more than just a middle school

By Jazmine H

Ace Esperanza is a middle school here in San Jose California. They have been open since 2014 and help all kids from all backgrounds no matter how far they may have fallen behind. 

They have helped many students bounce back from whatever they may have gone through at past schools and get ready for high school, college, and anything else life has prepared for them. I had the opportunity to sit with the assistant principal and a school leader resident to help tell Aces' story. 

Jimenez: “Hi, my name is Suyen Jimenez and I am the assistant principal here at Ace Esperanza.”

White: “My name is Kelsey White and I am a school leader resident here at Ace Esperanza."

Jimenez: "So Ace Esperanza is obviously a middle school, opened back in 2014 advocated for students who had fallen behind. We wanna serve those students who needed that extra support within a small  group setting or school setting. We believe that every student no matter how far they have behind, have the potential to achieve college and life success. So here, we prep our students to go to high school, and from our high school, they prep them to go to college and beyond.”

During the 2018-2019 school year, around four teachers, some of them being founding teachers, announced that that would be their last year teaching at Ace. They stated how they couldn't make the commute to Ace every day anymore. The staff was devastated but knew that was what was best for those teachers.

That school year went on as normal. The next year, however, things changed more than what everyone expected. 

After the teachers had left, the school's environment had changed completely. Students who had previously been taught by those teachers were no longer acting the same way they used to when they were in their classes. The students who were previously taught by them no longer felt like they were being held accountable for what they were doing wrong therefore they thought they could get away with much more. 

Jimezez: “So I think that year that following the departure of those teachers, I think everyone—all students—were moving along just fine. The toughest class i think were the 7th graders so all of our discipline issues came from the 7th grade classes. The students in the class, that was the heaviest year, I think. Discipline-defiant students and you know, you saw some of them were in our class working in there. Them leaving was okay, we made it happen. It was just the students because the teachers who left did hold them accountable and now having a whole entire new team, the team had to get to know them and they had to get to know their teachers.”

Not only were the kids different, most of the teachers were now teaching two different grade levels in the same subjects. Some of those teachers expressed concern because of how much more planning they would have to do considering the lesson plans had to be very different because different grade levels learn different things. 

As if this school year had not already been through enough, a pandemic was thrown Ace's way, forcing Ace to take what they thought would only be a two week break. 

That two week break eventually turned into a “rest of the year” break, considering things only got worse with the pandemic. 

The following year would be referred to as the “year of unknowns.” 

Ace quickly made sure all the students, family, and staff felt supported. That included routinely messaging home so families knew Ace would still be there to support them no matter what. Ace also made sure to give support to those teachers who may have needed just a tad bit more help than others when it came to technology. 

Jimenez: “When we went into the pandemic, I think as a team, we were all in this room if not Room 2. And we're like 'okay, this is real, like we're closing schools down.' I know that other schools quickly went into distance-learning but I think we took about three weeks to kind of plan out exactly what we were gonna do and make our plan intentional to meet the needs of our students. The first three weeks, I think we had all students and parents come pick up a packet of work for the following three weeks and their computer and then you know told them to wait for the next steps because we were gonna be teaching online. We just didn't know how at the moment, but it was gonna happen. I think everyone was a little scared but a lot of them had a sigh of relief because teaching online is a whole different ball game. A lot of our teachers are tech savvy and you know, some are not and those were the ones that needed more support which was okay. It worked out great.”

Ace also has made sure to have a strong community within their staff to make sure everyone feels supported. Feeling like they can rely on each other and ask anyone for help when needed is one of the reasons the school’s culture continues to elevate, getting better and better as the years pass. 

White: “Here, we are such a great community in terms of our staff and we all kind of rely on each other. We are all very close and are willing to kind of rally together to take care of things and support one another."

Jimenez: " Just to add on that, not many schools have an open door policy. Here, us admin, anyone can come in here and just talk to us and tell us how they feel. Our staff is not afraid to tell us what they're feeling at the moment and what they don't like and what they do like, so encouraging that open conversation allows us to identify 'Okay, maybe today we don't have a staff PPT. Let's go do something fun with the team. Let's go get ice cream as a team and come back and maybe do some work or, you know what, it's the Friday before the break.' Everyone goes home when the bell rings, like we have such a open communication and we know each other so well that we can read each other and we can identify, you know what, as an admin team let's let everyone go home. They're tired, we're all tired, let's just go take care of ourselves.”

No matter what struggles Ace went through and continues to go through, they made sure to never steer away from their mission of helping all students get ready for whatever life wants to send their way as well as making sure anyone—whether it be a student, teacher, or other staff member—feels supported throughout their journey at Ace. 

For the Warrior Times, this is Jazmine Heredia.