Voices of la Lydia

This book tells the story of a Lydia Patterson Institute, a Methodist mission school founded in El Paso, Texas in 1913. In picture-book format with portraits and first-person narratives based on footnoted history, the founders, architect, teachers, students, and graduates tell of Lydia Patterson's beginnings as a ministerial school for Spanish-speaking boys, its provision for refugees of the Mexican Revolution, its pioneering English as a Second Language program, and its current-day...
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This book tells the story of a Lydia Patterson Institute, a Methodist mission school founded in El Paso, Texas in 1913. In picture-book format with portraits and first-person narratives based on footnoted history, the founders, architect, teachers, students, and graduates tell of Lydia Patterson's beginnings as a ministerial school for Spanish-speaking boys, its provision for refugees of the Mexican Revolution, its pioneering English as a Second Language program, and its current-day success as a co-educational college preparatory school. Readers learn how John Wesley's "methodism" was manifested on the US-Mexico border a century after his death, and meet Lydia Patterson, who served Mexican children in El Paso's Segundo Barrio. They meet the first graduate, Abel Gomez, who rode with Pancho Villa before enrolling in the school and learn how Laura Bush brought attention to it when she was First Lady of Texas. Readers are also introduced to recent graduates who helped build the borderlands region and whose professional accomplishments have impacted other parts of the world. By sharing their first-hand experiences, the characters reveal how living on a border allows for personal growth, and how a school established on the U.S. side of an international bridge came to be known by the personal name, "La Lydia."