Xena’s hitting puberty and working on the clarinet. Mom’s planing boards. Their busy lives intersect at school.
Since we last checked in on the family as part of a year-long look at parental involvement in local schools, sixth-grader Xena Cordero has begun to wear cool black glasses. Her mom Virginia has cut her hair short. Those are hardly the only changes.
The hair was cut short, Cordero explained as Xena and the other 70 students gathered at St. Martin dePorres Academy (SMPA) for their honors assembly, because it’s always under a hat and surrounded by sawdust.
The business at which Cordero has been working full time and more since she left her night-waitressing job has become successful. Family Fencing has become “Family Fencing and Handiwork.” Cordero has learned to hang windows and plane boards alongside her sons, who began the business.
“We now have five employees, counting my sons and I, and we’re poised to hire two more people. This season we do fences, of course, but in the cold weather we’ve been remodeling a beautiful 1889 house on Linden Street.”
Cordero left work early at that site Friday to see her daughter and the rest of the SMPA kids receive the acknowledgements of their teachers and the accolades of their parents in the honors assembly.
A dozen parents were present for the 4 p.m. ceremony. Cordero felt there should have been more present, even though people are working.
Xena made second honors (all As and Bs, with one C allowable), as opposed to first honors, which is all As. As a clarinetist, Xena also was honored as one of SMPA’s musicians to have been selected to join an honors band and to perform in concert.
Oh, and Xena just started taking French (in addition to reading, math science, English, religion, social studies, and Spanish). She’s been working at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen, along with two dozen other SMPA kids who were also honored.
Has mom Virginia’s entrepreneurial business made mother and daughter less close? No way. “I love her more and more every day,” Virginia said, as yelps of congratulations filled beautiful St. Peter’s Church on the SMPA campus, and the honorees walked up to receive their certificates.
“I may spend a little less time with her, but it’s very deep how much she cares for me, loves me. She sees us work so hard, and she’s always asking if I’ve gotten enough sleep. Have I eaten? Shouldn’t I set down? With a daughter like this, I am blessed.”
Cordero ascribes her daughter’s caring nature to her relationship with her father, who died several years ago. Daughter has taken it upon herself help take care of her mother, for whom a husband’s death is heavy blow.
Xena still spends time with her mom and brothers and new employees on the weekends, but that has declined somewhat. “I spend so much time here at school,” said Xena, “ten hours a day, so when I go home, I just want to sleep, on the weekends too.”
There’s puberty at work of course, said Virginia Cordero, with her infectious smile. “She’s growing up.”
SMPA’s principal Mary Surowiecki conducted the honors assembly, which features each and every student receiving not only the applause of colleagues and parents in the audience, but also the handshake and embrace of all SMPA’s 13 teachers, in a receiving line. It’s a measure of the acknowledging of each person as an individual that characterizes this small school of some 75 kids grades 5 to 8.
Surowiecki says they are going to keep it that way. They’re recruiting only 15 fifth-graders so as to keep the total school population to 65 or 70, she said right before the proceedings began. “Intimacy is so important for us to maintain, and we lost some when we moved here. The parents come from all over. They told us they miss opportunities for give and take with us and the kids; too much of that happens only in the parking lot. We’ll change that.”
A measure of the sense of educational family that Surowiecki and the school’s president Jay Bowes have created is the 75 postcards that the principal sent to Xena Cordero and her other 74 students. She took a week off during spring break and went to Prague, but the kids were on her mind.
“I wanted all our kids to see this place, to come here. So I wrote to each of them individually, saying not if you come you’ll see the castle or the Charles River, but when you come. The woman at the post often said to me I must have a lot of friends to be sending so many postcards.”
Knitting Class On Hold
Has Virginia Cordero’s involvement at school itself been affected by the new business responsibilities? Alas, she said, she could not conduct her knitting and sewing class as part of the after-school activities this year. “But as soon as we finish the house on Linden Street, there will be time.” The kids are clamoring for it, the principal told Cordero, and she’s not one to say no.
St. Martin de Porres is a Catholic middle school built on the nativity model, which means low income families only, close student-teacher relationships, cultivation of personal responsibility via the Christian tradition, and a profound sense of a family behind each kid committed to the kids’ potential.
Xena’s science teacher Kelly O’Leary hugged her not only because she excels in that subject — they’re working on the categories of rocks and the notion of hypothesis — but because she knows Xena has an intuitive sense in connecting theories to the world around her, namely, the geological formations she sees around her in New Haven. Maybe that has to do with all the hours she spends outside on construction sites with her family. That sense will be nurtured at this school.
The prayer offered at the honors assembly went like this: “Let us take a moment of silence to thank God for the gift of who each and every one of you are.”
Virginia Cordero reported that when the fog of puberty clears, Xena says she wants to be a doctor. Then the next day, an artist. “Whatever it is, she says she wants to use a profession to help people.”
Those interested in registering their children at the three-year old school or receive other info, click here. And anyone interested in the Corderos’ Family Fencing and Handiwork, the phone number is 203-633-2830
Previous installments in the Independent’s series on parental involvement in local schools:
7 Parents Get Their Own “Head Start”
Moonlight Readers in West Rock
Joshua’s Parents Take Him To “Foie Gras” Service
Parents Question Skittles Suspension
Parents Want Say On Suspensions
Son Gets Pills; Suspension Policy Targeted
Dad Goes To The Top, Gets Results
Parents, M&Ms Join In Math Lesson
Brandon Aims For The Blue Shirt
Night-Shift Waitress Hangs Up Apron
Dad Meets The Teachers. All Of ‘Em
Ms. Lopez Moves Brandon’s Seat
Night-Shift Waitress Gets Xena To Class On Time
Fifth-Graders Get “Amistadized”
Board of Ed To Parents: Get Involved!
