COUNTYWIDE : Tutors Aid Students Who Speak Spanish

Although 16-year-old Gabriel Gomez spoke no English when he moved with his family from Jalisco, Mexico last year, he was placed in the 11th grade at Moorpark High School.

Gabriel managed to get along by studying hard and taking English language classes, he said. Although some of his classes were taught by bilingual teachers, he remembers panicking when his biology teacher, who spoke no Spanish, began teaching mitosis, or cell division.

“You don’t know (anything) about it,” Gabriel recalled feeling. “You look around. There’s no one to help you with it.”

Then, he said, “there was Simon.”

Gabriel was referring to Simon Mejia, 24, one of 10 Moorpark College students who work 12 to 15 hours per week tutoring Spanish-speaking students at high schools in Moorpark, Santa Paula and Fillmore. Moorpark College’s Migrant Teacher Corps program, as it is called, is the only one in the county that matches community college students with Spanish-speaking high school students, coordinator Gloria Romero said.

Mejia said he helped Gabriel by first explaining in Spanish how cells divide.

“What they try to do is teach concepts instead of just a direct translation,” Romero said. “The words can come later. It’s the concepts that are important.”

Gabriel, now a senior, got an A in the biology course.

In addition to tutoring, the college students also try to serve as role models.

Alma Valdovinos, 19, said she almost didn’t graduate from the school where she now tutors, Santa Paula High School. Now, Valdovinos said, she tells high school students who speak only limited English “how hard it was for me to do it.”