Introduction

Gilbert High School, a continuation school in Anaheim Union High School District, offers an academic home to eleventh and twelfth graders to find their voice, agency, and purpose through content and skill development. Gilbert exemplifies a unique approach to community schooling in an alternative high school setting through its robust offerings of dual-enrollment courses, service-learning opportunities, socioemotional supports, and a staff who tailors their work to student needs and assets. 

Gilbert serves about 640 students from eleventh to twelfth grade who are in credit deficiency, meaning they are behind on classes or have failed classes at traditional high schools. About 90% of Gilbert’s students are socioeconomically disadvantaged (compared to the 78% district average) and 36% students are considered long term English Language Learners (compared to the 22% district average), meaning that they haven’t met the criteria to be reclassified as English Only. Gilbert has a Special Education population of 35%. Ethnically, Gilbert students are about 90% Latinx (predominantly of Mexican descent, as noted by Principal Jose Lara), 5% white, and 2% African American. Roughly 58% of Gilbert students are male.

This school case features an interview between Gilbert High’s principal, Jose Lara, and UCLA Center for Community Schooling researcher and journal issue editor, Natalie Fensterstock. The segments of the interview included below focus on themes of student voice and agency within an alternative community high school setting. Please read the full interview here. 

Our conversation highlights the connections between Jose Lara’s personal life experiences and those of his students, his motivations to serve in a leadership position at an alternative high school, and the importance of mentorship. In describing the student experience at Gilbert High School, we discussed the central role of student voice and purpose, the philosophies that guide the work at Gilbert, and how community schooling takes root in an alternative educational setting.

“I am my students”: The Principal’s Personal Connections to Alternative Schools

Natalie: Can you share a bit about yourself, and how your journey connects to your work as principal of Gilbert High School in Anaheim Unified High School District? 

Jose: My motivation comes from my personal experiences and the community schools movement meant to disrupt our current educational systems and build schools that can cultivate hope and transform communities. That’s what community schools are really all about. This really resonates with me as a child of an immigrant mom–a single parent. I was the oldest of three children at home and I was working full time, all the time. We had few resources, no mentors. The path forward, in my school site and in my community, did not feel like a caring one. If I look back at my high school years, those times are full of great pain and anguish. It was not a very happy childhood or adolescence. I did not have a good time.

I gave up a lot of hope. And I thought in a lot of ways that I wasn’t going to be successful in life, even though I did have some people tell me otherwise. I ended up going to juvenile hall twice, went to five different schools, and finished at a continuation school. I ended up graduating – there was always at least one person, that one teacher, that kind of helped me along. I was fortunate enough to be able to find the “hope dealers” in every school system that I was in that provided me some hope to continue going on. [Hope dealers is a term that refers to folks who are “joy makers, empowerment builders that make transformational educational experiences abound” and refers to work by Dr. Duncan-Andrade]. 

And so, today, what motivates me is working with a tireless, amazing group of teachers, counselors, and staff in building a community school that children deserve – that I wish I had when I was growing up. And they’re amazingly empathetic, hardworking staff that are transforming lives. When I come to work every day and see my staff, my teachers, inspired to see the work that the students are producing, it inspires me and keeps me going. I hope to build a school that I wish I was in when I was growing up. I can relate to the stories of a lot of my students because I am my students.

From Hopeless to Hope Dealing: Finding Mentors and Becoming a Mentor

Natalie: And how did you move from this space of hopelessness to becoming principal of Gilbert. What were those in between steps for you?

Jose: When I graduated high school I became a father, a single dad –  his mother went away. It was just me and my son. I struggled it out: went to school full time, worked full time, was trying to figure out my way, went to Cypress community college, found a mentor. Mr. Flores was one of my professors. He took it upon himself to mentor me, to provide that connection to me, to guide me through. I also had a great Extended Opportunities and Supports Counselor , Ms. Dugan. I remember her as well. She’s the one that had me apply to universities. I didn’t think kids like me went to universities. So, I finished community college and ended up going to UCLA and at UCLA, I found Chicano Studies and a mentor – Ellie Hernández. She really helped guide and provide space for me. Student groups at UCLA also provided a community for me. And, while I was there, I really started to think of myself as an intellectual. I decided to become a teacher to be able to help out kids who are like me, that went to continuation schools, that were marginalized, that by all statistics weren’t supposed to make it – whatever “make it” means. 

I taught in South Central Los Angeles for seven years and became a Dean of Students, doing restorative justice work. This was really when the restorative justice movement was just getting started. Then, I was able to come back home to Anaheim (I grew up in Anaheim – in Placentia, in North Orange County). I got into administration in order to have a deeper impact on a systems level. I am glad to still be doing that work today! 

Describing Gilbert High School

Natalie: How would you describe Gilbert to someone who knows very little about the school?

Gilbert is much more than demographics – it’s a community school. We take a holistic approach to public education. Gilbert’s a place of “hope dealers,” which I borrow from Jeff Duncan-Andrade: joy makers, empowerment builders that make transformational educational experiences abound. When I walk around Gilbert, when I walk into classrooms, when I see people in the hallways, when I see people out on the basketball court or the football field, it’s absolutely amazing. It’s where we take civic engagement seriously. It’s where we talk about resources democratically. We make decisions democratically as a staff, as a school community, and we allocate resources to those with the most needs. 

When you talk to our staff, our students, our community – in surveys, in interviews, in conversation – the number one thing they will say about Gilbert is the focus on kindness. They’ll say Gilbert is a place where people are unbelievably kind to each other and empathetic and understanding. You feel it when you’re on campus. That’s the root of our pedagogy – kindness. It’s a way of being here. At Gilbert we run on kindness and compassion and empathy. Our emotional intelligence meter is very strong with the staff and adults that work here. I’m really proud of that. 

Natalie: Beautiful. You just mentioned that kindness was at the root of your pedagogy. What does that mean? How have you supported developing that ethos, or that feeling and experience at Gilbert?

Jose: I think one of the things I have been able to do is transform and support the kindness of our staff into actionable projects and actual items. It’s not just how we treat our students. But it’s the way we teach our students. And we grow with our students. And we build with our students and with the community. 

Since we’ve moved towards a community schooling model, our teachers have been reinvigorated with zeal and have started new projects, new campus clubs. We go on more field trips and experiential activities than we’ve ever had here in the past. Our students wanted and advocated for a sports program. So we started a sports program. Our students advocated for a music class. So we started a music class. Our students and teachers wanted to start more career technical classes. So we started more career technical classes. It’s really led to a lot of innovation by our teachers and staff and students, and really led to a lot of community partnerships as well. So a community partner wants to partner with us and says, “Hey, let’s dream. What would it look like? What would that be like?” And alright, let’s do it.

Student Voice and Advocacy at Gilbert

Natalie: You just mentioned this piece around students advocating. What does that look like at Gilbert? What does that mean? How do they do that?

Jose: We set up and design our systems around student advocacy. About two years ago, we included a check and connect period every day. We do school wide lessons during that time – we call it our power up time. We do a school wide civic engagement project where students could come up with an issue of their choice that they want to work on. Our teachers design lessons around that project or that issue that students wanted to engage in and then, based on those lessons, students develop an action project. They research it. They divide up an action project and build an advocacy plan to address that specific issue.

Last year our civic engagement project focused on mental health and mental health issues. Students chose and hung their hats on a specific aspect of mental health. At the end of the year-long project, we invited a lawmaker and assemblywoman, Sharon Quirk-Silva, to have a community forum where students proposed a possible law change: to have mental health days free of penalties.  Currently, when a student takes a day off because they need a break, they get penalized and we get penalized. Schools don’t collect ADA funds. 

However, there are plenty of employers who provide personal days for employees. And people who believe in labor rights would say, “Hey, this is actually a good idea.” So why wouldn’t that be a good idea for students? The students came up with the issue. 

This year, students were very excited about the project and chose an issue a bit closer to home. Students were tired of waiting for the bus and the bus lines weren’t aligned to our exit times for the school site. So the students studied transportation issues in Orange County, found out who to advocate to, and ultimately started a petition and started writing emails to the county supervisor. The county supervisor responded! We held another forum on our campus and the students advocated for a change in the bus lines. And they did it – they changed the bus lines!

Natalie: What do you love most about Gilbert?

Jose: What I love most about Gilbert is the caring environment and how inspired our staff are – they are always looking for new and innovative ways to do things. I love the community around Gilbert that has responded to our requests for help and support. None of the work is work we could do alone. We do this with partners, with community organizations, with parents. We leverage our community, our resources, and our programming for change. It’s changing the pedagogy of what our teachers are teaching inside of the classroom. It’s more student-centered and uses educational experiences to address issues in the community.

The Capstone has definitely changed what we do here. We have a school wide Capstone project, where our students are collecting artifacts of learning and presenting that at the end of the year. That was absolutely amazing, transformational, for our staff. We did our first Capstone presentations last year, and for a whole day, adults said nothing and students spoke. And that was powerful. Our staff took so much from that – so much data, so many stories. Students showed us what they are really interested in and prompted us to think about how we should start changing some of our lessons and some of what we’re doing in response to what students are sharing. 

So that was really exciting to see. Going back to the main question, which was, what I love most about Gilbert: the innovation and humility of our staff, the excitement of our students and the way we will do whatever it takes to help our students get to where they want to be. We don’t really believe in giving students second chances. We ask them to give us a second chance, and that flip and change of philosophy makes all the difference. It comes from a place of humility, a place of service, a place of being with and in community with others, not from a dominant space or from a savior complex. No we’re here in power. We’re here to stand beside. We’re here to support. And that’s a very different philosophy that community schooling brings to our program, and something that our district has been doing for a while. And, I’m really proud of this –  it’s one of the reasons why I love being here in Anaheim Union High School District. Our superintendent, our staff, and our board is really very supportive of these ideas.

Read more about Jose and Gilbert in the full interview linked here.