The women came to Sister Pat Davis when all she had was a space
in a parish hall that’s long been torn down.
The women came to Sister Pat Davis when all she had was a space in a parish hall that’s long been torn down.
Each day Sister Pat and longtime volunteer teacher Lynne Hasbany would spread out toys, books and school supplies for the immigrant women and their babies. It began with 20 women who came to learn how to speak to Americans; how to ask their children’s teachers questions; how to talk to their doctors; how to balance a checkbook.
Monday through Friday for 16 years very poor and mostly very young women have arrived at the Learning and Loving Education Center in Morgan Hill by bus, a few by car, to learn English – their second language.
Only by God’s grace and Sister Pat’s diligence has Learning and Loving grown out of a 500-square-foot space to two buildings on Church Street with 10 classrooms, 50 volunteers and 150 students.
“When those beautiful 20 women came across the threshold of the old church hall on Dunne (Avenue) with their little kids, it was awesome. Scary, but awesome,” said Sister Pat, who belongs to the Sisters of the Presentation, a group of nuns who got their start in the United States serving the poor in San Francisco in 1854.
The center’s trial run was in March 1994 on 10 Fridays to start, but it soon grew out of the parish’s hallways.
“In two years, we had so many we were bursting out the doors,” she said from her hospital room where she is recovering from hip replacement surgery. “Actually there was only one door.” The center has traveled from St. Catherine’s parish hall on Dunne Avenue, to rentals on Wright Street, then Monterey Road and now to its home on Church. The women have been right there with Sister Pat as the center moved around.
Her vision was of a holistic center just for women, where teachers, volunteers and the students would all work together and benefit from one another. A nun is at the helm, but it’s not a place or worship and the women aren’t led in prayer – it’s simply cared for with great compassion by Sister Pat and all who call it theirs.
“I can’t compare (Sister Pat) with Mother Teresa. But she’s like that,” said Barbara Estrada, who went through the English-learning program in the 1990s. “She says, ‘the center is yours. You can do it. Use it.’ ”
Thursday marked the 16th year of Sister Pat’s astute concept and the center’s evolution in Morgan Hill. And since the beginning, the women have heard through word of mouth about the center and how it’s changed lives; how with education and a grasp of the language comes self-confidence and opportunity.
” ‘If you want to learn English, I know a place. You can bring the baby, bring the preschoolers, because they’ll get them ready for kindergarten and teach them their English,’ ” Sister Pat says about how the women reference the center when they chat at church or at work. “And of course the babies gobble it up. They’re speaking English in a couple months.”
The center is crowded with mostly Latinas in their 20s who go from class to class from 8:30 a.m. until after noon when they leave to go to work. During the daily break they slide back into speaking Spanish, congregated around tables knitting or making jewelry. It costs $30 a year to take classes and have their children watched at the center; that small fee covers the cost of books and class materials.
Toddlers and preschool-age children bob around the childcare room while three women watch over their playtime, arts and crafts, and school lessons. One teacher on staff, who was once a student, dedicates her time to teach the 4-year-olds in an adjoining room. From time to time, toddlers can be seen sitting at the long tables in class or giggling in a baby bouncer just outside the floor-to-ceiling paned windows in the hallway. Watching their peers is a source of encouragement as well as convenience for the mothers. Sister Pat laughs when she thinks of how some believe she had those windows installed; they just came with the building.
“It worked out great that way,” she said. “It gives a feeling, I think, more of community, of effort on everybody’s part to learn.”
Most women are almost completely illiterate in English and stay between a year and two years. At the academic apex is the GED, along with gathering the knowledge of the language that will give them the credence to be a part of their children’s education and, as a necessity, to move up in the workforce.
Sister Pat and Lynne develop the curriculum for the classes that range from quilting and sewing to five levels of English learning to math, basic computer skills and nutrition. The busiest days are Mondays and Wednesdays when from 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. up to 10 classes are under way.
“What they’re learning in here is not only bettering them, it’s bettering the lives of their children,” Lynne said. “It adds vibrancy to the community. Everyone brings in their own gifts. It enriches the experience.” Lynne, a mother of four, spends every day at the center teaching level one English through the advanced classes, depending on the day. Her passion has always been teaching English to nonspeakers, now she’s just months away from graduating with a master’s degree in TSEL – teachers of English as a second language.
Next door to Lynne’s class is a room lined with shelves and filled with donated items: shoes, clothing, toys, sometimes used furniture – women can go in and take what they need. Donations are what keep the center a well-oiled nonprofit. Some individual donors but mostly foundations such as Presentation High School, Silicon Valley Community Foundation and Belle Vista give to Learning and Loving. The only fundraiser is a yearly wine tour, on April 10, that a caring group of mostly husbands and wives organize.
A smile seems to be permanent part of Sister Pat’s face, “It’s been so fun,” she said as the smile remains but tears spill over behind her glasses. Helping the women brings her great joy and the volunteer teachers bring their own uniqueness to the center – all just pieces of the puzzle to her holistic vision.
“That way the students have somebody different every single day so they’re interacting with American people, using their English, getting to know more people,” Sister Pat said about the variation of teachers. She quips that so many English language learners feel like “one student said years ago, ‘Just let me talk to them. Let me talk to Americans. I’m so afraid of talking to Americans.’ ”
Hope springs eternal
Barbara Estrada was one of those women.
She came to the U.S. in 1998 in her 30s with $2,000 and a lot of job experience as the right-hand to the owner of a small business in Mexico City. She had years of training with computers but couldn’t confidently speak English – and struggled at her first job at Super Taqueria on Monterey Street in Morgan Hill.
“People would say ‘burrito’ and I know what that is, but I would get so nervous; made a lot of mistakes. All of my orders were wrong, I wasted a lot of food.” She said her manager brought her to the Learning and Loving Center when it was on Monterey Road near El Toro Elementary School and told her “this is the place to learn English, take classes, they will help you.”
Without English, her new country was intimidating.
“You are far away from your country and you think that people are not going to understand you. It’s a change. Everything. To be away from your family and your environment … you’re in shock,” said Barbara, who is in her 40s. “I was always scared, afraid.”
Sister Pat was there to welcome her at the front door. Barbara described her smile with her hands passing over her face, “She glows, her smile, she glows.” Sister Pat asked her if along with English classes, she wanted to learn how to use a computer.
“No, no. I know computers,” she said. Sister Pat told her, “Oh, well maybe you will work here someday.”
Eleven years ago, Sister Pat did offer Barbara a part-time job assisting the computer instructor. It wasn’t until that teacher decided to move on in 2006 that Barbara admittedly felt nervous like she had in her first days at Super Taqueria.
Sister Pat asked Barbara to take the job. She thought that “to be a teacher … this is my opportunity. I might not have this opportunity again.”
“It has been a joy to hire … women who come through the program and who have shown great promise,” Sister Pat said about Barbara. There are other women she has in mind who she hopes will want to be teachers someday, and as other women move on, they will move into those positions. Barbara teaches computer classes five days a week at all levels: basic computer knowledge, the Internet, typing and the Microsoft applications Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
And like so many of the students, Barbara, a single mother, brought her son to the center while she attended her English classes. Emilo is in fifth grade at El Toro Elementary and thinks of Sister Pat as his grandma.
“Emilo almost born here,” Barbara said about how much time her son spent at the center as a child. “He feels like he’s part of the center, too. And that makes me feel so good.”
Barbara is the eldest of eight children and she says because of that distinction she had to help her mother and forego school after around sixth-grade in Mexico. At 14, they moved to Mexico City and she worked as a live-in housekeeper. Barbara would go home on Sundays but during the week the three school-age boys at the home she cleaned in Mexico City would help her learn and even let her go to school with them.
“They helped me a lot. They helped my family a lot,” she said; they still keep in touch.
Before she cries, Barbara describes herself as an emotional woman. She moves her hand to her heart and explains how in her first years in Morgan Hill her parents would call from Mexico very worried, asking if she’s OK, if she’s eating, the way parents can be when their child is far from home. But, she says those worries disappeared after their first visit. “They saw me here, I showed them the center. And they knew I was safe. They knew they didn’t have to worry anymore.”
“Thanks to this job, I can pay my expenses. My son has his own space. I don’t have to live in a room with a lot of people,” Barbara said. After seven years at Super Taqueria, she was able to quit and just teach.
Education comes with a motherly touch
Sister Pat says with a certain sternness “once you learn your second language and you’re a parent, you must represent your child. You must be involved in your children’s education from day one until they walk off the stage with their high school diploma. You need to be there.”
“And, if you can’t, we are there to be your advocate.”
She tells a story of a mother who said that if her child is going to be on the Internet, then she must know technology. ” ‘I cannot have my children learning the computer and being on the Internet … unless I know what they’re learning.’ And that’s powerful.”
It can’t be said enough at the center how critical it is for the women to understand that their child’s education is essential. Dolores Alvarado makes sure that point is made first before she talks about the center.
She speaks about Learning and Loving as if she’s been there for many years, with great praise for Sister Pat, though she started working there just two months ago as the woman behind development and programs. The women and Sister Pat’s great concern and care for her students have already touched her heart.
“They feel comfortable here,” Dolores says, “they have support here.”
The women find community at Learning and Loving, Dolores explains; there’s a sense of belonging and familiarity in this place. There’s a shared culture, shared language and a shared goal in mind. And they’ve heard the stories about Sister Pat: about how she’s changed lives; how she can help them learn; how their children can stay while they learn.
Many countries have been represented over the years other than Latin America, though they make up 90 percent of the center, Sister Pat says. Women from China, Afghanistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq and Yemen have all taken seats in the center.
“We’ve been blessed,” Sister Pat says. “The blending of the women from all the different countries has helped all of us to grow.”
She wants women to feel safe and focused; you won’t see a man at the center.
“Thanks to the center, I have the confidence. It helped me to be brave,” Barbara said.
Most importantly is that she is involved in Emilo’s education. She’s the president of El Toro Elementary’s English Learning Advisory Committee chapter, a group that brings together Latino parents and encourages them to be involved with their children.
Emilo just graduated from cub scouts to boy scouts, bringing tears to Barbara’s eyes again.
“He’s the only Hispanic boy in the troop,” she said. She’s so proud that he’s involved and that he can be an example to other boys; she said she signs him up for any opportunities that come his way, like basketball and art classes. He asks, “why do I have to do all these things?” And she reminds him how blessed they are to have those chances. Just like the chance that Sister Pat gave Barbara.
“For me, she’s my angel. I think in life I did something (right) because God put her in my life,” she said.
It Begins With Ingredients
Like cuisines from anywhere in the world, chefs in Maurizio Cutrignelli’s native Bari, Italy use what’s there. Fortunately for diners in Morgan Hill, there’s plenty.
And fortunately for Cutrignelli, there are plenty of ingredients grown here that mirror the Mediterranean climate of Southern Italy. Bari is located at the top of the heel of the boot, across the Adriatic Sea from Albania, the Pugliese region of Italy where there is plenty of sunshine and lots of fresh produce.
Bari’s cuisine, one of Italy’s most traditional, is based on three typical agricultural products found within the surrounding Puglia region, namely wheat, olive oil and wine. Bari cuisine is also enriched by the wide variety of fruit and vegetables produced locally.
Local flour is used in homemade bread and pasta production including, most notably, the famous orecchiette hat-shaped pasta, recchietelle or strascinate, chiancarelle (orecchiette of different sizes) and cavatelli.
First of all, forget for a moment that Italy is a country. It’s only been a nation since the beginning of our Civil War. Before it was a group of provinces, kingdoms and duchies, and culture, as well as cuisines, were vastly different from each other. As Morgan Hill resident, foodie and frequent traveler to Italy Dr. Walter Newman notes, “Northern Italian food is as different from the southern cuisines of Bari as ribs are from sushi.”
Peppers, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, eggplant, fennel, lettuces, wild chicory and onions grow well in the Pugliese sun. Often they are eaten raw at the beginning of a meal or served at the end of a meal with fruit, which also grows abundantly around Bari.
Foodies like Newman describe the cuisine of Maurizio’s as “country” Italian. Newman unequivocally calls Maurizio’s “the best authentic provincial food in the Bay Area. I’ve had friends and family come from San Francisco for that country flavor.”
Ovens are a central cooking tool in Bari, home to stuffed peppers, baked pasta such as pasta al forno, and of course the pizza pie. Cutrignelli’s pizzeria, La Mangia, which opened in August of last year, serves pizza in the Pugliese style with fresh ingredients bought fresh from South County farmers.
“I try to use as many local ingredients as possible,” Cutrignelli said. Of course some ingredients must be imported, Cutrignelli said. Certain olive oils, particularly the ones used to dip bread in, are imported from Italy, as are the fava beans used in his recipes. The flour used in pizza and calzones is also imported to capture the flavor of the wheat grown in the province, Cutrignelli said.
With Bari situated on the Adriatic Sea, fresh fish and seafood are popular dishes. Octopus, sea urchins and mussels are feature heavily in the local cuisine. One of Bari’s most famous dishes is the oven-baked Riso patate e cozze (rice, with potatoes and mussels).
“It begins with ingredients,” Newman said. “We are so lucky to be close to the ingredients he uses, especially the basil, garlic and tomatoes. It’s all farm fresh.”
Learning and Loving Education Center
What: School for women who want to learn English; children younger than kindergarten age are welcome
Where: 16890 Church St.
When: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday-Friday
Contact: 776-1196 or ed***@*******nk.net
