Post by southsidesignmaker on Apr 11, 2010 19:18:56 GMT -5
Bakersfield, Calif:
Beating the Odds in Bakersfield
by Herb Benham,
Bakersfield Californian
www.parade.com/news/our-towns/2010/0411-beating-the-odds-in-bakersfield.html
No one would have bet a nickel that Jose Garza would make it to community college. Let alone Berkeley. Let alone graduate school at Harvard.
Jose, 31, is a high school counselor from Bakersfield, Calif., an oil and farming community of almost 340,000 in the San Joaquin Valley. Bakersfield may help feed and fuel the nation, but it is not a bastion of learning—Kern County’s high school dropout rate is 26%.
Jose’s family consists of his parents, Carlos and Angie, and his brothers, Christopher, Daniel, David, and Adam, who range from 18 to 30. The Garzas live on the east side of Bakersfield, on Niles Street, a colorful jumble of shops, fast-food joints, and permanent yard sales. Their street is loud, but their tiny two-bedroom house is simple and quiet.
“This is the most remarkable family I have come across in 30 years of practice,” says their pediatrician, Sze Ho. “Carlos and Angie were good parents, but they didn’t even have the education to teach the kids. The boys learned on their own.”
No Garza had ever gone to college. Before Jose went to Harvard, he had never been on an airplane. He didn’t have any winter clothes until Dr. Ho and a friend in Boston bought him some.
But whatever Jose’s parents lacked, they made up for in stability. Angie and Carlos, who come from Texas, have been married and have lived on Niles for 32 years. She stayed home to raise the boys. He has been a janitor at Foothill High School for 39 years.
The community helped. Sal Salazar, the barber whose shop Carlos cleaned in exchange for haircuts, sold the Garzas his station wagon for $1.
In junior high, Jose wanted to read what educated people were reading, so he chose the biggest book in the school library, Gone With the Wind. In high school, he devoured classics like The Member of the Wedding, The Catcher in the Rye, and Anna Karenina.
All this reading paid dividends. Jose’s English professor at Bakersfield College, Marci Lingo, uses only superlatives to describe him and considers one paper he wrote—on Rudolfo Anaya’s coming-of-age novel, Bless Me, Ultima—graduate-school quality.
At Berkeley, where he majored in English, Jose was a George A. Miller Scholar, an award given to low-income, first-generation college students who have transferred from a California community college. While he was there, Jose says, “I called home every day. I had to hear my family’s voices before I went to sleep.”
After he got his master’s in education at Harvard, he could have gone on to a Ph.D. and perhaps taught at an Ivy League school. Instead, he spent five years teaching ninth-graders at East Bakersfield High. Many of his students couldn’t read or were in special ed. With a $1000 grant from Scholastic, Jose bought them books, which fueled more reading. “We had an interesting problem,” his co-teacher Cynthia Wade says. “Books began to disappear from the classroom.”
Jose became a quiet force. Fellow teachers took note. So did other principals. Last year, armed with an M.S. in educational counseling from California State University-Bakersfield, he was hired as a counselor at Mira Monte High, an even more disadvantaged school, shouldering a caseload of 450 students.
When he’s not encouraging students to go to college or being a Roman Catholic confirmation sponsor, Jose helps his three youngest brothers (Christopher went to UC San Diego, earned two degrees, and is now a nurse) with their homework and runs errands for his parents.
Jose isn’t perfect, his mother says, though most would be elated to have his brand of sin. Principals are constantly straightening his tie, and his belt is often askew.
“I need to believe in myself more,” he says, by way of naming his faults. “I believe in everybody else, but sometimes I don’t have that same feeling for myself.”
On Sundays, the five Garza boys gather in the house on Niles. Outside, sirens wail. Inside, love, order, and a passion for education rule. “We were taught to work in the fields,” Angie says. “ Jose is the first in the family to have gone so high.”
The gift continues. In addition to urging his brothers to finish college, Jose is intent on getting a Ph.D. in education or sociology.
Would you bet against him?
Beating the Odds in Bakersfield
by Herb Benham,
Bakersfield Californian
www.parade.com/news/our-towns/2010/0411-beating-the-odds-in-bakersfield.html
No one would have bet a nickel that Jose Garza would make it to community college. Let alone Berkeley. Let alone graduate school at Harvard.
Jose, 31, is a high school counselor from Bakersfield, Calif., an oil and farming community of almost 340,000 in the San Joaquin Valley. Bakersfield may help feed and fuel the nation, but it is not a bastion of learning—Kern County’s high school dropout rate is 26%.
Jose’s family consists of his parents, Carlos and Angie, and his brothers, Christopher, Daniel, David, and Adam, who range from 18 to 30. The Garzas live on the east side of Bakersfield, on Niles Street, a colorful jumble of shops, fast-food joints, and permanent yard sales. Their street is loud, but their tiny two-bedroom house is simple and quiet.
“This is the most remarkable family I have come across in 30 years of practice,” says their pediatrician, Sze Ho. “Carlos and Angie were good parents, but they didn’t even have the education to teach the kids. The boys learned on their own.”
No Garza had ever gone to college. Before Jose went to Harvard, he had never been on an airplane. He didn’t have any winter clothes until Dr. Ho and a friend in Boston bought him some.
But whatever Jose’s parents lacked, they made up for in stability. Angie and Carlos, who come from Texas, have been married and have lived on Niles for 32 years. She stayed home to raise the boys. He has been a janitor at Foothill High School for 39 years.
The community helped. Sal Salazar, the barber whose shop Carlos cleaned in exchange for haircuts, sold the Garzas his station wagon for $1.
In junior high, Jose wanted to read what educated people were reading, so he chose the biggest book in the school library, Gone With the Wind. In high school, he devoured classics like The Member of the Wedding, The Catcher in the Rye, and Anna Karenina.
All this reading paid dividends. Jose’s English professor at Bakersfield College, Marci Lingo, uses only superlatives to describe him and considers one paper he wrote—on Rudolfo Anaya’s coming-of-age novel, Bless Me, Ultima—graduate-school quality.
At Berkeley, where he majored in English, Jose was a George A. Miller Scholar, an award given to low-income, first-generation college students who have transferred from a California community college. While he was there, Jose says, “I called home every day. I had to hear my family’s voices before I went to sleep.”
After he got his master’s in education at Harvard, he could have gone on to a Ph.D. and perhaps taught at an Ivy League school. Instead, he spent five years teaching ninth-graders at East Bakersfield High. Many of his students couldn’t read or were in special ed. With a $1000 grant from Scholastic, Jose bought them books, which fueled more reading. “We had an interesting problem,” his co-teacher Cynthia Wade says. “Books began to disappear from the classroom.”
Jose became a quiet force. Fellow teachers took note. So did other principals. Last year, armed with an M.S. in educational counseling from California State University-Bakersfield, he was hired as a counselor at Mira Monte High, an even more disadvantaged school, shouldering a caseload of 450 students.
When he’s not encouraging students to go to college or being a Roman Catholic confirmation sponsor, Jose helps his three youngest brothers (Christopher went to UC San Diego, earned two degrees, and is now a nurse) with their homework and runs errands for his parents.
Jose isn’t perfect, his mother says, though most would be elated to have his brand of sin. Principals are constantly straightening his tie, and his belt is often askew.
“I need to believe in myself more,” he says, by way of naming his faults. “I believe in everybody else, but sometimes I don’t have that same feeling for myself.”
On Sundays, the five Garza boys gather in the house on Niles. Outside, sirens wail. Inside, love, order, and a passion for education rule. “We were taught to work in the fields,” Angie says. “ Jose is the first in the family to have gone so high.”
The gift continues. In addition to urging his brothers to finish college, Jose is intent on getting a Ph.D. in education or sociology.
Would you bet against him?