Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Turning Around: Middle College High School student David Michal McDonald (left), 18; and Willow Glen High School students Alythea Sainz, 18, and Gustavo Juarez, 19, each received $1,000 Turn-Around Scholarships from the Willow Glen Kiwanis Sunrisers Club.
WG Kiwanis Sunrisers Turn-Around scholarships help out at-risk students
By Kate Carter
A special scholarship program by the Willow Glen Kiwanis Sunrisers shows that hard work and perseverance do pay off.
The group's annual Turn-Around scholarships are given to those students who have gone from being likely high-school dropouts as freshmen to being assured of graduating this spring. Twenty-five such students in the San Jose Unified School District received the $1,000 awards, to be used for future education costs, at a ceremony and luncheon at Lou's Village May 9.
"This group is truly an extremely superior group in terms of what they've accomplished," said scholarship program co-chairman Jim Crownover.
Three Willow Glen student recipients exemplify those accomplishments. Willow Glen High School students Gustavo Juarez, 19, and Alythea Sainz, 18, and Middle College High School at San José City College student David McDonald, 18, have all overcome early obstacles and slow beginnings to bring them to where they are today.
Three years ago, Juarez had a grade point average of 1.6, he said. He was hanging around with "bad people" when his mother had a heart attack, in part because of her concern for his welfare, he said.
That was a wake-up call for Juarez, who decided to make a change in his behavior and attitude. But he was still surrounded by those people who were negative influences at school. So he chose to drop out, and got a real lesson in real life--he was 15 years old, working 60 hours a week in his uncle's tire shop.
"It was hard work," Juarez said. "It made me realize how valuable education is."
So, after a year, he went back to school and got himself on track to graduate. He credits his mother with supporting him through it all--"She's always there when I need her," he said--and he now plans to go to college. He expects to spend two years at San Jose City College and then transfer to San Jose State University, and, for him, the sky's the limit--he said he doesn't yet know what he wants to do with his life.
Not so for Sainz. Her desire to become a veterinarian pulled her out of a downhill academic spiral. Early in her high school career, Sainz "was going through some really bad times," she said. Her aunt had a tumor and her grandmother had diabetes and two types of arthritis. She wasn't focused on school, and her grade point average dropped to a 0.2.
But her family stood by her decision to raise her grades and eventually get into UC-Davis. Her grandfather went out and bought her a computer and printer, her uncle, a college graduate, helped her with her homework, and her mother pushed her to do her best. She also started at Willow Glen High's Plus Program and received extra assistance from her teachers. In the past 11/2, years she has raised her grade point average to about a 3.0, which means she is making entirely As and Bs now, she said.
Sainz said she has regained a lot of her family's trust and pride in herself and now plans to head to West Valley College before attending UC-Davis. If she graduates from college, she will be only the second person in her family to do so.
For McDonald, getting himself back on track meant getting himself off drugs, and that was a choice he alone had to make, even with the support of his family, teachers and community, he said. He started doing drugs at 13, he said, and at 15, he finally entered a rehabilitation program.
When McDonald got clean and went back to school, he didn't want to return to Willow Glen High, where he felt he might be pressured back into an unhealthy lifestyle. So he attended a community school in Santa Clara. But he really wanted to go right to college, he said. He found out that San Jose Unified School District accepts credits from a high school program at San José City College, and that's where he'll graduate this spring, he said.
McDonald said he wants to become a firefighter and is debating whether to go to college first or receive firefighter training and then go back to school. But the May 9 luncheon was a chance for him to reflect on where he's come from more than where he's going.
"I've been clean and sober for two and half years on [May] 14," McDonald said. "One day I woke up and I said, 'I want to do something with my life.' It was just a whole attitude change. That's the choice that you make every day."
The Willow Glen Sunrisers have been applauding those choices of students who have turned themselves around since 1995, when it started the scholarship program and gave away nine scholarships of $250 each. At that time, only four of them were actually used, and Crownover said that there are still those youths who decide not to continue their educations and instead serve the world by raising families or entering the military, among other ways.
But the program has grown enormously in the past seven years, this year giving away a total of $25,000. Crownover said the group received 46 applications for the 25 scholarships. Next year, it hopes to receive 60 applications for 30 scholarships; the following year it wants to receive 75 applications for 35 scholarships.
"We want to keep the schools identifying every single Turn-Around student," he said.
Every high school in the district, including its continuation high schools, recommends students for the Turn-Around scholarships, with the final decision made by the program's committee. It receives money for the scholarships from local corporations and individual donors and is also supported by the San Jose Unified Educational Foundation.
The goal of the program is to honor those who have made mistakes, learned from them and moved beyond them, rather than dwelling on and being held back by their mistakes. McDonald said that's a lesson he's learned, even without the scholarship.
"Without those mistakes that I've made, I wouldn't be where I am today," he said.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
