“I don’t like it.”

Faced with a tough algebra problem, it’s not hard to see why Leonie, a middle school student in Pescadero, would lay her head on the table in front of her workbook and groan.

“You’re good at it, though,” answers her mentor Vanessa Centuron, a college student enrolled at UC Santa Cruz.

Leonie shakes her head. But she is good at math. She goes on to solve that algebra problem, and another one. Then she gets frustrated again.

“I can’t do it, I’m not smart,” declares Leonie.

“Yes, you are. You’re extremely intelligent. You just need to believe that,” coaxes Centuron, patiently.

Middle school students everywhere struggle with math homework. Here at Pescadero Middle/High School, students like Leonie are lucky enough to be paired with UCSC students like Centuron, who offer a kind of support that goes beyond the academic realm.

Leonie relaxes again. Around the room, at long wooden tables, several other mentor/mentee teams concentrate on science, reading and other English homework. Some are hunched over workbooks, others absorbed in a computer screen, none are alone.

To these 11-to-14-year-olds, the mentors in their midst aren’t just helping them with their schoolwork – they’re incredibly cool college students who represent their own prospective achievements.

Centuron even looks cool, with retro hipster glasses, an eyebrow piercing, and fingernails painted in purple and blue. She is one of six volunteer mentors who have been paired with middle school mentees as part of Classroom Connection, a UCSC field study-based education course. The program has evolved into an exciting partnership between Puente, the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District and Merrill College (one of the ten colleges at UCSC).

The college students, who are all Latino and English-Spanish bilingual, earn credits while they hone their teaching skills in K-12 classrooms in Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Pescadero. Pescadero is by far the longest drive for this cohort of college students, who take a two-hour round-trip van ride to the school district’s after-school program on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Several Merrill College students also volunteer in the mornings as classroom aides at Pescadero Elementary.

“You need to be making your future plans in middle school, and what better way to do it than to engage with a UC mentor who’s actually involved in it?” asks Margaret Sedillo, Guidance Counselor and Coordinator of the Mentor Program at Pescadero Middle/High School. “To see college life up close plants that seed for our students: ‘I can do this too.’”

The UCSC mentors are here because they want to be. Like their mentees, who have asked for a mentor, they are self-selecting. Some want to be educators; others are interested in other fields like psychology. But they chose Pescadero High, the smallest public high school in four surrounding counties, for reasons that are often deeply personal.

“I want to work in a high school with a lot of Latino students. I come from Oakland, where you often hear the message: ‘You can’t make it,’” says Monica Meza, a fourth year student at UCSC.

The college mentors are the children of first-generation Latino Americans, and they are often the first in their families to attend a four-year university. That’s something they have in common with their mentees, and it forges a bond. The younger students often ask detailed questions about college: what’s it like in a dorm? How do you pay for books and tuition when your family lives below the poverty line?

Mentors can make a difference in their mentees’ lives that is not only academic, but also behavioral.

Centuron says Leonie reminds her of what she was like at 13, in a way that worries her. Growing up in South San Diego, Centuron started skipping classes and spent a lot of time in detention. She was even suspended for a time. “I had horrible grades and it really defined my future. I want to help someone else before her GPA goes downhill. I feel that if I can get in there sooner, maybe her dreams won’t be so limited.”

Centuron and Leonie spend a lot of time discussing her future, she says. “I see a change in her behavior already.”

Puente board member Larry Trujillo knows just how many limitations these young students need to overcome.

“Some struggle with English language learning. Sometimes the family might not have education themselves and not know how to guide their students. Sometimes the student falls behind and loses confidence,” he says.

And when that happens, it can be very hard to regain. That’s another reason why the mentors can make such a profound difference, adds Trujillo. “Helping a student get their confidence back is as important as the academic skills.”

Trujillo has coordinated programs to bring UCSC students into Pescadero classrooms – twice. A former lecturer in Community Studies at UCSC, Trujillo helped create a program called Step to College that thrived in Pescadero for many years, bringing up to 60 UCSC mentors into local classrooms. It was discontinued when Trujillo retired.

But Puente did a reboot in 2014 when Trujillo and Suzanne Abel, Puente’s then-Academic Director, heard about Classroom Connection. Merrill College Provost Elizabeth Abrams was on board right away.

Mentors work with students on a full range of coursework and special projects. They help them prepare for tests. They also work with students on their study skills and time management issues – help them organize their backpacks and use their planning calendars.

Not only does Classroom Connection improve college and career readiness, it adds resources to the classroom and helps kids and their parents to see themselves in a different light. It dovetails with a La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District program that teaches parents how to engage with their children’s schoolwork, even if they don’t always understand it. They also learn about things like credits and transcripts.

“There’s been a longstanding commitment from the school district for this partnership. They’ve been doing the heavy lifting for a long time. We’ve played a role in making it a deeper program,” says Kerry Lobel, Executive Director of Puente.

Best of all, teachers themselves are already seeing very positive results. Last year, two teachers wrote to Trujillo to share just how much mentees had already improved by almost every qualitative and quantitative standard: classroom behavior, student performance on tests, quality and quantity of homework, motivation and independent reading.

Having a mentor can change a life forever. Noel Chavez, Puente’s newly hired Education Director, went into education because of key experiences with mentors as a youngster. Chavez came to the U.S. as a child. When he started school in the third grade, he could only write his name. But he loved academics and quickly excelled thanks to people like his fifth grade mentor, a Stanford University student who “gave me a perspective on what my future might look like,” he says.

Chávez also received life-changing mentorship at Sequoia High in Redwood City when he met student ambassadors from an outreach program at Cañada College. Later, he himself graduated from Cañada and later was hired to supervise that same student ambassador program.

“I noticed the chain of others mentoring me and I’ve been blessed to take on leadership in that role,” he says.

Pescadero students don’t have to imagine college life – they saw it for themselves on a recent field trip to UC Santa Cruz. The handcrafted tour took students to Merrill College, where Provost Abrams personally greeted them. They visited the university’s Chicano Latino Resource Center, where a group of Latino students talked to them about the experience of going to college. They saw impressive libraries, science and sports facilities. They got to eat in the college cafeteria.  Best of all, they got to spend the whole day with their mentors, who patiently answered all their questions. After months of hearing about the university, they were as eager as if they were visiting an amusement park.

“They all came back excited about college. It made us feel as though the seeds are taking root,” says Sedillo.

Paula Arriola has never been comfortable behind the wheel.

The mother of three has lived in Pescadero for 9 years, but has never driven farther than Morgan Hill. Like thousands of other undocumented Californians, she found herself obliged to drive without a license or any formal driver’s training. You can’t get around the South Coast without a car. But she restricted herself to getting to and from work and taking her daughter to school. “It does make me nervous,” she acknowledges.

It doesn’t help that Arriola, a single mother, has been driving around an old, beat-up car she kept from her former marriage. It doesn’t have an odometer, which is nerve-wracking because she’s always worried that she is speeding.

“I never know how fast I’m driving. I just follow the car in front of me. When there’s a car behind me, I just pull off to the side of the road and let them pass,” she says.

Arriola, whose name has been changed for this story, decided that 2015 would be a year of opportunity. She was emboldened by AB 60, the California law that, as of January 2015, gave all qualified residents the right to apply for a driver’s license regardless of legal status. She wanted a legal license and she wanted her own new, safer car. Her daughter Daisy, a college-bound 18-year-old, was working hard to earn her own driver’s permit and license. (Daisy passed both tests and received her license in September).

But the biggest incentive was hearing that Puente was teaching a class on the rules of the road, specifically to prepare students to pass the DMV “traffic laws and signs” test. And that the class was women-only, and taught by a woman, in Spanish and tuition-free.

Puente launched its AB 60 program in August 2014, with a community workshop to answer questions about the documentation and overall process required to get a legal driver’s license. Locals learned they would need proof of residency and photo identification. The latter could be obtained from the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco, something Puente helped facilitate for dozens of residents.

More than 549,000 undocumented Californians have become licensed drivers since the law went into effect, according to DMV estimates.

In late 2014, Ben Ranz, Puente’s Community Outreach Coordinator, began teaching classes on the rules of the road based on the DMV driver’s manual to help people pass the written test. He passed that role over to Charlea Binford, Puente’s Adult Education Coordinator who also teaches ESL and other Adult Education classes at Puente.

The class is an indispensable tool to help students manage their anxiety about passing the dreaded DMV test by helping them take practice tests, says Binford. There is a tremendous amount of material to memorize, so each class spends two months preparing for it. At the DMV, students can take the written test in Spanish. They can opt to fill out the answers on paper, on a computer screen, or via audio prompts which they answer orally.

Slowly, the numbers are climbing.

“We know of 48 people who have passed their written test. 18 of those 48 are women. 33 of those 48 have gone on to pass the road test,” says Ranz. Overall, Puente has helped 144 people in one way or another through the driver’s license process – whether that’s attendance at an informational session, making an appointment at the DMV, or help getting an ID. Puente even offered one class for farm workers who were never taught to read or write.

The idea for a women’s class came to Rita Mancera and Kerry Lobel, Puente’s leaders, when they noticed the low enrollment of female students in Puente’s co-ed driving classes. A class for women, taught by a woman, held the promise of a safe space where women could speak up without fear and learn at their own pace.

It was also a practical issue. “We knew they were already driving. We saw them bringing their children to school or going to get their groceries. The challenge was to help them a pass the laws and signs test,” says Mancera, Deputy Executive Director of Puente.

In class, students learn driving tips, as well as how to read hard-to-understand road signs, which are full of English words they may not know, and little mnemonic tools to help them memorize things like which way to turn the driving wheel when parking on a hill.

Even though she’s been driving for years, Arriola learned valuable information in class – like the importance of strapping her 7-year-old daughter into her child’s seat every single time they go for a drive, no matter how close their destination may be.

Many lessons are learned in the course of group conversations that build everyone’s confidence, because students teach each other the rules that they already know.

“I think men’s energy can change the dynamic of a group. This was the first time I’ve taught an all-women group, and I think it’s great. When one woman feels discouraged, the other women will raise her spirits,” says Binford.

Binford just finished teaching Puente’s second driving theory class for local women. Both classes have delivered a good success rate, with nearly all students going on to ace the written exam – if not at first, then eventually. The female students are exceptionally perseverant. One woman failed the test nine times before she passed it. For many participants, it was the first class they had taken in 15 or 20 years.

“I tell them they will probably fail the first time because they’re so stinking nervous. But they can take it again. And they’ll be able to think clearer the second time through once they get a feel for how the test is,” says Binford.

Arriola wasted no time taking her written exam at the DMV on November 16, which she passed with panache. She credits her Puente prep class. “I believe it’s better with all women. You feel comfortable with other women. We have more confidence together,” she says.

Paula Arriola with her new license.

For Binford, teaching is personal. She not only helps schedule her students’ DMV tests, she takes time out to drive them to the DMV, either in Redwood City, Capitola or Watsonville. She helps them manage their anxiety and oversees the registration process. When her students pass the test, she takes them out for ice cream to celebrate.

Sometimes Puente works with volunteers who also drive people to the DMV. It’s so important to have that human touch, says Binford. “Students are so nervous, and the DMV is not a welcoming place.”

Sometimes a DMV employee will challenge a woman’s proof of residency. Household bills and other acceptable forms of proof of residency are often in a husband’s name. In cases like that, Puente writes a letter on the woman’s behalf that affirms that she is a member of the community. This is an accepted document at the DMV, but Binford often has to intercede and make sure the DMV employees cooperate with the letter of the law.

When a student passes her driver’s test, it feels like both she and Binford have won.

“It’s such a privilege, because this process makes us friends. It’s something that we go through together and it makes me really happy to see their success,” she says.

Now, Binford is taking her students to the next level with a driving tutorial. She recently set up traffic cones in the parking lot of Pescadero High School and invited the women to practice steering and parallel parking. Binford is not a driving instructor, so she did not drive with them, but offered pointers through the car window. She also demonstrated how to change a tire. “They can practice with me and no one’s going to laugh at them or raise their voice,” she says.

Arriola would like to pass her driving test by the end of 2015. Having a driver’s license is not just a practical matter, but also a key to a brighter future. She works two cleaning jobs to support her family and pays the bills on her own. She also takes ESL and Zumba classes at Puente, which she balances with her other obligations.

“My goal is to have a different job. Or to be in charge of the cleaning service, to own my own business,” she says.

Arriola wants to drive her 7-year-old daughter up to Oregon to visit their relatives. She can already picture herself behind the wheel of her new car. “I’m growing with all these new things. I’m happy,” she adds.

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