•The Power of Story telling

•Education as an act of resistance

•Service and social justice

•Everything is political

•Value Honor and Duty

•May 24th: What is in a birthday?

This was the day of the patron saint of the school,  and as such, it was the birthday of all the children who, like me, were foundlings or had no traditional family or documentation of birth date.

•Summers abroad helping with missions: Calcutta, Zaire, etc. Unintended multilingualism 

•I find it hard to compare families if one assumes, as it is often the case, that we all have them, or that they look like the many beautiful images including parents and kids.  I find it hard not to meet the stereotypical expectation of a large Hispanic family that keeps feeding you.  My family was different from many, but similar to those of many children who have to make do.  Many nuns dressed as adorable penguins, service and world travel to serve as a center piece, focus on education and self-discipline, formality, quiet spaces, etc… I remember no other feeling more from childhood than hunger couples with the discipline not to complain, even though, when my nuns saved me, I had to be taken to the hospital by them.  I was dying from mal-nutrition and dehydration.  My family was made up of nuns, unwanted children, poor vestiges of more regular families who did not make it as such in their all too real world.  Of the markers of distress in my recent certification learning tools, to be an SAP team member, my childhood met every marker but one. 

•I never called my convent a family before.  It was just home.  Family seemed to fit the assignment better, although if I had felt totally free, I would have said I had none.  I did have a home community.  Community fits my experience best.

-We are multicultural and multilingual (Spanish/canarian/Italian/catholic/Mennonite/German/American…)

-We are much more private than most families I know, and leave the world out on the curb much more easily.

•We have visited some of the most wonderful museums in the world, taking our child since she was a baby

•We make it tangible