No one has ever said anything good about him before

I was recently translating for some middle school parent-teacher conferences. It was a very impressive experience, humbling really.

One woman who came in to hear about her boy told us that she was not the mother, but that she had taken in him and his sisters from her cousin. She had accepted them instead of letting them be sent off to foster families, which is where her cousin was about to put them, out of frustration. They kids weren't living with their biological parents because their mother killed the father in front of them. So they were sent from their home country here to the U.S.. Then they were put in low-income public schools.

The teachers said good things about the boy, noting that he was friendly and intelligent, maybe a bit distracted in class, but nothing terrible. (Golly gee, I wonder why he's distracted? The fact that he's only been speaking English for two years? The fact that he's been shipped from family to family only to be put upon an older single woman with no financial security? Honestly, I think more than anything it's cause the stuff he's learning is boring and his teachers could care less about him.)

His care taker cried and cried. She cried through every single teacher's conference. She cried quietly, gracefully, thanking the teacher, asking what she could do to make him a better student, and then she would get up and we would walk to the next classroom. At the end she thanked me for translating.

"I'm sorry I cried," she said. "But I have worked so hard. No one has every said anything good about him before."