Cohort Stories: Meet Ovidio
vol. 2, no. 3— guest post by Ovidio Reyna
I was born on the US/Mexico border in Texas to immigrant parents. The first 6 years of my life were spent moving between California, Texas, and wherever there was need for farm work. I received my education through the Texas public school system from kindergarten through high school. Throughout those years, I spent 4 to 5 days of the week in Texas and the rest of the time in Mexico helping my grandfather run the farm.
Early on in my education, I found that I had a penchant and ability for math and math-related subjects. I was enrolled in an advanced math program by 2nd grade. By 9th grade, I was taking college classes at the university closest to us. By the time I graduated high school I felt pigeonholed into math, so I decided that in college I would study something that I knew nothing about. I decided to study Anthropology.
University was difficult because of the culture shock (which is a concept I learned about in my anthropology program); it was the first time I was not surrounded by people who looked like me, or spoke the same way that I did.
My program was very fulfilling personally and academically, as I got to complete two ethnographic studies in Northern Africa for my degree — Tunisia in 2008 and Morocco in 2009. My studies in university, and my experiences with people in university, propelled me to travel.
After graduating in 2010, I traveled to South Korea and Taiwan, where I taught a rotation of English, science, and kindergarten. I returned to the US in 2014, and started working as a middle school science teacher in Texas. Many of my students were from very similar backgrounds as myself and when I told them of the places I had traveled to, and the things I had seen, I could almost physically feel their boundaries being expanded. I know of a least a handful of my students who became committed to studying abroad because of my stories of travel.
At this point in my story you might be wondering, “how does this relate to tech and you being in Hack.Diversity now?”
Great question. Technology has been an interest since I was a child.
Growing up, I remember taking apart my VCR when I was 8 years old. Removing the plastic and seeing the small motherboard and all the other bits and pieces of it working together so that my mom could watch the novellas she had recorded was captivating. That VCR broke and I remember thinking maybe I can fix this. I remember feeling so accomplished at having the power to fix something so intricate. Ever since then I’ve been tearing apart more and more complex systems, learning how they work and fixing them whenever possible.
I paid for college by working multiple jobs, including as a laptop repair specialist with a few computer repair shops in the city. In 2015, I started work as an instructional technologist for an elementary school. My job was to help teachers integrate technology to help the students learn better and faster. In the year that I was in that position I worked with 50 teachers of varying levels of experience, and helped support them in bringing the school up to state standards. Additionally, I created:
- a lego robotics club for 4th and 5th graders. They competed in the First Lego League competition against middle schoolers and scored 7th out of 20 teams!
- a computer science club for 2nd and 3rd graders using curriculum from code.org.
- mentorship opportunity in computer science for three young girls of color to encourage their tech interests.
Motivated by where I grew up, the people I’ve met through my travels, and a general curiosity to figure out how everything works and if there is a better way to do it, I have continued my pursuit of strengthening my technical background. I recently completed the Udacity Android Nanodegree, and am currently a master’s candidate in software development at Boston University.
The higher up I move up in my career and education, the fewer people there are who look like me and have the experiences that I have. I want to continue to be a role model for young students of color. I want to show them that they can do whatever they can imagine, and that they will probably do more than they imagined.
