e trust.) For my part, I felt that by learning English I had somehow committed a s

August. He took great interest in me after he realized that I couldn't answer his questions in Spanish. He would grab me, as I started to leave the kitchen. He would ask me something. Usually he wouldn't bother to wait for my mumbled response. Knowingly, he'd murmur, "¿Ay pocho, pocho, donde vas?*' And he would press his thumbs into the upper part of my arms, making m

do it. Then they would call me Pocho. Sometimes playfully, teasing, using the tender diminutive - mi pochito. Sometimes not so playfully but mockingly, pocho. (A Spanish dictionary defines that word as an adjective meaning "colorl

. I'd know the words I wanted to say, but I couldn't say them. I would try to speak, but everything I said seemed to me horribly angli- cized. My mouth wouldn't form the sounds right. My jaw would tremble. After a phrase or two, I'd stutter, cough up a warm, silvery sound,

the

The silence at home, however, was not simply the result of fewer words passing between parents and children. More profound for me was the silence created by my inattention to

m less. My mother grew restless, seemed troubled and anxious at the scarceness of words exchanged in the house. She would question me about my day when I came home from school. She smiled at my sma

silence

been. An eight-year-old boy, I finally came to ac- cept what had been technically true since my birth: I w

At first, it seemed a kind of game. After dinner each night, the family gathered together to practice "our" Eng

Three months passed. Five. A half year. Unsmiling, ever watchful, my teachers noted my silence. They began to connect my behavior with the slow progress my brother and sisters were making. Until, one Satur- day morning, three nuns arrived at the house to talk to our parents. Stiffly they sat on the blue living-room

What they understood was that I needed to speak public English. So their voices would search me out, asking me questions. Each time I heard them I'd look up in surprise to see a nun's fac

Without question, it would have pleased me to have heard my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered

of bilingual education imply today that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their

I grew u

Supporters

In public, my father and mother spoke a hesitant, accented, and not always grammatical En

public

victims

no: It is not possible for a child, any child, ever to use his family's language in s

I was fated to be the "problem student" in clas

, when I first entered a classroom - able to un- derstand about fifty stray English words. The third of four children, I had been preceded by my older brother and sister to a neighborhood Roman Catholic sc

rescued

One thing about firemen, they don't let each other fightbattles alone.

But how? Forget about replacing the players. How do you replacethe men? How does starting cornerback Danny Foley replace thestarting cornerback on the other side--his brother, Tommy?

Most of the guys on the team have a nasty case of the WTC coug

Hell, yes, they're playing.