hours.
Lupe’s own love of reading flourished during the years. Her vocabulary was enriched and her imagination fired by the novels she read—novels which she learned later were classics of Spanish literature. She read Don Quixote, the famous story of the noble, impr
清明节贺卡actical knight who fought against windmills. She read thrilling accounts of the Mexican revolution. She read La Prensa, the local Spanish-language paper, and Selecciones, the Spanish-language version of Reader’s Digest.
