The Early Days

Well, if you are Polish and proud of it, you know babcia is Polish for grandma. My babcia grew up in a very Polish Catholic Community, Pulaski, Wisconsin.  She was a non-conformist from an early age.  She was going to be a teacher.  Not just your typically everyday Polish teacher.  She was ready to jump in and teach English in this Polish Community.  It was almost as if she was committing a mortal sin. " English in our schools, what kind of shit is that?"  They all wondered if this move to English would make her forget her Polish roots.  Babcia was the youngest of her 14 brothers and sisters.  Her father, a gambling man and drinker, lost two of his three farms.  The children all worked the farms except, babcia.  She was going to make something of herself.  She was going to beat all the odds.  She was going to teach English in Pulaski.  Of course, she forgot one crucial aspect of teaching English.  You have to be able to speak it and read it in order to teach it.  Babcia was just like all the other children in school at that time.  They were learning Polish.  How to speak it, write it and read it, when they were in school.  And at home they were speaking and writing and reading in Polish.  There was no need for English in this community.  In the Catholic Church of  Saint Stanislaw, the mass was not in Latin.  It was in Polish.  There just was not this need that babcia thought there was to introduce a new language to this community.