Victoria Soto  Victoria Soto  Professor Leslie Ricklin noticed
it early on. Victoria Soto was different than the other teacher
candidates in Ricklin's social-studies methods course at Eastern
Connecticut State University.  It wasn't Vicki Leigh Soto's
boundless energy or even the effortless way that she became a
leader in the class.  It was what she did with the information.
She took it in, and turned, almost palpably, Ricklin recalls, to
a point in the future, to a time when she herself would be in
front of an elementary school class. And she envisioned, and
crafted, how she would teach that lesson to not only a classroom
of children, but to a group of kids of different aptitudes and
attention spans and home lives.  "She just didn't sit in your
class,'' Rifkin said of Soto. "She absorbed your class. We are
talking about some controversial issues. Christopher Columbus;
the definition of a family. ... Vicki would be figuring out how
she would make it hers, so she could pass it on. Teaching was
not an abstracti