Laboring by Day, Learning by Night

Now the spelling lesson becomes a lecture on environmental conservation. "Natural wealth is the trees, the oceans, the animals. It is us, the world, the equilibrium of nature," he explains. The men listen, spellbound. "Sometimes factories poison the earth or ships spill oil and poison the oceans, and then all of life is affected."

Jose Sanchez raises his hand, nodding in recognition. "I have seen paintbrushes being washed in water drains. Then it all goes into the rivers," he says.

Sanchez always sits in the second row. He is a leathery Mexican of 45. His workbook is full of words copied in elegant script, with a special flourish on the A's. In the margins are other, longer English words he has looked up in the dictionary. Successful. Portfolio. Heather.

Sanchez grew up in a village with no school, and he picked up a smattering of written Spanish as an adult in Mexico City. Now, he says, he wants to improve his formal Spanish so he can eventually learn English.

"I work in a restaurant," he explains. "When a customer asks me about something on the menu, I always have to excuse myself and go in the back and ask."

The house in Springfield is brand new, all polished stone countertops and cathedral ceilings, even a Jacuzzi. There are hints of family roots: the hammock strung across the master bedroom, the

sack of tortilla flour in the kitchen, the photos of a teenage girl in a frilly white quinceañera gown.

Rivera gives the grand tour, beaming with pride.

"Would you ever think this is the house of someone who cannot read or write?" he asks, filling a tumbler at the ice maker.

It has taken him a lifetime of toil to get this far. Planting corn in El Salvador as a boy of 8, cutting sugar cane in Mexico, picking tomatoes in Texas, working construction in Virginia. Along the way he got married, had children, became a legal permanent U.S. resident. There was never time to study, until now.

"My life has always been about surviving, and it has been a difficult journey," he says, trying a few sentences in English. "I go school, pero no read, no write." He laughs, switches back to Spanish. "That's why I tell my kids to study hard."

Rivera's wife, Reina, 42, never learned, either. She was too busy raising children and cleaning other people's houses for a living. She still cleans houses all day, still comes home to pat tortillas for supper -- but now she does it over a stainless steel island range.