YB Anywhere Else

By Jade Padilla

Yerba Buena High School is a public school and it has been open since 1971. It has approximately 1,791 students. The school is located in San Jose. According to the website, World Population Review, San Jose has a population of about 1,030,119 people.

San Jose is the 3rd largest city in California, also being the 10th largest in the U.S. San Jose was the state's first capital.

Ms.Wolcott, a chemistry teacher at Yerba Buena High School, first started teaching at YB in 1988.

Ms. Wolcott gave a variety of examples:

• Racial make up of YB (Back then: 10% black, 10% white, 35% vietnamese, 35% latino, more cambodian and filipinos, there was more variety back then)

(Now: 45% vietnamese, 45% latino)

• Student activity (Spirit week, fantastics) (there were floats and they would be presented in homecoming)

• Discipline

• Music programs (There were music programs at YB, Marching band, Jazz band, Orchestra, Concert band, Choir, Rock bands, and there were more plays and musicals back then)

• Physical feature of campus

• Class offerings (AP Classes)

Those are some of the things that she considers that have changed over the years.

In her opinion she considers that the school has not improved over the years due to our administration. “This has nothing to do with the quality of students,” Ms.Wolcott explained “ The positive thing about this school is the student union.”

She commented that back then the attendance was better than nowadays.

Something else that I asked her was “What’s something that you miss from back then?” She responded, “Everything- the richness of school activities, spirit week and fantastics.”

Personally, one of my favorite quotes from Ms.Wolcott was when she mentioned the quality of students. “The quality of students has been great. There is no other high school with the students of YB.”

I also asked her if she thought that YB was a good school and she responded, “Absolutely, or I wouldn’t still be here after 34 years”.

Mr. Cortez, a P.E. teacher at Yerba Buena High School, started teaching at YB in 2010. He attended Yerba Buena High School as a student from 1979-1983.

For Mr. Cortez the certain things that he thinks has changed over the years in YB is: “The buildings that are renovated and the painted campus and the student body, it's more pleasant.”

I also asked him if he thought that the school had improved over the last few years. “ Yes, test scores are going up, enrollment, our school has gotten stronger academically, and also we have more AP classes” he replied.

Since Mr. Cortez attended YB, there were things that he missed. “ I miss playing sports, playing football, playing soccer, doing cross county. I miss the people that I shared memories with.”

Since there wasn't much technology, students did many things for fun. “They did sports, fantastics, there were more assembly's, and there was a lot of school spirit,” Cortez said.

When I asked him how the surroundings were back he then told me that It looked different. “there were more white and Chinese people, there were probably 46%-48% of latino students. The community changed.”

Another question that I asked him was, “What was popular back then?” He said “At the time, MTV was popular because there wasn’t much technology, people would go to friends houses and watch it for hours and they would be so interested in it.”

Another person I interviewed about Yerba Buena High School was Buzz. Buzz is a staff member at YB. He graduated from this school in the year 1978.

I asked him the same set of questions. “What do you think has changed the most in YB over the years?”

“Behavior for the better,” meaning that there were less fights over all.

Related to Mr. Cortez, Buzz also thinks that the school has been doing well: “Yes, the student union, and the population of the school are rising.”

1. He commented that something that he misses from back then are the better athletes that the school had.

Related to Mr. Cortez, Buzz told me that back then the school was based on race. By this I think he meant that back then the school had less variety of student races.

For Buzz, his opinion on YB being a good school is: “ Yes, our kids are as good as any other kids in our district.”

The last teacher that I interviewed was Mr. Solis. Mr. Solis is a calculus teacher in Yerba Buena High School. He started teaching there in 1993.

The things that have changed in YB over the years for Mr. Solis is that there are more AP classes and that's good for college.

The academics and the safety have improved in YB over the years, says Mr.Solis.

Something that he misses is: “The great soccer teams that we had” he also commented that he missed the coworker that used to work there.

In his opinion he thinks that YB is a good school because of the resilient students of YB. What he means by this is that the students come with a positive attitude for learning.

For Mr. Solis that surroundings for him back then were different. There was more tension between certain groups and there were no fences around the school property. “It was beautiful, it always had the green trees.”

It was interesting for me to write this story and it was also a great learning experience to know how the school was like back then. When I would ask the teacher the interview questions, all of them always had a bright smile remembering the past and how it has changed in different ways.