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Aldo Ramirez ’00
Migrant to Mentor
I was born in L.A.
and very shortly after, my family had to
move back to Mexico. We lived over there
for three or four years. It was a very happy
time. My parents and my grandparents
were hard workers. They had cattle. They
had some crops. So, that is what we did
out there. Then my family started moving
back to the U.S. as farm workers, moving
up through California, Oregon and Washington.
My earliest memories of that time were
picking apples and pears and peaches, nectarines
and things like that in Washington
State. … We would get up really early in the morning, sometimes
before the sun was out. It was not fun, I can tell you
that. It was very hard, carrying a ladder in the morning. Your
hands would freeze. Pulling the cherries from the trees, the
stems would wear your fingers down. But during that time
my parents always tried to stay positive. They always told us
they wanted us to go to college and get a college degree so
we wouldn’t have to work out in the fields.
It definitely helped with my endurance. I mean, in school
it was pretty easy to put forward a lot of effort. When I was
going to school, I didn’t have to work in the fields so I loved
school. Most of the teachers that I had were fantastic. They
wanted us to do well. But my 8th grade teacher, Mrs.
Copeland, she was especially kind. She taught me a lot about
writing and literature. And she kept track of me when I was
going through high school. And in my senior year, I had a
For Aldo Ramirez ’00,
school was an escape from a
hard life toiling in the orchards
and fields as a young
boy. So, it is no surprise that
after graduating from
Pomona, he pursued a career
in education. He is now putting
his experience to work
by helping young, low-income
immigrants as principal
of a small elementary school
in the city of San Bernardino.
4.0 grade point average so she came
over to the high school and she pulled
me out and she gave me literature on
Pomona College. And she said ‘I think
this is a very good school for you to go
to.’ She’s the one who steered me that
way and helped me put my application
together. She just cared. She wanted me
to be successful.
One of my first courses I took at
Pomona was Raymond Buriel’s Psychology
of the Chicano. And that just
resonated with me. It was so interesting
to start thinking about the psyche of
immigrants, specifically from Mexico.
Because education was such a positive experience for me, I
did some work as part of a mentor program for students
from one of the Pomona Unified School District’s middle
schools. And so when I graduated I decided to go into
teaching. And it was a perfect fit. I mean it gave me the opportunity
to give back. Just like Mrs. Copeland helped me, I
found myself in the position of being able to help the families
of the students I was teaching.
I find as soon as I share my experiences with them and I
show them pictures of my family, they relate really quickly.
And they do look up to me and a lot of them aspire to do
what I have done. The city of San Bernardino has a high
concentration of English language learners. About 40 percent
of the district is English language learners. About 95
percent of the district gets free or reduced-price lunches so
we are working with a very needy population.
30 POMONA COLLEGE MAGAZINE
PHOTO BY CARLOS PUMA
SUMMER 2012 31