Kent ISD — Senior Lucero Delgado-Gomez knows if it had not been for her mom, she never would be at the Kent Career Tech Center — much less graduating.
Seeing her daughter struggling and heading down the wrong path, Diana Gomez made the decision to send her daughter 2,200 miles from Los Angeles to Cedar Springs.
“I thought I was just coming on vacation (to Michigan), but she already had a plan for me,” Lucero said. “She already knew. She knows me. She knows what’s best for me, and even to this day, that’s what she tells me. I’m like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you knew I was gonna never go back to LA?’ and she was like ‘Do you think you would have come if I would have told you?’”
Now Lucero can’t believe she had the opportunity to attend the Kent Career Tech Center, and through MySchool@Kent will graduate from Cedar Springs High School this spring.
Lucero’s health instructor Beth O’Donnell said she has seen Lucero’s confidence grow as she started to believe in herself.
“She started out a little bumpy, but she has really worked at accomplishing her goals of graduating and then going on to do something in the health field,” O’Donnell said.
‘I kept my promise, I’m going to graduate.’
— senior Lucero Delgado-Gomez
A Change for the Better
Lucero’s school journey started in California, where she was born. Her family had immigrated to the Los Angeles area from Guatemala.
Her mother, Diana Gomez, always had the goal of her children having a better life, Lucero said. “She used to clean houses, and so now she works in a factory, but she doesn’t want us to have the life that she had.”
Lucero attended Los Angeles Public Schools, and although she faced a language barrier — Spanish being her first language — she said she did well in elementary school.
Things changed in middle school with an environment that was “full of drama” and “fights,” she said.
With her grades slipping and friends who were not the ideal “role models,” Lucero’s mother decided a change was for the best, sending her to live with an uncle in Cedar Springs and then joining her a few months later.
“It’s like in the middle of nowhere because Cedar Springs, there’s not much around,” Lucero said. “We came over and we loved it. We just wanted something different from (LA).”
It was 2020 and because of the COVID quarantine, Lucero finished her eighth-grade year online and started her freshman year at Creative Technologies Academy, a charter school in Cedar Springs.
While her grades improved, Lucero said she never felt like she belonged at the school. She talked to her mother about going back to online schooling. The two worked with a counselor at Cedar Springs High School to enroll Lucero in MySchool@Kent, a hybrid online and in-person program offered by Kent ISD.
Stepping Up To the Task
She found a place at MySchool@Kent where she could grow, Lucero said. She also discovered she was behind on credits to graduate.
“I think I had like 10 credits or something like that,” she recalled. “The (MySchool@Kent) coach was like ‘You have to complete a lot of classes in order for you to graduate. Do you think you can do it?’
“I was like, I have to. My mom was in my mind. I have to make my mom proud. I have to do this not just for her, but for me, because this is going to benefit me at the end of the day.”
Lucero buckled down in her sophomore and junior years, completing about 18 credits. The reward was the opportunity to enroll in her senior year at the Tech Center in the Health Career Foundations program.
“I wanted the health field because I just felt since my family didn’t get the opportunity to do something like that (and) since I can, I wanted to do it. I see a lot when I go to the hospitals. I just love how they treat you. It’s like they care about you. It’s like they’re gonna help you out. … So that’s what I want to do is give other people a solution for them to be good and happy and healthy.”
She not only found something she loved, but people who accepted her.
“In LA, you walk into the classroom, the first thing they look at is your shoes and what you’re wearing and stuff. Here it’s like, you just walk into a classroom … ” Lucero said. “Nobody’s (asking) ‘What is she wearing? What is she doing?’”
Because of that — and instructors willing to work with her — Lucero said she put in more effort than she did in the past, and her grades, A’s and B’s, reflect that improvement. She added that Health Career Foundations is more challenging than a typical class.
‘Put your mind to it’ and Never Give Up
Lucero also sees many opportunities ahead of her. She is considering signing up with Trinity Health to enter into the health field. She hopes to be a nurse assistant and perhaps a nurse.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be in the Army and I also wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “Now that I’m in Health Career Foundations, I found out that I could be a military nurse,” an option she is thinking about.
Through the past five years, Lucero said she has learned it’s important not to give up on your dreams or yourself.
“I just thought that I wasn’t smart enough. I thought I’m trying hard enough, but I didn’t see any results. I actually wasn’t trying hard enough. I really wasn’t because I wasn’t asking for clarification, I wasn’t asking for resources, for help.”
In other words, she was just getting by. She would encourage other students to advocate for themselves, seek out resources and ask for help.
“You can actually do what you want to do but you have to put your mind to it,” she said.
Also, be proud of your accomplishments, Lucero said, adding she certainly is proud of what she has done “by myself, for myself.”
“I just love it. I’m just proud of myself and my mom is too. That’s what makes me happy: seeing her face happy when she hears that I’m getting good grades or when she sees my certificate for Pro of the Month — she just flipped because she was so happy.
“So she sees that I’m doing it. I kept the promise that I told her, which was that I was going to graduate, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
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