Meet Miguel Robles, Family Friend
“Más Allá really opened up a lot of doors for me. They helped me get a job…and a scholarship for college!”
Miguel headed to the Domínguez home to help Paulo with his math homework. Miguel was a close friend of Paulo’s family; in fact, his mother is Paulo’s madrina (godmother). Miguel was one of the first students involved in the community college outreach program Paulo was considering and currently attends the local community college with a scholarship from the outreach program.
As the two boys worked together on the math homework, Paulo put down his pencil and rested his chin against his fist in frustration with the hard work. Miguel knew he had to talk with Paulo,
“I know how you’re feeling,” he said, “This math work is hard, but it’s important that you stick with it. You know those guys who make videogames? They use math all the time and you could be one of them. That race car game you like needs math to design different courses and calculate the size and slopes of loops. You’d need to be familiar with concepts like speed, velocity, and acceleration to program whether cars make it to the finish or crash. If you want I can show you on your computer some cool websites on math lessons and word problems.”
Paulo looked a little more excited, and mentioned to Miguel that Rachel had given a presentation about the Más Allá program.
“Hey, that’s great, Paulo! Do you have the application? We can get to work on it right now. You know, it was the program that really opened up a lot of doors for me. They helped me get a job tutoring other kids when I was in high school and have kept me employed since then. And that scholarship sure helped me pay for college. Now I work at the program’s partnership with the university as a researcher to help make the program better and as a college mentor. So take that application out. Let’s look at it!”
When Paulo explained that he had been too embarrassed to get the application form, Miguel talked to him about all the reasons he really should get involved. Miguel added that besides all the benefits for the future, the program had state-of-the-art computers, tablets, and portable media players, and there were also cute girls who often attended!
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Next: Read Rachel Marquez, Community College Outreach Program Director’s Profile
