High school teachers Jason Torres-Rangel ’03 and Rosa Jimenez ’04 came home to campus this week, bringing dozens of their students with them. Torres-Rangel, lead English teacher, and Jimenez, lead social studies teacher, are part of the group of educators who helped open a small public school in L.A.’s Koreatown in 201o. The UCLA Community School at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools Complex is home to about 1,000 K-12 students, coming primarily from Latino and Korean immigrant homes. And, as Torres-Rangel notes, it was a thrill for the two Sagehens to introduce the high-school students to Pomona College:
Coming back to campus reminded Rosa and I what a nurturing, supportive, loving place the college is. I got to hug Frank Bedoya [of Campus Life] and wish him a happy birthday, and my fellow graduate Conor O’Rourke ’03 gave our students the Pomona admissions talk in Rose Hills Theatre where I heard [former Admissions Dean] Bruce Poch give the same speech to Conor and I some 15 years ago … that was kind of surreal!
For our students, who come from immigrant families and will be the first generation to graduate from high school and college, it was their first time to step on a liberal arts school’s campus, and they all remarked at how they could tell that Pomona was a really special place.
Seeing the new arts building made me want to come back for a second round!
Photo by Mark Wood
