Dear Students and Community Members: 
Before I tell you briefly about my background, I want to thank Mr. Bob Harper for establishing a quality foundation of programs that will allow us to build on the next level of educational services to better meet your goals as life-long learners. Because of the pavement embedded in that foundation of programs, your school, the Watsonville/ Aptos Adult Education is now ready for new directions, new opportunities and new reasons to celebrate.
Please allow me to introduce myself and to thank you for this wonderful opportunity and the honor to serve as your new director of your school. Throughout my life, I have often reflected on my own challenges and successes. As a young child, growing up in a farm-working family in Sanger, California, there were many times that I wished my life was different. I am sure this is common for many children as they are growing up, however, as I worked and played in the fields under the hot sun of the San Joaquin Valley, harvesting crops and getting physically exerted, I had no idea that this seemingly endless adversity would someday serve as the foundation for my own intelligence and for establishing my own core values.
Working in education for the last 28 years with English-language learners, migrant families, from infants to elders and students living in poverty with modest means, it has become evident to me that my own life-experiences are what led me to work with diverse communities today. My ability to speak Spanish has not served me as a weakness, but rather as strength and a bridge. My experience working in the fields has not made me bitter, but rather given me hope, endurance and persistence. Living in poverty did not hinder the quality of my life, but rather gave me an appreciation for the necessities of life and served as a reference point to set my own educational and career goals.
As I serve now as your director, I will advocate for the best educational programs to facilitate meeting your goals. I am ready to do my part to support “shared-leadership” that will take your school to the levels you dream. Together the people, the staff and the community behind Watsonville/Aptos Adult Education will seek new directions and new opportunities, so that new celebrations will occur. Those new celebrations will be in your honor.
I firmly believe that we can meet your unique educational needs. Our dedicated teachers are prepared to design and deliver courses that will build on your own experiences and strengths to help you achieve your academic success. Our friendly and professional office staff is ready to greet you and welcome you with a smile. Watsonville/Aptos Adult Education reflects the needs of the community; your community.
We are in some very exciting times as your school begins to transition into a new year. Your school offers quality educational and life-enhancing courses. I personally invite you to come into my office to meet me and to join 10,000 other students and take the chair that is waiting for you at one of our many school sites. Please look through our brochure and select the classes that are right for you. We honor you and welcome you to walk through our doors soon. Before you know it, we will all be celebrating.
Respectfully yours,
Ricardo J. Téllez, Director
Parent Education has always been a core part of Adult Education. It is and has been a goal of Watsonville/Aptos Adult Education to create partnerships with parents, PVUSD district partners, and the community to improve schools and provide the support, the tools, and the voice parents need to build strong families, ensure their children’s success in school and create more equitable communities. We recognize that not only do parents want to learn how to advocate for their children in school and be more involved with their education but the school and community need to be involved with the families and reveal their needs and their solutions and access what they have to offer. This is more important than ever with many of our schools in school improvement status because of low test scores of some students. WAAE has collaborated with Extended Learning, Migrant Ed and State and Federal programs to increase workshop and conference offerings to parents in Spanish as well as English, to share resources, and to create a Parent Outreach Network to provide opportunities for educators who work with parents to share best practices and support each other. Let us know if there are more ways we can meet the needs of our families.
Cynthia Stark
AssistantDirector
When we lost our Radcliff campus on Rodriguez Street nine years ago, it was a significant change in our identity, and how we were organized as an adult education program. We had been a close knit staff, and the great majority of our program was on one centrally located site. Almost all teachers and staff were able to feel like part of an extended family, and there was great loyalty to the school by our students in downtown Watsonville, many of whom were able to walk to school. For many in our community, we were not the adult school at all, but rather we were “Radcliff.”
But our district needed the site for an elementary school, and we had to split our programs into many sites, principally the Porter Building on Main Street and the district offices in “the old hospital” on Green Valley Road. In very real ways, we became a “program” and stopped being a “school.” There were things that we lost in this change; there were things that we gained.
We were able to build a large and successful program at the Green Valley site that connects with new communities of adult learners. We were forced to look at increasing our collaborations with partners that could house us and help us with outreach. We explored new class offerings and expanded support services. The year just ended saw our attendance at its highest level ever. (Not enrollments, which were highest in the 1980’s during the Amnesty program).
Losing Radcliff changed us. Gaining a new center, the Institute of Language and Culture, will change us again.
Our new center, at 320 Rodriguez Street near the new courthouse/library complex downtown, will give some of our students the opportunity to study in large, modern classrooms equipped with the latest instructional technology. It will have a babysitting area, and a large public lobby, that groups of students designed. We hope that this space will be a welcoming area for our community and used for diverse purposes. Really our teachers, staff and students worked out many of the details of this center. Including suggesting the name to our Board of Trustees.
Adult ed. historically has offered English language literacy, and this new center will be our principal ESL site. But we hope that the facility can be used in other ways, to increase community education opportunities, to validate and expand the sense of multiple-cultures in our community, and provide a venue for the kind of dialogue and inquiry that can transform individuals and achieve greater democracy. We have high hopes for this new building. Please come to our “grand opening” in March, 2007 as we continue to ask you, our community, to define what we do. We may not be a single school anymore, we may be a program, but we still belong to you.