Photo: Lilly Sullivan

It’s a Tuesday morning and physician assistant Alicia Potes greets her patients. A teenage boy and his mom sit side-by-side in the exam room.

Alicia Potes: So, how are you?
Teen Boy: Good.
His mother: No muy bien.
Potes: No muy bien? Porque?

The boy’s been having stomach problems.

He explains: “It’s probably been for like…I don’t know, like five months ago? But now like every time I eat something…”

His mother adds “Pero ya me estoy preocupando porque es como….”

His mom is getting worried, so she wanted to bring him in. But unlike most doctor visits, no one had to leave school for this appointment. This clinic is located at Pajaro Valley High School. Right in the middle of campus.

“Kids come in on their break. They don’t need to have an appointment,” Potes says “They can just kind of look around, check things out.”

My Doctor’s at PV High

This clinic is run by the organization Salud Para La Gente. For almost forty years, Salud has run clinics all over the county. They work to make health care more accessible to everyone. Recently, they’ve started setting up clinics at schools. These are full-service clinics. They do physicals, vaccines, eye-exams and dental care. A lot students use the Pajaro High clinic as their sole healthcare provider.

“So the other reason you guys are here was to talk about your lab results, right?” Potes says to the boy, then says to his mother, “So…La otra cosa es los estudios…”

Care Where it’s Needed

Watsonville is an agricultural community, and the families that work the fields are often low-income. Getting to the doctor can be a challenge. It can mean missing work or walking long distances. But doing farm work invites a slew of health risks. These same families are the ones that NEED the medical care the most.

“It’s so many things. Crops, pesticides. Just bending all day long to pick fruits and vegetables. That stooped position can cause a lot of pain. More in the adults but I also see it in the teens in the summers or after graduation.”

Potes emphasizes preventative care. Some doctors try to treat problems; She tries to catch problems before they start.

She tells the boy: “You have what’s considered pre-diabetes. It means you could have a risk of developing diabetes in future. It hasn’t gotten worse in two years, so that’s good. So all the more reason to keep with what you’re doing with the nutrition changes and that kind of thing. I think you should be encouraged.”

Finally, Potes checks her patient’s thyroid results. His mom has some questions.

“Y doctora, también puede haber un cambio en la actitud? Cuando se enoja y todo? Porque, el se enoja mucho. Todo le molesta.”

She wants to know: “Can the thyroid affect attitude?” Her son’s been getting mad a lot. Everything seems to bug him. It might sound like a common observation about teenagers, but Potes doesn’t brush it off.

“No se. Posiblemente…” and she invites them to discuss this topic outside of the presence of a reporter.

Confidential Services

The clinic offers a range of confidential services. Things like birth control and STD testing. But patients can also talk to Potes privately about mental health.

“There’s a lot of depression and anxiety especially among the teens that I see. I mean this is a very stressed population. They’re stressed financially and physically. And sometimes they’re separated from family members. There’s definitely that type of depression or loneliness. It really takes, though, building trust. I’ve really seen that if they trust you, they’ll tell you more.”

Potes’ patients confide in her, and Alicia takes that trust seriously. At the end of the appointment, she makes time to speak to her patient alone.

Potes often works with patients and their families all through high school, and she gets to know them well. That’s her favorite part of her job.

“We’ve established a little community here. Coming in as nervous, insecure freshman, to just seeing them grow and change and all the crucial things that happen in the teenage years. I really enjoy seeing them thrive. I love that part of working with them.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has named a Salud Para la Gente a National Quality Leader.

This story was funded by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.

May marks the beginning of picking season, and farmworkers are returning to Watsonville for the harvest. On May 1, 103 families moved into seasonal housing at the Buena Vista Migrant Camp. As farmworkers return to town for a new picking season, their kids prepare for their first days back at school.

Fifteen-year-old Cristian lives at the Buena Vista Migrant Camp. The camp, tucked behind Watsonville’s county jail and landfill, is one of California’s 24 state-run labor camps. Buena Vista has pre-fabricated plywood houses, with yards, a playground, even free childcare while parents work. Rent is just $350 per month—less than half the average rent in the area.

“Yeah, I like it. It’s pretty good,” he says of the unit he’s staying at.

But there’s a catch. A pretty big one.

To Mexico in Fall, to Watsonville in Spring

Buena Vista’s residents can only stay in town during picking season: May 1 through November 30. During the off-season, the camp closes, and state rules mandate that all residents move at least 50 miles away.

“I’m not pretty sure why you have to move, but like, I’m sure you have to move 50 miles away. We go like straight to Mexico,” Cristian says.

A lot of Buena Vista teens have been on cycles like this their whole lives. But moving twice a year, each time mid-semester, makes it hard to keep up in school.

Cristian’s grades are all over the place. A’s and B’s one semester, failing the next. For a lot of migrant youths, school isn’t optional. It’s a survival strategy. They worry that if they get bad grades, they’ll have to work the fields when they grow up. They worry, but their parents worry more.

“Yeah they do. They don’t want me in the fields,” Cristian says.

Life Lesson

Cristian’s mother, Ilia, picks strawberries. When Cristian lost interest in school last year, Ilia said… “fine.”

“I was like, ‘Dude, my mom changed. Yes!’ But then I went to the strawberry fields,” Cristian says. “The first day, I was happy. Like ‘Yeah, working the strawberry fields. No more school for me!’ And the second day, ‘Oh my god, I hate the strawberry fields.’”

His mom remembers how he whined that day.

“‘My back hurts a lot!’” she mimics in Spanish. “‘I want to go back to school. I don’t want to work in the fields!’” Ilia didn’t let him off that easily. She made him finish they day. And she didn’t give him a ride home.

Cristian says, “She’ll be like ‘No. You’re getting out when we get out. You keep working, alright?’ And I had to ride my bike back home. She wouldn’t even take me in the car. I was like in the cold and everything.”

It might seem cruel, but Cristian seems to appreciate it.

“Yeah yeah, she did it on purpose. I didn’t even last two days there. Like ‘Oh, well that’s why I’m telling you to study.’”

Poor Graduation Prospects

The advocacy group Human Agenda says that only 10% of migrant students graduate high school. And legally, kids can start working the fields at just 13. That reality haunts Cristian’s mom, whose biggest dream is that her kids escape the fields.

Ilia tells Cristian, “My son. You’re so young. You have a good opportunity. You speak English. I want you to study, not work in the field, like us.”

Ilia sees education as Cristian’s way out. But maybe it’s easier said than done.

If Cristian can find a way to pass his finals, then he might pull off decent grades this semester. If not, he’ll have just one more obstacle between him and graduation.

This story was funded by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.

It’s May first; Buena Vista migrant housing center opens today for the summer and fall picking season. Only one housing unit remains available. A representative of the center shakes a raffle box while families wait hopefully.

She calls out numbers as she draws them. “Su número es 2664.”

The Buena Vista migrant housing center provides a subsidized home for farmworkers during the peak season. But workers have to move 50 miles away in the off season.
Photo: Reid Ramirez

Buena Vista sits just north of Watsonville and has 103 housing units. A three-bedroom unit costs residents $12 a day. California’s department of housing and community development provides subsidized housing for migrant farm workers at 26 centers like this one. The units are nice –clean, air-conditioned and even have a front yard. But in order to qualify, residents must prove they are migrant by moving at least 50 miles away when the facilities close in November.

Starting School in Time for Finals

Fifteen-year-old Christian Fernandez starts his first day at Aptos High School tomorrow.

“I’m going to have to take finals as soon as I go back to school,” he says.

Christian gets really good grades in Mexico, but not here.

“I failed some classes. It just gets me confused you know, like what’s going on.”

Hoping for a Change

Julie Solomon a member of Human Agenda wants to change the 50-mile regulation

“This is very very disruptive to children’s educations to be uprooted multiple times during every single school year,” she says.

Human Agenda and the Center for Farmworker families have been advocating to change the regulation for nearly ten years. In 2010, they introduced a bill in the California legislature, but it died in the senate. They are petitioning the Department of Housing and Community Development to get an exemption for families with children in school. HCD doesn’t seem to agree there’s a problem.

Is it the Rule or the Lifestyle?

I’m Evan Gurberding I am the deputy director of the department of external affairs at the department of community housing and development

“We haven’t seen any evidence that migratory students are doing any worse than non-migratory students,” says Evan Gurberding, an HCD representative. “And certainly there are inherent challenges in the realities that go along with being migratory and that is exactly why HCD offers this migrant housing.”

Human Agenda interviewed residents of 217 housing units in the four largest migrant centers in California. The results have not been published, but Solomon says they indicate residents feel the regulation does hold their kids back in school.

“So interviewees were asked whether they believed the fifty-mile rule affected their kid’s education, and overall 91 percent said that they did.”

Christian Fernandez’s mom, Ilia Hernandez, shares that view. She says the regulation affects Christian’s schoolwork because when he returns from Mexico his grades goes down.

Human Agenda made several requests for the paperwork when the 50-mile rule was first introduced, but they say the HCD hasn’t handed over any documents. If there is no record of how or when the law was put on the books it may not be enforceable.

Human Agenda and the Center for Farmworker Families hope to hold a public hearing about the rule in the fall.

This story was funded by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.

Vista Pickett [left] stands with Anita Silva. Photo: Adia White.

Three-fifths of Santa Cruz County 3rd graders fail to reach basic levels of literacy. The pilot Santa Cruz  Reading Corps project has seen promising results placing literacy tutors in preschool classrooms to get students an early boost. So far, these interventions look promising. Vista Pickett came out of retirement to participate.

“Letters Letters, Letters have names what is the name of this letter,” Pickett sings as she holds up an illustration of an A.

She’s surrounded by preschoolers at the Freedom Children’s center. Pickett is a petite woman, with short silvery hair, big eyes and brimming with energy.

“And then we’ll chant, A, A, AAA, A is the name of this letter!”

The project is part of AmeriCorps. For a stipend, individuals like Pickett with little or no teaching experience get three weeks of intensive training on literacy education. They hone their new skills for awhile under the supervision of a lead teacher. Then the tutors work their magic in the classroom.

Smiling Tutors Make Good Students

Fortunately, Pickett’s fears turned out to be false: “For new staff to come into the classroom it’s really important to build relationships with the children and that was very easy for Vista.”

Anita Silva, lead teacher at Freedom Children Center, has been working closely with Pickett in the classroom for the past two years.

“Children respond very well to people who care and people who are genuine and people who are encouraging with a smile,” Silva says.

Steady Progress

“Red means they need help. Yellow means they kind of got it but they’re not all the way there, green means they got it.”

Pickett flips eagerly through their progress charts. At the beginning of the year most of the students were in the red, that’s not the case anymore.

“There are some in here that are really exciting, this person we’ve exited”

Exited means that the student has moved from the red zone into the yellow zone. The majority of the students are now in the yellow.

Pickett can take some credit for this improvement. Her responsibility as a literacy tutor is to target the kids in the red zone and work with them individually or in small groups to give them the boost they need.

Reading By 3rd Grade

“Prior to dropping out of college to get married I always thought I’d be a teacher, when I grew up I always thought I’d be a teacher and I thought this is about probably as close as I’m going to get.”

Pickett may very well be helping improve the standard to which her students perform for the rest of their lives, says Christine Sieburg with First Five Santa Cruz.

“Children in third grade are no longer learning to read but reading to learn,” Sieburg says. “So children that do not have that skill set in third grade will move further and further behind their peers as they move on.”

Santa Cruz Reading Corps’ primary goal is to get students reading by the third grade.

“My experience as a Reading Corp literacy tutor has been the most rewarding experience of my life. I get teary when I think about it.” Says Pickett

Pickett hopes that she will teach again next year, but she reminds me that she is a senior citizen. Having accomplished her lifelong dream, she just might be ready to retire.

This story was funded by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.

Christian Lamonea in the classroom.

More than 5,000 youths remain locked up in California at an estimated cost of $380,000 per day. Community-based programs have proven an effective strategy at keeping kids out of jail. Laura Flynn has this report from Rancho Cielo a community school in Monterey County.

By Laura Flynn | KUSP News -

Teacher Christian Lamonea and 13 students balance short bent wires on popsicle sticks. 18-year-old Anastasia Gonzales explains they’re watching how involuntary muscle activity works.

“We’re learning about like bones, ligaments, and bruises and all that stuff,” she says. “It’s cool to see how, like the body works and stuff.”

Individual Attention for Students on Probation

Down the hall in Chris Dever’s class about 13 students work independently as he helps one student. 17-year-old Sheridan Sampognaro is almost done with a project concerned with instances of mathematical ratios in nature.

“The golden ratio and the Fibonacci all come together,” she says. “See in the pine cone the spirals. Three, five, three plus five is eight. Five plus eight is thirteen and so on, right?”

This is Rancho Cielo’s Silver Star Program in Salinas.  It’s one of  about 75 community schools across California serving mostly students who have been expelled from regular high school or who are on probation. The goal is to give students more individual attention. Anastasia Gonzales notices the difference.

“They take care of  you more. Their focus is on you, like they make sure you get your stuff done  an d get it.”

Kids in Court May Be Facing Difficult Choices

Retired Judge John Phillips established the program about ten years ago. He sat on the bench for 21 years, often sending young people to prison for life he says. One day while covering juvenile court for a colleague out sick, he was coming down hard on a young man in violation of probation for missing school.

“And his mother stood up and said, “well judge, he can’t. My car is broken down.” And I said, “well he can walk to school like I did,” you know. “Well I don’t want him to get shot again walking to school.” I said, “shot again?” And they said, “yeah he got shot walking to school, because he had to walk through enemy territory.””

Realizing the kids who often end up in court face difficult everyday life choices, the judge created Rancho Cielo to help them get their high school diploma or GED. But it’s easier said than done. Though Silver Star serves 15 ½ to 18 year olds, teachers like Chris Devers have to incorporate multiple strategies with students whose proficiency levels range from third to twelfth grade.

“You’re integrating everything all at once. And it takes a long time to know how to select assignments that are going to work for every kid.”

A Setting to Take Kids Out of Hectic Lives. 

Teacher Christian Lamonea likes to employ experiential learning often taking advantage of the ponds and hills on the 100 acre property they’re on – something he thinks helps the student s over all.

” But I think part of it is really is just getting out of the urban setting for students. And as a science teacher, nature, hills and its tranquility will prevail. It’s hard to be wound up in nature, you know.”

It’s also about making sure students are present and develop healthy habits.

” I think one of the great things that Silver Star, Rancho Cielo does is we pick the kids up, so truancy is really not an issue. We feed them a breakfast. We give them time to eat it. So now they have the energy regardless of what kind of home they come from.”

To deal with underlying issues that may lead to truancy or criminal behavior the school  provides counseling for mental health and substance abuse. For Anastasia Gonzales the school has changed her point of view.

“Like I feel like I didn’t really have as much respect for people and here I feel like I have more respect. …usually I would feel dumb and stupid but here like I feel like I can be smart and I can be a better person.”

Comparable to studies about community-based interventions, about 33% of youth commit a new crime after one year of participating in Silver Star versus a 50-70% recidivism rate for incarceration.  Ultimately, that’s the bottom line– creating more opportunities and keeping kids out of jail.

O’Neill sea Odyssey Education coordinator Laura Barnes. Photo: J.D. Hillard

California and most of the other states will switch next school year to a new set of math and English standards called the Common Core. The hope is this change will help U.S. students improve their progress. A ‘Next Generation Science Standard’ is expected to roll out in a couple years.

The new standards emphasize practical understanding. Environmental educators, like Laura Barnes at the O’Neill Sea Odyssey say their field trips and hands-on activities will help students get ready.

“This is something we’ve been doing all along in the Sea Odyssey program,” Barnes says.

At the offices of the Sea Odyssey, an elementary school class that just returned from a voyage on the Sea Odyssey catamaran is looking through a microscope at plankton they’ve collected. The old standards say students should finish fourth grade knowing, for instance, that 90 degrees is also called a right angle. The Common Core standards say students should be able to use tools to measure angles. Which Barnes notes aligns with a Sea Odyssey’s exercise in which students to find their location beginning with three bearings.

O’Neill sea Odyssey Education coordinator Laura Barnes demonstrates triangulation, an exercise that could help fourth graders meet geometry standards. Photo: J.D. Hillard

“That means taking the angles from the compass rose,” she says, “moving those angles over through the item on the chart that they actually pointed their compass at when they were taking bearings, and then  drawing an actual line of that same parallel angle. And then you do that three times. You get three intersecting lines, and that tells you the exact location of the boat.”

Nurturing Students’ Enthusiasm

Tamara Meyers teaches high school in Santa Cruz, in an alternative school for students who’ve had attendance problems. She doesn’t need common core to sell her on the value of field trips.

“The main thing I notice is they’re more enthusiastic about the class. They like going out there so when it’s time to go again they’re more excited about going.”

She says the practical application emphasis of the new standard is something she’s already pursuing with hand-on activities like counting sand crabs for a statewide beach monitoring project with a group called LiMPETS.

“So kids learn all these scientific facts about the animals, but then they also learn this procedure of how to do a investigation,” Meyers says.

Reinforcing Curriculum

In Aptos Junior High science teacher Ted Altenberg’s classroom, a familiar double helix built from paper by students stretches across several posters on the wall. Altenberg says he hasn’t had funding for a field trip for years, and under the old standards his schedule has been filled preparing for annual tests. But years ago he took a fifth grade class on a field trip on the O’Neil Sea Odyssey.

“I clearly remember over the next couple weeks as we continued our marine science unit, you know again and again the kids would come up ‘Oh yeah, we saw one of those on the trip remember?’”

Altenberg has been studying the Common Core and especially the yet-to-be-adopted Next Generation Science Standards and says he sees some hope for more experience-based education.

“Even the approach to science really is more looking at science as the process of scientific inquiry and problem solving. So I think the Next Generation Science Standards lend themselves well to even more labs, more hands on activities and projects,” he says.

Altenberg seems unconvinced the new standards mean a big step forward. He says he worries teachers still won’t have time to get outside while they get students ready for a new annual test.

Construction Academy and Hartnell Community College students install drywall in Rancho Cielo Campus housing under the supervision of John Anderson [red hardhat]. Photo: Laura Flynn

While, U.S. Census data trends link earning less than a high school diploma or GED to lower annual income and higher rates of unemployment, research also correlates it to poorer health outcomes and disproportionate rates of incarceration. All of these factors have compounding effects on families and whole neighborhoods.

In Monterey County, Rancho Cielo offers its own set of strategies to prevent dropouts and incarceration. Its Construction Academy helps students graduate high school and learn the ins and outs of the construction trade.

A Young Father Learns a Trade

23-year-old Vincent Abarca opens his locker, puts on his tan work boots, and grabs his tool belt before walking up to the construction site a few feet away. Today he and a crew of about 30 other students are putting finishing touches on a new home for students who need secure and sober places to live at Rancho Cielo in Salinas.

The Construction Academy’s current project will provide sober and secure housing for Rancho Cielo students. Photo: Laura Flynn.

“I’m here to get my high school diploma. I was never really too far. I only need about, right now say about eight credits,” says Abarca.

The Construction Academy serves 16-25 year olds who have dropped out of high school or have excessive absences. Here they can earn a diploma or GED. Students learn sustainable construction practices and get college credit.

A self-described hard working man, Abarca learned about the program from his mother.

“Well I never really finished high school so right out of high school I got a job because I had a son so I’ve been working ever since,” says Abarca.

A Different Approach to School

This series is underwritten by the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation, which is dedicated to maximizing the potential of children and youth in Santa Clara and Los Angeles Counties. On the web, at F C Fox dot org.

Typically in the morning students get their hands dirty: tying rebar and hanging drywall. After lunch they attend academic classes and on Fridays they receive construction training at nearby Hartnell Community College. It’s different from a traditional school, but it works for Abarca.

“You know teachers at actual high schools they’ve got 200 students a day. So here it’s more hands on. They’re really focused on getting you out there and getting a job and putting you on the right path,” says Abarca.

For other students, such as 18-year-old Cristhian Rubio, the enthusiasm isn’t just for small class sizes or more attention from teachers. He says, “It’s not like, just school, school, school for six hours. And then go home. It’s work, and then school. So I get a little bit of both. It’s kind of like going to college, but getting your diploma not your degree.”

For some students, Rancho Cielo’s setting above the streets and field of Salinas is one of the advantages of the school. Photo: Laura Flynn.

For Rubio it’s also the whole environment. The campus sits in the foothills of the Gabilan mountain range.

“You get to go outside, go to walks, take hikes. And like I said all the benefits that this school has they’re helping people get their licenses, driver licenses, IDs,” says Rubio.

Adding Necessary Training for the Workforce

The program started about two years ago. John Anderson, who has worked in the trade for 45 years, oversees the construction and instruction. He says high schools are not offering enough alternatives to young people.

Construction Academy students at work building a laundry room for future Rancho Cielo residents. Phtoto: Laura Flynn.

“And there’s practically no conversation or dialogue about perhaps if you don’t want to go to a four year college and want to go out and make a living, and raise a family, and pay for your living expenses that perhaps a trade would be more suitable for your needs,” says Anderson.

He says the Construction Academy is offering alternatives to the streets or working in the fields. And they’re filling a gap.

“A lot of the old guys have moved on since the last collapse of the building industry and there’s a huge vacuum that needs to be filled as the economy improves contractors are looking for young people who are malleable enough to learn the way that they want to do business and they don’t exists,” says Anderson.

Since the Construction Academy started it has served 100 students and 57 of them have earned a diploma or GED. Vincent Abarca joined the ranks of graduates in December. He’s still working in construction. Cristhian Rubio plans to study computer science after he gets his diploma in June. The program remains one of a few in the area offering young people a chance re-build and turn their lives around.

KUSP’s Solutions in Education series is underwritten by the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation, which is dedicated to maximizing the potential of children and youth in Santa Clara and Los Angeles Counties. On the web, at fcfox.org.

Ana Lopez and other students at Rancho Cielo’s Drummond Culinary Academy develop restaurant skills in a professional environment. Photo: Laura Flynn.

By Laura Flynn | KUSP News

It’s Friday night. Inside the Drummond Culinary Academy restaurant smiling and wide-eyed students stand ready in position. Nervous energy permeates the air. Students busily prepare to give tonight’s expected 56 diners a full-fine dining experience. Front house trainer Andrea Mullany-Moneypenny talks to students about their jobs for the night.

From Probation to Culinary Art

This isn’t an ordinary culinary school. Not all, but many of the students have had brushes with the law. The academy helps 16-25 year-olds get their high school diplomas and learn culinary arts skills by certified chefs. Founding teacher Paul Lee announces the first order:

“Soup for two,” he says. “Here we go. Rock and roll. We’re live.”

At each station in the kitchen students work intently on their jobs: washing pots and pans, warming dinner rolls, sautéing fingerling potatoes, preparing salads and desserts. Each student rotates jobs in the kitchen and dining room throughout their 10 months in the academy. 17-year-old Jose Peña is on dish duty tonight, which he says is just where he wants to be.

“Believe it or not it’s a fun job because I mean you got to learn how to wash a dish in order to use it so I prefer starting from the bottom.”

The academy reports high reductions in recidivism and substantial rates of employment and post secondary education. Of its 2011 class, 85% of graduates still have a job.

Student-Run From Start to Finish

Every detail of the dinner is prepared by students. Photo: Laura Flynn

With the help of the front-house supervisor Sarda Desmond, Executive Chef Paul Lee teaches the students everything they need to know about running a restaurant.

“…And the students prepare everything from pastry crust, to salad dressings to cooking the salmon to making the marinades, to preparing all the vegetables and all the rice, sauces for the steak. Everything.

Lee is a certified executive chef with the American Culinary Federation. He helped launch the academy in 2010. One of the most important things the school offers, he says, is encouragement.

“Some students have never been told, hey good job. And that’s what they need. They need that reinforcement. And once you give them that reinforcement you can do such great things with them. And then they’ll do great things for you and that’s what we see every Friday night.”

The real test for students comes every Friday night when the Drummond Culinary Academy opens its doors to customers.

“Quite frankly this is a professional dinning room: the service, the attention, the collegiality, the love,” says Debbie Chinn. The executive director of the Carmel Bach Festival has been back for the Friday dinner a number of times. “You don’t find this in a whole lot of restaurants anywhere. And I believe this is the best deal and it all goes for a good cause. And that’s why I’m here.”

And Jean Fleming from Santa Cruz: “The food was all very excellent, very tasty. And the environment is just very comfortable. And I really like too that it’s doing something very special in these young people’s lives too.”

Cultivating Ambition

At the dish washing station, Jose Peña says he first learned about the culinary academy from his probation officer. Initially he was reluctant but gave it a try. Now he wants to continue studying culinary arts and one day open up his own restaurant.

“I would go for a Mexican bar and grill; something like that,” he says.

As he speaks, Chef Lee stops by and tells Peña, “Hey Jose I’ve got a customer out there raving about your soup.”

It’s ambition like Peña’s that the academy hopes to inspire in other young people struggling to find opportunities to cook-up some change in their lives.

Elizabeth Campos credits her mentorship with Feeta Bishop for helping her turn from partying and juvenile hall to education and helping others. Photo: Laura Flynn

Monterey County this month hired a full-time coordinator for a new county wide strategy to reduce youth crime.  In Santa Clara County a volunteer program called Fresh Lifelines for Youth or FLY has helped kids who commit crime stay out of trouble.  Laura Flynn reports on the impact FLY has had on two people’s lives.

Elizabeth Campos learned she’d have a mentor form her probation officer as she was being released from juvenile hall. Flynn 1: Campos’ mentor was working with Fresh Lifelines for Youth, a nonprofit in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. FLY’ s mentor program connects adult role-models  to at-risk and formerly incarcerated youth. When it works it does more than keep a kid out of jail. FLY staff say it costs about $100,000 to incarcerate  a youth for one year whereas participating in the mentorship program is $5,500.  In Campos’ case there was a lot to overcome. Her  first  assigned mentor didn’t show up, something she was used to.

“Truth I’ve been in the system since I was 15, 14. So to me it was nothing new,” she says.

Then FLY matched her Feeta Bishop.

“I was in a choir with Christa Gannon [FLY's Executive Director],” Bishop says. “She mentioned that she had started this program and that it was for youth coming out of drug court. And I’ve been in recovery like 33 years so I figured Oh I could do that.”

The next challenge was that Campos didn’t keep appointments with Bishop.

Living the Life

Campos says she thought initially that the mentorship would be just another thing she’d have to do for probation. Meanwhile, she was busy, “just living my life as a little, running the streets. And by running the streets I mean hanging out with my friends, going to the park, going to parties. You know just drinking not really having a care of the world.”

Campos didn’t have a cell phone or internet, so Bishop got in touch the only way she could.

“I wrote her a note and I told her that I’d be at her house at three o’clock on Thursday and I’ll wait half an hour,” She says. “So I went there and I did that and she didn’t show up so I left a note and said I’ll be back next Thursday at three.”

“And I don’t know how many times I did that but then one day I went there and there she was.”

Overcoming Cultural Divide

Campos says she was scared to meet Bishop because they come from different worlds. Bishop is white and Campos is Mexican. A lot of her impression of white people was from interactions with the staff at juvenile hall.

“You know  in the system I was always around a lot of white people, a lot of people who told me do this, do that,” Campos says. “And it’s their job I understand. And I had a lot of people come at me and speak to me in a way that I was lower than them.”

It took Bishop’s follow-through and non-judgmental approach eventually broke through Campos’ guard.

“With her I just realized that she wasn’t fake. Something about her just persistence,” Campos says. “Whatever she said she would do. She would never say ‘hey I’m going to be here at this time’ and never came up never showed up. No she was always there.”

Working on the Future

Bishop and Campos met for four years. Since then, Bishop has helped Campos enroll in college to become a social worker.

“Now I’m attending college to get my AA in Liberal Arts study social human behavior to become a social worker. And my main goal is to basically to help my community, to help the youth, troubled youth.”

In addition to school, Campos also works full-time, speaks at local gang-prevention events, and has recently taken to mentoring a young girl in her neighborhood whose behavior mirrors her younger self. Today Bishop and Campos continue to hang-out regularly, lately watching a play at the San Jose Rep.

” She just eats it up,” Bishop says. “It’s so cool. And I remember when she told me that when we first met she thought I don’t know what this little white girl and I have in common. And it turns out that we have a lot, a lot, a lot in common.”

Commitment Pays

The mentorship program serves about 80 new youth every year. Aila Malik of FLY says what makes their mentorship model different is the level of commitment and the focus on relationship building. A recent assessment found the large majority of youth  who completed two years in the program stayed out of trouble. The two year volunteer commitment for mentors pays off in other ways too.

Malik: “There’s no greater reward than watching a young person smile at 49ers football game or their first baseball game or watching them come home come to you and say I want to show you my report card and I got my first A or my first B or I’m actually going to be graduating from high school I never thought I could.”

For Bishop and Campos, FLY is more than diversion program for kids who run afoul of the law, it helps young people to rise from their mistakes, grow, and in turn become positive adult role models themselves. Fly’s staff say they need more mentors, especially men, who can help a kid just be a kid.

Hadley Robinson | KUSP News

With a focus in California schools on math and language arts testing, science learning often takes the back seat. To fill in the gap, some teachers look to outside organizations that run field trips or in-class, hands-on lessons. But what each classroom gets for science, especially in elementary schools, is spotty at best. Hadley Robinson reports a group of educators hope to change that for the Monterey Bay area.

On a beach near Capitola, sixth graders from New Brighton Middle School are counting sand crabs.

“When it gets to the red line we pull it up and see how many sand crabs we got ,” says one of the students.

They determine who will count, who will dig through the sand and who will record results.  They count crabs and record data points like age, whether it’s a male or female and if it’s pregnant. The area erupts with youthful exclamation as they find a crab carrying eggs.  The activity is guided by Ann Wasser who runs  LiMPETS (Long-term Monitoring Program and Experimental Training for Students).

“Those are freshly fertilized eggs, so she’ll have those for about a month,” she tells the group.

The data the students collect during Wasser’s field trips goes into a state database and is used by California environmental agencies. The students get to see science in action and learn some biology.

But this approach to science education can be a hodgepodge depending on the teacher, the programs they can find, and funding. Ann and other environmental educators from the Monterey Bay Area have formed a group to try to make experiential programs more consistent and meaningful.

“We were all at the North American Association for Environmental Education conference and saw this model working in the South Bay area and went, this is it.”

This idea started several years ago, when multiple science field trip programs converged their focus on one elementary school in East Palo Alto. Working together, they provided 40 hours of science instruction to the students for three years. The majority of students scored higher on tests, they better understood scientific concepts, and were far more aware of humans’ impact on the environment.

The model grew to serve more than a thousand schools in the South Bay. And the program built a website to make it easier for teachers to find the right field trips.

“Teachers can go one stop shop for all their field trips,” Wasser says. “They say I can teach this grade level and I want to meet these standards and all these different field trips pop up for them on one website.”

Now outdoor educators in the Monterey Bay Area want to do something similar.

“Right now everybody has their own programming and there’s not a ton of communication between organizations. So now it’s talking about, OK who serves what grade levels and meets what standards so we can make a more coordinated effort.”

Kathy Kelley is the science and math teacher who took her 70 students to the beach today. She tries to take her students out once a month, but she is on her own to find programs that work for her curriculum.

“I found this one from a parent,” Kelley says. “A parent actually emailed this to me and I went to the class and I went oh my gosh this is perfect, it’s great.”

But Kelley says she’s had some field trip flops too. She’s enthused about an easier way for teachers to find the right trips for their students.

“I think it’d be a lot easier just to find one place to go to, c heck and see what interests us and would fit with our classes, that’s a great idea,” Kelley says.

The Monterey Bay area effort is still in its infancy. Wasser and dozens of other educators are now meeting regularly, working on funding, and coordinating their various offerings.

On the beach the students again shout a new discovery:

“Holy cow its huge. No we lift up the tail. It’s pregnant! We found another!”

” They love it,” Kelley says. “They love to be out of the classroom. For some kids this is amazing and they start on a lifelong path to environmental science.”

Wasser and the others working to collaborate, hope they can help teachers like Kelly give students a science curriculum that’s more varied, corresponding and complete.

“They’ll have more opportunities to see how things are connected in nature,” Wasser says. “They’ll see oh yeah we went to the wetlands but that’s connected to the ocean here which is also next to the beach where we did sand crab monitoring so the wetlands can effect sand crabs and here’s how people can affect wetlands and the beach.”

The teachers and environmental educators involved think the effort will lead to kids connecting the various science lessons they learn in and out of the classroom.