Walking the school talk: Mom heads for college with her two freshmen kids
COLLEGE: Mother will live part time with kids
| Wednesday, Jun 03 2009 11:00 AM
Last Updated Wednesday, Jun 03 2009 11:02 AM
Images
handout photograph - Jose Daniel Gomez, 18 and Nathalie Gomez, 17, graduated from Shafter High last week. They will attend Fresno State in the fall, along with their mother Bertha Martinez. Nathalie plans to be a kindergarten teacher, and Jose Daniel will major in chemistry.
Shafter High seniors Nathalie and Jose Daniel Gomez make for a neat success story: Both were English language learners when they started high school, and both graduated this week with high GPAs, college scholarships and plans to attend Cal State Fresno next year.
Along the way their mother, Bertha Martinez, has been right there to listen, support and remind them how much she loves them.
And next year, she'll still be right there with them.
Armed with an associate's degree from Taft College, Martinez is transferring to Fresno State at the same time as her kids.
Martinez's message for her kids, and the Shafter community, hasn't wavered: Education is the answer to a better life.
Her message extends to all students who grow up in a rural area.
"I think we as a community should do everything we can to give the opportunity" to rural kids to get a higher education, Martinez said.
It was embarrassing, and she remembers blushing in class more than once as the oldest student at Taft College, but Martinez knew she was setting a powerful example by going back to school nearly a decade and a half after her daughter was born and she earned a GED.
Studying part time, she continued to work and support her family.
And on occasion, she wasn't above scaring her kids into performing at school.
Martinez would drop a line such as, "I'm not sure how you're doing, I might go up to the high school."
"They would say: 'Mom, can you wait a week,'" she said.
Most of the time she didn't have to visit the high school, because she knew her kids would get their act together.
"Sometimes kids say they don't want them in their life, but they do," Martinez said.
Her mother would tell them that if they didn't go to school they wouldn't even be able to work at McDonald's, because the restaurant required a high school diploma to get a job, Nathalie said.
And if they couldn't work at McDonald's the next option would be to pick grapes, a job Nathalie did one long, hot summer, earning $800.
Before her summer as a field worker, she may have been a "little bored" with high school.
But afterward, she said, "it was like, 'I gotta keep going because I don't want to work in the fields the rest of my life.'"
At Fresno State, Nathalie plans to study education to become a kindergarten teacher. Jose Daniel plans to study chemistry, and their older sister Belen, who's currently at Taft College, plans to study computer science.
"It's tough for English language learning kids from rural areas to break out of the cycle, and that's where a parent like Bertha becomes so instrumental in that equation," said Shafter High Principal John S. Davis.
Martinez will study child development and live part-time with her kids in a Fresno apartment.
She'll shuttle between Shafter, where she cares for her ailing parents, and classes at Fresno State.
After she gains a better understanding about sociology and child development, Martinez plans to teach parents about the importance of bonding and structure for the children, and how that translates to success later in their lives.
"I just think that she really instilled in them a work ethic and value in education that really illuminated for those kids how important it would be to work hard and achieve their goals by getting to college," Davis said.
Martinez was also a force behind the R.A.I.T.E.S. project, which worked with the Shafter City Council to implement bus transportation so rural students could get to Taft College last year. Plans are in the works to set up transportation to Cal State Bakersfield, and link Cuyama into the network as well, Martinez said.
Nathalie said some of the seniors she graduated with would end up working in fast food, some would go to Mexico, and others dismissed higher education, saying, "I wasn't born to go to college."
But with a lot of support from mom, Nathalie and her siblings are moving on.
"I want to be working doing something I like, and earning money, and I love kids," Nathalie said.
"That's what keeps me going, I want to hit that goal."
