School Puts Mexican-Americans on the Road to Success
Tough love and hard work is the prescription at San Jose's Downtown College Prep — and it's getting results.
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As the ‘04 commencement speaker, Magdalena Villalvazo had talked about doubting that any college would want her, about trying to persuade her mother to let her quit. “Slowly, our fears became our strengths,” she said. A business graduate from Dominican University, Magdalena is working at a bank, where she’ll train to be an investment banker. I asked her what was hard about college. “Everything!” she said. But becoming a college student was “exhilarating.”
Veronica Lugo Perez’s admissions essay started, “Pulled by my mother’s dreams, I walked barefoot across the border from Mexico. I was six years old.” Her mother has a first-grade education and works as a janitor and seamstress. When she started DCP, Veronica decided she wanted to make honor roll and she did, every semester. She graduated in Spanish from Santa Clara University. Now she’s decided to earn a doctorate and be a Spanish professor.
Erika Rico, who came from Mexico without a word of English in middle school, earned a math degree at Mount Holyoke. She’s been hired by a space sciences company, which will pay for her graduate education.
I helped Yessica Solorio with a college form when she was a senior. She was struggling with English spelling and grammar. One question asked if she had work experience. She was working a five-hour dinner shift as a waitress three days a week plus 16 hours on the weekends at a furniture store. I said, “Thirty-one hours is a lot.” Yessica said she liked to work. She’d been very sick as a child, forced to rely on others. With better medical care in the U.S., her health had improved and she could enjoy the pleasure of doing things for herself. Some of her earnings helped support the family — her mother was out of work — and the rest went into her college fund. That work ethic paid off for her at Cal State Monterey Bay, where she earned a degree in kinesiology.
Gloria Medina gave a speech about her turnaround: She was a rebellious, unmotivated student until her sophomore year. “I simply got tired of failing,” she said. She thanked her tutor, the college counselor and her mother. She started crying when she tried to talk about her mother and couldn’t go on. I told her later that we’d all gotten the gist of it.
A UC-Santa Cruz psychology graduate, Gloria plans to get a master’s in social work at San Jose State. She’s also being considered for a job at DCP-Alviso, a new middle-high school that will open in the fall.
Juan Guttierez earned a psychology degree at Monterey Bay. He’s going to work at a restaurant — the tips are excellent — for a year or two, then return to college to earn a master’s degree in psychology so he can be a school psychologist. That kid who read “ride the carrot salad” eight years ago, that was Juan.
Joanne Jacobs is the author of Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds. She blogs on education at JoanneJacobs.com.
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14 Comments
1. Kay:What’s a Mexican-American? Someone with dual citizenship??
Jun 28, 2008 - 7:48 am 2. LC:Most of us are native born US Citizens. Some, like me are first or first or second generation Americans. But, again like me, if we’re dark complexioned, or if we have an accent, or maybe follow futbol more than football, well then, we’re Mexican-Americans. (I suppose if I said rugby we might pass for Irish-American but they lost their hyphen many years ago).
Frankly I’ve declined to state my “ethnicity” or “nationality” on forms for years. I am a U.S. citizen, by common usage, an American. And being a mestizo who can pass for Mexican, Filipino, and sometimes Asian, you can’t really tell what I am when you see me, so let’s just leave it at American.
Jun 28, 2008 - 9:42 am 3. joanne jacobs:[...] and hard work is the prescription at San Jose’s Downtown College Prep ?? and it’s getting results.http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/school-puts-mexican-americans-on-the-road-to-success/Erie County Real Estate Transactions The Buffalo NewsFollowing are real estate transactions over [...]
Jun 28, 2008 - 2:08 pm 4. Allstonian:LC:
And damned if that isn’t how we all should be doing so. We’re American, no hyphen-anything.
Jun 28, 2008 - 2:15 pm 5. Lisa:Why is the public paying for the education of people who are here illegally?
“Veronica Lugo Perez’s admissions essay started, “Pulled by my mother’s dreams, I walked barefoot across the border from Mexico. I was six years old.””
Jun 28, 2008 - 7:41 pm 6. Dark Helmet:Mexican/ American…. hey pendaho , Mexico is a place not a race. Stop putting being something in front of being an American. It’s treason.
Jun 28, 2008 - 9:17 pm 7. Rachel:Why is the public paying for the education of people who are here illegally?
Because it makes those who risked their lives to come over here better Americans. Isn’t that worth something? Or do we want these people hiding in the shadows and/or become “those illegals” you complain so much about.
Look at where these kids are using their skills. In the US. I think that’s a major investment with some serious return.
If you want to be mad at the “illegals” be mad at their parents. But don’t condemn the kids to a subsistence future because you have an issue on how they got here
Jun 29, 2008 - 3:36 am 8. Lisa:Rachel..
the people who came here illegally are NOT Americans and at least one of those students you describe is an illegal immigrant.
Jun 29, 2008 - 12:38 pm 9. Lisa:Furthermore, there are MANY Americans who are living at a subsistance level.. shouldn’t we be helping them before we help people who broke our laws and should still be in Mexico?
Jun 29, 2008 - 12:40 pm 10. abu al-fin:Most of the people of the world would rather live in the US during a deep recession than where they are now, in terms of being well off.
In Mexico, drug gangs routinely round up local police and national security police and gun them down in cold blood. You wouldn’t want to be in Mexico and neither do these children–even those who fly the Mexican flag in misplaced youthful rebellion.
In Mexico a small elite at the top controls all the resources, to the point that nothing at all gets done unless you bribe someone to let you do it. Mexico is supposed to be well-off compared to most of the third world, but it is only a matter of degree.
Jul 1, 2008 - 7:59 am 11. hollywoodsux:abu al-fin:
Who’s fault is that? Mexico’s!!! There is no reason why Americans should have to pay for Mexico being messed up. Let Mexico deal with it’s problems and the US deal with our own problems. Fences make good neighbors.
Jul 1, 2008 - 10:44 am 12. Jim Stutts:“Rachel:
If you want to be mad at the “illegals” be mad at their parents. But don’t condemn the kids to a subsistence future because you have an issue on how they got here”
They are welcome to a bright future in their own country.
“Fruit of the poison tree” is a legal concept. They are benefiting from the commission of a crime. These kids are illegals. We have no duty to pay for them. If you wish to pay for them, do so with your own money. Don’t forcibly take ours to pay for the cuckoo’s young.
Deport them all.
Jul 2, 2008 - 7:34 am 13. Matt:Mexican-American? OK, the first way to give these kids a boost up is to stop giving them a diminished sense of their identity. If they’re born and raised in the United States, they are AMERICANS! Our failure as a nation to DEMAND that people who live in the US become Americans has led us to this bizzare, fractured state where we feel like our country is dissapearing. It is our fault! When I hear the guilty liberal morons talking in horrendous Spanish to a person because they have tan skin I cringe. Sorry, but I wouldnt want to assimilate into a country that treated me like I didnt belong there either. People ask why no one is assimiliating anymore? We’ve let them get away it! No more dual citizenship!!! No more Bi-lingual anything!!! This is treating people like they are beneath you; not a way to transform immigrants into loyal citizens.
Jul 2, 2008 - 9:28 am 14. deguello:Good God! Is that school insane or what? Don’t they realize that the reason illegal aliens are allowed here by the plutocracy, is so that they can be exploited, at slightly higher wage levels than in Mexico? The plutocracy is doing its best through free trade,to export professional and skilled work overseas,and here goes this lunatic school, encouraging poor kids, to have professional expectations,and to reach them through hard work and disciplined academics. Have they gone totally loco?We need semi literate maids,car washers,and grass cutters,not unemployed doctors engineers,and mechanics educated enough to plot revolution against the plutocracy.This school needs to follow the lead of government-run schools in LA and NYC where the hispanic dropout rate is over 50%, and where obscurantist failed”progressive ” curricula” graduate functional illiterates who can do scutwork for crap wages. The democrat party needs welfare dependent voters;the republicans,cheap labor to exploit. It’s only a matter of time before the dept. of education,Teacher’s colleges, the teacher’s unions, and the organs of state security,shut this evil place down!
Jul 2, 2008 - 9:40 am