After lunch at the Sims Park family literacy site, a few adults gather at the horseshoe table for Alice Schafer�s class on parenting. Pulling her jacket off over her head, Megan Wittrock assumes her spot at one end of the horseshoe.

�Ah . . . she came back,� Megan suddenly calls out, encouraging Mai Lee, who enters with Kou and Houa Xiong. Earlier in the school year Mai attended the ESOL family literacy classes at the YMCA, but the work there was too easy for her. It was decided she should join the Sims Park group to have more interaction with English speaking students, but here she struggles to follow what is going on. Megan�s remark is a rope thrown across the chasm of cultural difference, and Mai acknowledges it with the tiniest trace of a smile. Mai�s husband died last year, of a heart attack at age forty, leaving her in an alien land with no job and little ability to speak the language�and with eight living children. Her youngest, four-year-old daughter Ker, is enrolled in the bilingual class downstairs.

Alice Schafer enters the classroom, slim in a tailored red and navy blue ensemble. She busily pushes the VCR cart into place, pulls down the screen, adjusts the overhead projector, and addresses the class in a commanding �O.K.-folks-it�s-time-to-pay-attention� tone. Alice braces herself for a difficult afternoon. The group is too small�last year parenting classes had 12 or 15 participating. The group is too diverse�Megan is bright and easily bored; the Hmong are just learning English. Michelle would be an asset, but she is not able to attend school in the afternoon. And throughout the class Megan will sit staring in that resentful way broadcasting, �I DO NOT WANT TO BE HERE!�

But Alice is experienced and in tune with the complex of emotions that parents feel. In spite of all the obstacles and even though she does not expect it, Alice will teach a good class today.

The discussion will focus on what to do when children misbehave, but not wanting parents to dwell exclusively on what their kids do wrong, she begins the class by asking each parent to focus on one four- or five-year old child. �Make a list of the good things your child does. Kou and Houa, I want you each to write your own list about Gootsang.�

�I can�t write,� Houa looks perplexed.

�We�ll go out into the hall,� Alice responds without missing a beat. �You can tell me the goods things Gootsang does, and I will write them down.�

In about ten minutes the parents are ready to talk about the lists. Kou reads his list about Gootsang. �She happy all the time. She smile at me all the time she see me. She wake up herself. She dress herself. She say magic words, �I Love you daddy.� �

Houa, wishing to emphasize this bond for the group, inserts happily, �She want to marry my husband.�

With an occasional glance at her paper, Houa continues the rhapsody, her round young face happy and smiling. �Gootsang really clean. She help me washa dishes sometime. She really small. She always say she love me a lot.� �She want to take all her dolls when we go,� here Kou joins in, and the duet sing exuberantly about how adamant Gootsang can be about gathering all her dolls before the family can leave the house. �She play with all the dolls,� Houa sings. �She tell my husband, �Daddy, my baby doll is really happy!��

Alice addresses first the Xiongs, �She�s imitating what she hears you say,� and then the class, �When children play with their animals and their dolls, they repeat what they hear in the family.� Alice wishes they could linger on this moment. If there is screaming, yelling, hitting in any family represented in the room, she hopes the Xiongs� unsuppressed happiness will suggest another possibility.

Mai has not spoken except to briefly answer questions put to her. It is quietly murmured among staff that Mai is depressed, in grief, overwhelmed by the gargantuan task of raising eight children alone. As the group turns to hear her list about Ker, the room is quiet. Mai is still, her black hair swept back from her pretty face and twisted into a bun on the back of her head. Her lips purse as she searches for English words.

�Her . . . father . . . passed away,� Mai says each word carefully in a soft voice. The group waits for more words.

�Ker, she sad . . . . She say �My daddy you can not stay with me.� I cry with her.� The words begin to come more freely. Mai describes and Alice encourages. �Ker say, �Mommy, I don�t want you to die. If you die nobody will love me.� �