Education Evangelist : Counselor Sells Higher Education as an Option for Those Who Have Counted Themselves Out

To attend seventh grade, Irasema Pedraza walked three miles. And that was just to get to the school bus.

More than a decade later and after a lifetime of changes, there remain indelible impressions and lasting values from her days as a young girl in the remote Mexican village of San Juan Tumbio.

Perhaps foremost is the inspiration of her grandmother.

“She felt responsible for me and took it seriously,” Pedraza said.

“She would hold a stick in her hand and say: ‘You have to go to school,’ ” Pedraza recalled with a broad grin. “Her style helped in raising me. She understands how important education is.”

Today, at the age of 26, having reaped the benefits of grandmother’s guidance, Pedraza is more than merely grateful. She is on a singular mission to instill in others the same reverence for education imparted to her by her grandmother, a woman who never learned to read or write.

Five days a week Pedraza can be found buttonholing middle-aged women, advising teen-agers, encouraging very young children and generally delivering her special sales pitch to anyone who stops long enough to listen.

She is selling prospective students on the value of a college education. The only thing her customers are expected to pay is attention.

Pedraza’s clients are the county’s minorities, whose high school dropout rate is alarmingly high and whose level of college enrollment is discouragingly low.

The percent of Hispanic high school graduates ages 18 to 24 attending college declined from 36% in 1976 to 27% in 1985, according to the American Council on Education.

“That trend continues today, not only in California, but nationwide,” according to Donald Randol, Coast Community College District director of education services.

For two years Pedraza has run the Mobile Higher Education Center out of the back of a van. She brings a glimpse of college to 200 community centers, public schools, job-training sites--anywhere she can find an audience.

The program is sponsored by a consortium of the eight Orange County public colleges and Cal State Long Beach.

“It’s really essential for the economic health of California that (minorities) participate and get the training other folks do,” said Randol, a consortium director. “It’s really a social goal as much as an education goal.”

If this were a movie, Central Casting could not have delivered a more ideally suited leading lady. Pedraza came to the United States at the age of 15. She spoke no English.

As a young girl, she lived with her grandmother, Nicolaza Mendoza, in a dusty Mexican village so small the streets had no names, the houses had no addresses and only about 1,000 people called it home. Her two sisters and brother lived with Pedraza’s mother and father, who had immigrated to the United States when she was very young.

Rather than leave the grandmother alone, the family decided Edie would stay behind with her. She and her grandmother finally joined the rest of the family in Anaheim in 1976.

In Mexico it was her grandmother who followed her every morning “to make sure nothing happened to me and that I got to school.

“She used to, I guess you could say, spy on me to make sure I was in school,” Pedraza recalled. “She used to drop by the school regularly to say: ‘I don’t know how to read, but can you tell me how this girl is doing?’ ”

Pedraza’s father works in the strawberry fields, her mother in a factory. She lives in Garden Grove with them, her younger sister and, of course, her grandmother, now 87 years old.

Pedraza’s personal achievements serve as an example for those she hopes to inspire. She graduated in 1978 from Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove and embarked on a college education with little understanding of how to go about it or where it would take her.

It took seven years to complete four years of study, principally because Pedraza was still mastering English. But she emerged from Rancho Santiago College and then Cal State Fullerton with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

The little teen-age girl from San Juan Tumbio who could speak no English had transformed herself into a college-educated woman. Now she wants to do the same for others.

Although the Mobile Higher Education Center program was conceived before Pedraza was hired, it has unmistakably been shaped by her.

“We had probably 20 applicants, and Edie was clearly the No. 1 choice,” Randol said. “She is just a real dynamo. We had a job description for her, but really had no groundwork laid. She made contacts with 89 different agencies.”

Though the program “may sound like a lot of other recruiting efforts,” Randol said, “we really haven’t concentrated on recruiting, per se. What we are trying to do is bring the message that college is important and to assist (minorities) by providing information. It’s kind of a long-term project.

“We’re thinking that if we can kind of create some type of climate that is favorable, more of these folks will be going to school.”

More than 600 college prospects, many of whom otherwise may not have considered higher education, have been referred to colleges by Pedraza. But she is just as likely to address a class of 8-year-olds or the parents of preschoolers as she is an 18-year-old high school senior.

The idea is to make people who have counted themselves out believe that college can be an option for them, as it was for her.

“A lot of these people are not familiar with their options, so how can they decide what to do?” Pedraza said. “But when you look at things through their eyes, it makes a big difference.

“That has added to my commitment to minorities, especially the ones who live in the very disadvantaged areas.”

Pedraza recalled that her own limited mastery of English forced her to repeat three classes in college.

“I share with them my experience,” she said, adding that English classes abound for those willing to put in the time. “I think the best way to encourage anybody is by example.”

She estimates that about 60% of the people she deals with are not fluent enough in English to handle college courses.

“But I don’t think that’s the major factor,” she said. “A lot of them are going to do what they have to do. You need the other factors--motivation, purpose--and a lot of people I talk to have it.”

Angela Chavez of El Modena had motivation and purpose but lacked direction. Despite her interest in college, Chavez had never enrolled. She met Pedraza in January.

“I wasn’t sure what to take or anything,” she said. “I didn’t even know what the rules were.

“Edie suggested I should enroll in college,” said Chavez, 21, who graduated from high school in 1985.

Pedraza outlined her options, described the steps for admission, helped fill out the application and even drove Chavez to Rancho Santiago College for placement tests.

“She really helped me a lot,” said Chavez, who has attended classes at the college since January. “She’s really doing a service.”

Many of those Pedraza works with cannot afford even the nominal expenses of community college. Much of her work involves helping would-be students arrange grants and loans, obtain financial aid and scholarships and find work-study programs to offset their expenses.

“There’s money for you, if you need it,” she advises everyone.

Guillermo Cordova, director of the Delhi Community Center in Santa Ana, has witnessed Pedraza’s effectiveness.

“The response has been tremendous,” Cordova said. “She’s very charismatic, and that’s one of the reasons she has been able to convince people.”

On a recent morning at the Delhi Community Center, shortly after Pedraza set up her folding table and racks of literature on the lawn, she was approached by a man speaking Spanish. As it turned out, he was also originally from the Mexican village where she was raised.

“Most of us are picking strawberries or washing dishes,” Pedraza said later of immigrants from her hometown.

The man left with a fistful of literature for his son, a senior at Saddleback High School who wants to be an engineer.

“There are seven in the family, and the two other (sons) got Fs, Fs, Fs,” Pedraza said later. “This son . . . gets good grades.”

Two young girls stopped to inspect Pedraza’s literature. Upon learning it was free, they stacked their arms with brochures and leaflets before scurrying home.

Pedraza, who has an engaging smile and a ready handshake for everyone, conceded that the girls, the oldest merely 16, were probably not seriously interested in college. But each encounter, no matter how brief, potentially represents a life-changing experience.

“You know a lot of them get lost,” Pedraza said of minority youths. “They live in areas where there are crimes, gangs, social problems. We have to find ways to promote (higher education) so they feel it belongs to them too.

“You think about what they see the most, what they hear the most, and it’s not much of this,” she said with a sweep of her hand toward the college literature.

“I try very hard to send the message that I’m here; I’m sincere.”

Later that afternoon the younger of the two girls, a seventh-grader, returned to talk to Pedraza, who shared with her a book, “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. They talked about schoolwork habits.

“That makes my day!” Pedraza said later. “She’s getting A’s.

“How can I tell her to do well, to be a professional? Her mom works in a factory. Her dad works day by day, whatever he can get,” Pedraza said, concerned that she may be unable to impress upon the youngster the significance of her academic success. She resolved to talk to the girl again when she returned to Delhi for the next month’s visit.

But later the same day the girl tried to reach Pedraza at her Orange Coast College telephone number. And by the time Pedraza got home, she had several messages on her telephone answering machine, also from the girl. Before she could return the calls, the seventh-grader called again.

“Her first question was: ‘Can they help with math in college?’

“She said, ‘It’s for my sister, she’s 18 and dropped out of school and has a 1-year-old baby.’

“Then she said: ‘What about my brother? Can he go to college?’

“To me it was just amazing.”

As Pedraza reflected on the day’s accomplishment, she acknowledged that an actual college enrollment from this encounter was still years off, at best.

“With her, it was easier,” Pedraza said. “She was paying attention. I was able to send a message.

“It was the first time I got a call from a younger girl. That’s what encourages me to give 100% when I’m doing what I’m doing. When I see young people like that, that’s when I think very hard about what I’m doing. Even though they have the same ability (as non-minority students), there’s a great difference.”

Students attending Joplin High School in Trabuco Canyon, a campus for youths serving juvenile court sentences, face even greater obstacles.

Joplin teacher Arturo Santos said Pedraza has brought the prospect of college to students who have even less opportunity to visit a college than most minority youths. Three Joplin students, he said, have enrolled in community colleges as a result of Pedraza’s encouragement.

Pedraza has applied to UC Berkeley, Stanford and Harvard to pursue a graduate degree in education. She wants to teach at a university or “be able to affect policies concerning the education of poor minorities and the non-English-speaking.”

Retired banker Manuel Esqueda, who has helped establish college scholarship funds since 1951, said he sees Pedraza “as a role model that will be very, very helpful for the problems of our people.

“In this day and age of so many dropouts, (having that model) will be very, very positive,” he said.

But Pedraza is the first to concede that much remains to be done.

Convincing minority parents of the value of higher education is only part of the job.

“One of the things I tell them is even though (their children) are young, the best thing you can do for them is to be prepared.

Pedraza urges parents of second- and third-graders to visit their childrens’ teachers often and “make sure they are learning to read and write.”

“The best thing you can do at this point is to encourage them and get involved, every week, even if that means going to English classes so you can help them with their homework,” she said.

“Especially in the Hispanic community, the problem we are facing in education is not a matter of can you go or not. It’s a matter of assuring that they can get the preparation that is required.

“There’s been a lot accomplished, compared to how we were 40 or 50 years ago,” she said. “Now that we have that chance, at least the doors are open. Now we have to prepare the students.

“What’s the use in going to Harvard or Stanford if we are not preparing the students?”