The education of Mr. O

A Mexican teacher comes to America and learns a lot about his profession - and himself.

By Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 1, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

Fourth-grade teacher Juan Osorio lines up his students to escort them to music class at Beach Court Elementary in Denver.

Photo by By Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

Mr. O, who is fluent in Spanish and English, works with Anthony Perez on a writing lesson.

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In the fall of 2002 Juan Osorio left his home in Cuernavaca, Morelos, a part of Mexico so beautiful it is known as the City of Eternal Spring, and flew 1,500 miles to teach in a working-class neighborhood in northwest Denver.

On the first day of school, Osorio put on his usual suit and tie, and walked into Beach Court Elementary.

"There's an American teacher who walks by and she's like, 'Wow, do teachers in Mexico dress like this?' " he said. "I'm like, 'Excuse me? What were you expecting to see - a sombrero and some huaraches?' "

In time, Osorio would become an integral part of the instructional team - including his sister, Rosa - who have made Beach Court one of the best neighborhood schools in Denver.

He would use his fluency in English and Spanish to propel students to success in the classroom and ease tensions between Mexican and American kids on the playground.

Along the way, Osorio, also known as Mr. O, would learn a bit himself - about the differences between U.S. and Mexican schools, about the lingering racism that causes some students to be ashamed to be brown, about what a teacher can be.

This is his story. Call it the education of Mr. O.

'Moments I live for'

It is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and the 30 fourth-graders in Mr. O's afternoon class are wired with excitement about the fact that, in a couple hours, they'll be out of school for five whole days.

They're 9 and 10, and writing is a chore most dislike. They are grudgingly, with much erasing and sighing, completing their daily essay.

Osorio, who has been correcting the pieces, suddenly lifts his head. "Look at this," he said, smiling as he holds up a notebook. "These are the moments I live for."

The piece is titled "School" and it begins, "School is the best time of the year. They are the best time of the year because learn more. They are the best time because when you are big you can be a doctor and a nurse . . . "

Imperfectly written but entirely in English, a feat for the author, a boy who was moved into Mr. O's class in October and who initially refused to write in English.

The boy's notebook shows his progression, from a mostly Spanish entry in early October to an Oct. 14 entry that is mostly English but nonsensical:

"Mabe do you like dolphins o no like the dolphins is beauty your other is blue."

The last sentence of last week's entry may be Mr. O's biggest triumph: "I like the school."

'Learn, practice, work'

The boy reminds Mr. O of himself at 12 in the U.S. for the first time, illegally, with little English.

"The minute he walked in with me, he wants to use Spanish because he knows I understand it," Osorio, 31, said. "There's two, three days when I asked him to do work, he would write in Spanish.

"So I talked to him and I told him that that's not going to help him. I gave him a spelling list and he had a dictionary, and he only produced five or six sentences but he's trying. And he's going to get there faster."

Osorio's family moved to Arizona for three years when he was in middle school, searching for a better life. He vividly remembers other students' taunts.

"I didn't understand half of what they said, but I knew they were making fun of me because they were laughing," he said. "I cried the first two weeks, but . . . my mom said, 'Crying is not going to solve anything. Do something about it. Learn, practice, work.' "

In six months, he had the last laugh, he said, because he understood the insults thrown at him in English - but they didn't understand his retorts in Spanish.

"That motivated me because who enjoys it when somebody is making fun of you? Nobody," Osorio said. "I don't want him to go through that."

Mexican vs. American

Beach Court is a bubble of stability in a changing neighborhood off Interstate 70 and Federal Boulevard. Step inside and it feels safe and inviting, an atmosphere nurtured by exuberant Principal Frank Roti.

"Boys and girls, let's have an awesome, fantastic, wonderful day together," is a typical Roti signoff on the morning announcements.

But even here, where nearly every student is the same ethnicity and income level, differences matter. Here, as in some other schools, language is a divider. About half of the students are native Spanish speakers.

At recess, "All the Spanish- speaking kids would be playing on one side and all the English-speaking kids would be playing on the other side," Mr. O said. "We always came back to lunch with a fight: 'They called us Mexicans' or 'They called us whatever.' "

So he started playing soccer at recess and mixing up the teams. And if a student uses Mexican as an insult, Mr. O stops and explains he is Mexican and he loves his country.

"I say, 'Would you like me to say something about your country?' " he said. "I think it makes them reflect."

He also talks to kids about skin color.

"Be proud of who you are, be proud of speaking two languages, be proud of having Hispanic roots," he tells them. "Because it seems like a lot of kids grow up thinking it's a bad thing to know Spanish, it's a bad thing to have Mexican blood in you."

'Magic with your mind'

When Mr. O was a little younger than his students are now, his mother would give him bread to sell and tell him not to come home until it was gone. He was 8.

"We didn't have enough money because my dad was a teacher and a teacher doesn't make enough money to support a family of nine kids," he said. "It was tough because I used to walk in my neighborhood knocking on doors and I would see my friends playing soccer and playing on their bikes.

"But I definitely think I'm who I am today because of those experiences. We worked and we studied. By the time we were in college, we didn't know any different."

Four of Mr. O's siblings are teachers, all in Mexico except his older sister. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English, taught for four years in a private school in Mexico and was contacted by a Denver Public Schools recruiter in Cuernavaca.

"At first, I didn't want to come," he said. "I thought, I have everything here, my family's here, I have a good job, teachers are very respected here. But then I thought, if I go up there, I'm going to find out all these strategies and I can come back and help my country."

What he discovered is that a teacher's life in Mexico and here are not so different, in some ways.

He worked two jobs in Mexico - teaching and coaching - to make about the same money he makes here, a salary of $39,350. That goes much further in pesos. But he works nearly as many hours here as he did there.

"There, you can't be sending a lot of homework, so you're not grading as many papers as you do here," Osorio said. "You don't have a bunch of materials to work with there. . . . You have the board, a piece of chalk and your mind, and you try to do magic with that."

On a recent Wednesday, while their students are at music and gym, Mr. O and his team teacher, Bianca Baghaie, sit at a small round table and grade essays.

Between them, they share 50 fourth-graders. Mr. O handles reading and writing duties, working with native Spanish speakers in the morning and native English speakers in the afternoon. Baghaie takes care of math and science.

Audrey Bourgeois, the school's literacy coach, listens as Osorio reads aloud an essay on the banning of 4-square, a favorite playground game at Beach Court.

"Is that Hugo?" Baghaie asks, impressed.

"No, it's Manuel," Mr. O said.

"Wow, Manuel," Bourgeois said, tallying up points. "He went to advanced; that is incredible."

The three haggle the finer points - was this student's work focused enough to earn a 3, or is it only a 2? Did that student support her stance enough for a 4?

It is a conversation Mr. O never had in Mexico for two reasons: Class sizes can range from 45 to 60 per teacher, and data are little used to shape instruction.

"That's something I didn't like at first: Everything is based on data. But now I think it's good," he said. "Sometimes you look at data and you go, 'Whoa, they're not getting it. I need to do something different.' "

Mr. O will tell you he is a better teacher now, and he wants to be better still.

"I'm worried because they think they only need to write five sentences, the beginning, three supporting details and the ending," he said to the literacy coach. "I need help on the endings."

When he tells the literacy coach he needs help in teaching his students how to write endings, Bourgeois said, "OK, you and I can work on that."

Coming to America

Mr. O's transition to America has not been easy.

He has been pulled over by police for no apparent reason, trailed by salespeople in the mall and stared at when he speaks Spanish in the supermarket.

"There's a point where you have to understand, it's not their fault," he said. "Their parents inject those feelings in them, and it's not the parents' fault, it's the grandparents' fault. It just goes way back.

"I think we just have to re-educate people."

He called his mom once, back home, questioning what he was doing in a place that did not seem to want him.

"She said, 'Juan, teaching is not about Mexican, American, Chinese or French. Teaching is about kids. It's about working with kids, about helping them grow and become better than they are and giving them hope and touching their lives,' " Osorio said. "She just told me, 'You can come back to Mexico, but if you don't understand the full meaning of teaching, it won't make a difference.' "

He smiled: "I think that's when I finally landed here."

Last year, Mr. O was named Beach Court's Mile High Teacher for going "above and beyond." His parents flew in to see Mayor John Hickenlooper shake his hand.

But the best awards are the construction-paper trophies and letters he tapes around his classroom computer, the ones that declare, "Dear Mr. Osorio, you are smart, nice and kind, you are my first best teacher. Sincerely, Jessica."

Tuesday, before they tore out of school for break, a group of girls stopped to explain what Mr. O means to them.

"He doesn't know how to get mad," said Angela Sierra, 9.

Guadalupe Rodriguez, also 9, thought for a minute. "He touches our heart, really deep," she said.

IN HIS OWN WORDS: JUAN OSORIO

What he tells kids:

"Your life can be a disaster, but you still have a chance. And you don't have to be rich. I'm here to prove it. I come from a family that was big, that didn't have enough money, that we had to eat rice and beans for weeks because we didn't have money for anything else. We could only get a new pair of shoes after you had holes in your pair of shoes . . . but I'm here, I went to college, I worked hard.

"There's always a chance, there's always hope. It's all in what you believe; it's all in what you think. The most powerful weapon you have is your brain. And if you don't feed it, if you don't give food to your brain, you won't be ready to fight. You will lose every single fight."

Differences in parents:

"American teachers say all the time, (recently arrived) Hispanic kids are more eager to learn than American kids. I don't know if it's because they don't know the language well enough that that keeps them hungry all the time. They want more and more and more because they want to be like them (American kids) . . .

"You have all these parents who barely got to third, fourth, fifth grades because of their family situations. School is just like a treasure, it's the one chance they didn't get. The one chance the parents didn't get is the one their kids are getting, so they respond completely different to it."

Differences in strictness:

"Kids are late here and all they do is get a tardy slip and they're in. In Mexico, if you're late, the door is closed and you can't get in, you have to go home. And parents suffer because they have to go to their jobs. So what do they do? They make sure they're on time."

Differences in curriculum:

"For DPS, science doesn't seem to be important. It gets to middle school and high school and they fix it or think they fix it. And civics, kids here don't say, 'Good afternoon, Good morning, How are you?' They don't say, 'Thank you' when you say, 'Bless you.' It is important. You open a whole new world when you have those manners."

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