Personal Biography

Ana Rawson

On August 17, 1952 I was born in New York. My parents had been in the United States for three years at that
time. My mother left Spain during the Civil War, and my father left Cuba to find a better life. It seems there was
always a relative camped on our couch until they got on their feet. By five, I was the designated English
teacher.

By the time I entered kindergarten we lived in Jamaica, Queens. It was a neighborhood of mixed immigrants
where I could eat food from a different country every night. It is from the many stories in different accents
where my passion for travel was born.

Although I entered kindergarten without a word of English, school was my world, and by the age of eleven I
was awarded a full scholarship to St. Johns on the Hudson. My opportunity for achievement came with a price.
The sense of alienation living at a boarding school was intense, but the education priceless.

Tragedy struck our family and my parents moved to California to try and remake their lives with me. St.
Monicas was delighted to have me on scholarship and I watched the waves on the beach from my classroom,
and tried to make sense of the Malibu crowd.

An experimental program at UCLA chose candidates from my high school and I began college two years early.
So, an early marriage followed after all we were at war. We had to grab at life quickly.

My first job was as a director of a Head Start Program in East LA. I would spend ten years in California
teaching in bilingual programs. My sons were ten and thirteen when we moved back east. Vermont was home
from the first day and it always will be.

It was my intention to teach at School for International Training, but fate had a different plan. The principal at
Academy, Larry Alper had a problem. A family of four children had arrived without a word of English. By the
end of the month, administrators at three other schools wanted to hire me. Well, WSESU had an ESOL program
and I had a full time job.

It seems hard to believe that was twenty eight years ago. I love to travel, garden, read, learn new languages, and
spend time with my family. My two grandsons keep me busy and life is still full of surprises.