https://thewritersjam.com/after-party-episode-9-sergio-troncoso/
Showing posts with label fathers and sons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fathers and sons. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Brad King Interviews Sergio Troncoso on Nobody's Pilgrims
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Work@Character
Yesterday Laura and I had our last face-to-face teacher conference of the academic year for our younger son Isaac. Next year he will join his older brother at one of the best high schools in New York City, and this conference was bittersweet for us.
Both our children attended the Bank Street School for Children starting as three-year-olds. Aaron graduated two years ago, and I’m on the parents’ committee for Isaac’s graduation in two months. Bank Street has been a remarkable school for both our children, and it will be hard to leave it.
But what struck me was how Laura and I reached this point, with two similar, yet also different kids, both who work hard and possess unique abilities, but who also needed to overcome specific challenges. My kids are excellent students at their schools; they have scored at the highest levels in standardized tests to reach their goals. Both are avid readers of very different books, yet Aaron and Isaac share a sense of humor that is light years beyond mine. Do I even have a sense of humor? I am their strict, mercurial father.
What is obscured by this bit of bragging about my kids —who are not kids anymore but young adults— is the years of hard work of parenting to help Aaron and Isaac become the best version of themselves. I believe in learning by doing, Bank Street’s philosophy, but also Aristotle’s. I never did my children’s homework. On the contrary, in recent years, I have hardly seen what they have worked on after coming home from school. But when they have a question or a problem, I teach them how to find the answer for themselves. When they are stuck, I prompt them with questions to guide them to their own revelations.
We provide the space and time to focus quietly on their schoolwork. Friends who are wild or rude, I tell my kids, are not welcomed in our home. When Aaron and Isaac start wavering on the good habits we have encouraged, when they watch too much TV, or have not chosen the next book to read in bed, then yes, I am the heavy. I draw the bright line too many parents fail to draw: to turn off the TV, or to make finding a new book a priority, or to rewrite what they thought was ‘good enough.’ Real pride in your work is when you learn to do it yourself —not when somebody else does it for you— and when you know the work you accomplished was excellent. But often children have to be guided to get there.
Case in point. A few weeks ago, Isaac had brought home two short papers in which the teachers had given him only average marks. Isaac knew it wasn’t very good work, and he showed me the papers with what seemed a mix of fear and shame in his eyes. I read the papers, and yes, they were lightly researched, and his arguments were unsupported and often unclear. I remembered when he had worked on these papers, and I knew he had not given them the time they required, or the focus. Isaac is a bright kid and a good writer, but perhaps that week he had worried too much about succeeding at Oblivion on the Xbox, and too little about the failures of Reconstruction after the Civil War.
We talked about it, and we decided he would ask his teachers if he could rewrite both papers over the following two weeks of Spring Break. I told him it didn’t matter if his teachers didn’t give him different grades, but what did matter was that he should do his best work. And this wasn’t his best work, was it? No, he said, it wasn’t. Yes, I was a bit the heavy. I also told Isaac he wouldn’t play the Xbox over Spring Break, nor watch any TV, until those papers were rewritten, and well.
Isaac asked his teachers about rewriting the essays on the Friday before Spring Break, and they agreed. The teachers also decided to extend that offer to all the kids in the class: if anybody else wanted to rewrite their papers, they could. But, as far as I know, only Isaac would rewrite his papers during this vacation.
Now let me tell you about what happened over Spring Break. Isaac worked from morning until afternoon, for five days straight, rereading and expanding his source material, outlining his arguments, and reconstructing his essays. Sometimes he would ask questions. Occasionally he showed me what he had written, and I gave him my honest opinion. He rewrote page after page.
Whether he was motivated by his desire to get to Oblivion before his vacation ended, to please his mean old father, to show the teachers what he could do, or a combination of these, I don’t know. But Isaac worked independently, and ferociously. I was in awe, and prouder than any father could be.
Weeks later, at the conference, Isaac’s teachers noted how remarkably better the second go-around of his Civil War papers had been. They had given Isaac the highest marks for his rewrites. That was the work they had been accustomed to seeing from Isaac. Moreover, the teachers happily noted that on an in-class essay after Spring Break Isaac had again written a beautifully coherent essay on the Civil Rights movement.
Perhaps the teachers suspected that I, the writer-father, had ‘helped’ him on the rewrites during Spring Break, but the in-class essay confirmed it was Isaac who had done the work on the rewrites. And indeed it was. I just set the bar high. I did not allow him to lower it because I knew he could reach it. I gave my son advice to prompt him to think for himself when he needed it. Isaac learned by doing it, the hard way, the only way. The way toward good character.
Both our children attended the Bank Street School for Children starting as three-year-olds. Aaron graduated two years ago, and I’m on the parents’ committee for Isaac’s graduation in two months. Bank Street has been a remarkable school for both our children, and it will be hard to leave it.
But what struck me was how Laura and I reached this point, with two similar, yet also different kids, both who work hard and possess unique abilities, but who also needed to overcome specific challenges. My kids are excellent students at their schools; they have scored at the highest levels in standardized tests to reach their goals. Both are avid readers of very different books, yet Aaron and Isaac share a sense of humor that is light years beyond mine. Do I even have a sense of humor? I am their strict, mercurial father.
What is obscured by this bit of bragging about my kids —who are not kids anymore but young adults— is the years of hard work of parenting to help Aaron and Isaac become the best version of themselves. I believe in learning by doing, Bank Street’s philosophy, but also Aristotle’s. I never did my children’s homework. On the contrary, in recent years, I have hardly seen what they have worked on after coming home from school. But when they have a question or a problem, I teach them how to find the answer for themselves. When they are stuck, I prompt them with questions to guide them to their own revelations.
We provide the space and time to focus quietly on their schoolwork. Friends who are wild or rude, I tell my kids, are not welcomed in our home. When Aaron and Isaac start wavering on the good habits we have encouraged, when they watch too much TV, or have not chosen the next book to read in bed, then yes, I am the heavy. I draw the bright line too many parents fail to draw: to turn off the TV, or to make finding a new book a priority, or to rewrite what they thought was ‘good enough.’ Real pride in your work is when you learn to do it yourself —not when somebody else does it for you— and when you know the work you accomplished was excellent. But often children have to be guided to get there.
Case in point. A few weeks ago, Isaac had brought home two short papers in which the teachers had given him only average marks. Isaac knew it wasn’t very good work, and he showed me the papers with what seemed a mix of fear and shame in his eyes. I read the papers, and yes, they were lightly researched, and his arguments were unsupported and often unclear. I remembered when he had worked on these papers, and I knew he had not given them the time they required, or the focus. Isaac is a bright kid and a good writer, but perhaps that week he had worried too much about succeeding at Oblivion on the Xbox, and too little about the failures of Reconstruction after the Civil War.
We talked about it, and we decided he would ask his teachers if he could rewrite both papers over the following two weeks of Spring Break. I told him it didn’t matter if his teachers didn’t give him different grades, but what did matter was that he should do his best work. And this wasn’t his best work, was it? No, he said, it wasn’t. Yes, I was a bit the heavy. I also told Isaac he wouldn’t play the Xbox over Spring Break, nor watch any TV, until those papers were rewritten, and well.
Isaac asked his teachers about rewriting the essays on the Friday before Spring Break, and they agreed. The teachers also decided to extend that offer to all the kids in the class: if anybody else wanted to rewrite their papers, they could. But, as far as I know, only Isaac would rewrite his papers during this vacation.
Now let me tell you about what happened over Spring Break. Isaac worked from morning until afternoon, for five days straight, rereading and expanding his source material, outlining his arguments, and reconstructing his essays. Sometimes he would ask questions. Occasionally he showed me what he had written, and I gave him my honest opinion. He rewrote page after page.
Whether he was motivated by his desire to get to Oblivion before his vacation ended, to please his mean old father, to show the teachers what he could do, or a combination of these, I don’t know. But Isaac worked independently, and ferociously. I was in awe, and prouder than any father could be.
Weeks later, at the conference, Isaac’s teachers noted how remarkably better the second go-around of his Civil War papers had been. They had given Isaac the highest marks for his rewrites. That was the work they had been accustomed to seeing from Isaac. Moreover, the teachers happily noted that on an in-class essay after Spring Break Isaac had again written a beautifully coherent essay on the Civil Rights movement.
Perhaps the teachers suspected that I, the writer-father, had ‘helped’ him on the rewrites during Spring Break, but the in-class essay confirmed it was Isaac who had done the work on the rewrites. And indeed it was. I just set the bar high. I did not allow him to lower it because I knew he could reach it. I gave my son advice to prompt him to think for himself when he needed it. Isaac learned by doing it, the hard way, the only way. The way toward good character.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
An Ysleta Christmas
I arrived in El Paso, Texas yesterday, my hometown. For Christmas. To visit with my mother, and to see my brothers and their kids. Laura and my kids have always relished this holiday visit, a trek we have made since we have been married. It releases Laura's inner shopper, and for a week before Christmas she gets to pump prime the economy at El Paso’s bustling malls. Aaron and Isaac love their cousins --they are similar ages-- and they have spent the first two days playing New Yorkers against Texans (their version of Cowboys and Indians) and exploring the irrigation canal behind my parents’ house.
For the past three years, however, this visit has been an awkward one for me. Three Christmases ago, I had a vicious argument with my father, ostensibly over something trivial, but in reality over old, deep resentments and that bitterness that can sometimes build between a prideful and headstrong father and a son with the same blood in his veins. For three years, my father would not speak to me whenever I called from New York. Instead, at the moment he heard my voice, he would pass the phone to my mother. For three years, even after I apologized for my harsh words to him, my father would not forgive me, and he would not say hello or goodbye whenever I saw him at Christmastime.
I thought about so many things during those three years. I thought about the argument, and why it happened, and even wrote an essay about it, which I called, “This Wicked Patch of Dust.” I thought about how I had hated my father’s macho personality as a child, his domineering control over my mother throughout the years, his bad decisions made by fiat. I thought about how I hated my own temper, and why I did not roll my eyes behind my father’s back, as my brothers did, but instead confronted my father, challenging him to a fight. I thought about
how my mother agonized over our family's rift, my mother the avid reader, my mother who is relentlessly curious about the world, my mother whom I have always believed deserves to stop sacrificing for others, and do more for herself. I thought about my father’s deteriorating body, how he cannot walk more than six feet at a time and is now totally dependent on my mother, and how he cannot stand to be so weak when throughout his life he was indefatigably strong.
Indeed, my father was a good father. Yes, he was tough and occasionally mean. But he did push us to work hard for our family, for ourselves. In Ysleta, my father was there to help me make posters when I ran for Sophomore Class President in high school, to fashion an intricate puppet theater for a play I wrote for an English class, and to teach me how to handle the stick shift of our Volkswagen Beetle. He had to compromise in his life, primarily by adopting a country in which he could speak the language, but with an accent that still embarrasses him. My father truly loved Mexico, but he knew his family would have a better life in the United States. He gained the possibility of a better future, but he relinquished his voice. He cannot stand how his beloved hometown of Juarez, which he visited with my mother every week for decades, has descended into an orgy of drug violence in 2008. Their loss: they have not crossed the border all year.
So as Laura, Aaron, Isaac, and I arrived in Ysleta yesterday, I expected, again, just to make the best of another awkward Christmas. But my father surprised me. As soon as I stumbled through the door with suitcases in both hands, he reached up from his chair --he can’t easily stand without his walker anymore-- and hugged me. At the kitchen table, we talked for a precious forty-five minutes, exchanging news, before I finished bringing in our luggage. I thought perhaps this was a first-day aberration, a momentarily lapse in his anger at his prodigal son. But today, again, my father and I have talked, and we have even laughed together, and although we have not yet uttered the words to each other, we have finally forgiven each other for being Troncosos.
For the past three years, however, this visit has been an awkward one for me. Three Christmases ago, I had a vicious argument with my father, ostensibly over something trivial, but in reality over old, deep resentments and that bitterness that can sometimes build between a prideful and headstrong father and a son with the same blood in his veins. For three years, my father would not speak to me whenever I called from New York. Instead, at the moment he heard my voice, he would pass the phone to my mother. For three years, even after I apologized for my harsh words to him, my father would not forgive me, and he would not say hello or goodbye whenever I saw him at Christmastime.
I thought about so many things during those three years. I thought about the argument, and why it happened, and even wrote an essay about it, which I called, “This Wicked Patch of Dust.” I thought about how I had hated my father’s macho personality as a child, his domineering control over my mother throughout the years, his bad decisions made by fiat. I thought about how I hated my own temper, and why I did not roll my eyes behind my father’s back, as my brothers did, but instead confronted my father, challenging him to a fight. I thought about
how my mother agonized over our family's rift, my mother the avid reader, my mother who is relentlessly curious about the world, my mother whom I have always believed deserves to stop sacrificing for others, and do more for herself. I thought about my father’s deteriorating body, how he cannot walk more than six feet at a time and is now totally dependent on my mother, and how he cannot stand to be so weak when throughout his life he was indefatigably strong.Indeed, my father was a good father. Yes, he was tough and occasionally mean. But he did push us to work hard for our family, for ourselves. In Ysleta, my father was there to help me make posters when I ran for Sophomore Class President in high school, to fashion an intricate puppet theater for a play I wrote for an English class, and to teach me how to handle the stick shift of our Volkswagen Beetle. He had to compromise in his life, primarily by adopting a country in which he could speak the language, but with an accent that still embarrasses him. My father truly loved Mexico, but he knew his family would have a better life in the United States. He gained the possibility of a better future, but he relinquished his voice. He cannot stand how his beloved hometown of Juarez, which he visited with my mother every week for decades, has descended into an orgy of drug violence in 2008. Their loss: they have not crossed the border all year.
So as Laura, Aaron, Isaac, and I arrived in Ysleta yesterday, I expected, again, just to make the best of another awkward Christmas. But my father surprised me. As soon as I stumbled through the door with suitcases in both hands, he reached up from his chair --he can’t easily stand without his walker anymore-- and hugged me. At the kitchen table, we talked for a precious forty-five minutes, exchanging news, before I finished bringing in our luggage. I thought perhaps this was a first-day aberration, a momentarily lapse in his anger at his prodigal son. But today, again, my father and I have talked, and we have even laughed together, and although we have not yet uttered the words to each other, we have finally forgiven each other for being Troncosos.
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