Here is the second of a four-part series on a dozen Latino students “doing positive things.” The three students in this story are 18 years old, June graduates of area high schools, who are embarking on higher education careers. The Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce honored all 12 students in these pieces. Academic counselors and administrative staff at the high schools chose the students.
BY RON SOBLE
DAILY SOUND CORRESPONDENT
A pall has been cast over Latino neighborhoods by gang violence this year in Santa Barbara, including two knife-stabbing fatalities.
A 14-year-old Latino boy, charged with the murder of a Hispanic youth, 15 years old, on State Street in March, during a clash by Latino gangs, faces a court trial as an adult.
Police Chief Cam Sanchez is concerned that thousands of Latinos are stigmatized by the actions of small numbers of Hispanic hoodlums. Most young people “are doing positive things,” he told the City Council.
Here is the second of a four-part series on a dozen Latino students “doing positive things.” The three students in this story are 18 years old, June graduates of area high schools, who are embarking on higher education careers. The Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce honored all 12 students in these pieces. Academic counselors and administrative staff at the high schools chose the students.
Rameen Zarrinnaal, of Buellton, a graduate of Santa Barbara High School, enters UCSB this month. Danielle Castellanos, of Santa Barbara, a graduate of San Marcos High School, began classes in August at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Juan Manuel Gonzalez, Jr., of Goleta, a graduate of Dos Pueblos High School, opened his freshman year, also in August, at Westmont College in Montecito.
Rameen Zarrinnaal
What a rousing birthday party Rameen Zarrinnaal had to celebrate the dawn of Year 18 of his life.
About 50 of his friends jammed into Rusty’s Pizza Parlor in Santa Barbara at the beach on Aug. 8, one day before his birthday. Many were school friends, others he knew through his activity in Future Leaders of America, a local group of mentors for Hispanic youth.
Two of his amigos from Santa Barbara High School presented him with a much-appreciated birthday gift -- Fiasco.
Friends being friends, they know that Rameen had a terrific job during his summer school breaks, designing special events for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s Web site.
Beyond that, his buddies are aware of Rameen’s interest in the museum’s live reptile and amphibian creatures. He feeds snakes, newts, frogs, lizards, turtles and other creatures. Called the Lizard Lounge, the exhibit was closed to the public this year and will be replaced by a gems and minerals display.
But Rameen still feeds and takes care of the furry, slithery creatures, a task to be curtailed when he enters UCSB in a few days to work toward a graduate degree in computer engineering.
To listen to Rameen in a telephone interview, he matter-of-factly talks about dipping into a freezer to extract frozen mice so they can thaw and be fed to snakes that enjoy the yummy treats. He says he isn’t afraid to move poisonous rattlesnakes around their enclosures, using glass dividers, or even handling poisonous tarantula spiders.
“As long as you remain calm and don’t make any quick movements, they’re easy to work with,” he says.
Brian Weber, director of the museum’s exhibits, says Rameen “is a very unique individual. He’s able to be a really good ambassador” for the museum.
At times, Rameen walked around the museum with a friendly 4-foot-long brightly colored corn snake to show visitors that nonpoisonous snakes can be friendly, Weber said during a phone chat. Then, when someone touched the snake, they said, “Wow, I never knew a snake felt like that,” Weber recalls.
Enter Fiasco, barely 3 weeks old, hardly a foot long, a cuddly black nonpoisonous king snake.
Rameen had an idea what his friends were up to when they presented him with his birthday present. The name of a local pet store was on the box.
“They thought it was pretty cool,” he says.
His mother, Laura, and his father, Touraj, aren’t particularly fond of Fiasco, however, Rameen says. That’s why, for now, he keeps his curled-up friend in his (or her, it’s too soon to tell the snake’s gender) cozy cage at the museum.
Rameen’s predilection for such creatures aside, his parents, Laura, and his father, Touraj, take a big interest in the academic achievements of their son, who graduated in June from Santa Barbara High School, and his 13-year-old brother, also with the first name of Touraj.
Laura emigrated from Mexico along with her family, including seven sisters and a brother, when she was 2 years old. She manages a real estate office. Touraj, a native of Iran, traveled through Europe when he was 17, before finding his way to Santa Barbara where he is an auto mechanic. He has two sisters and a brother. Both parents’ families live in California.
Rameen’s family resides in Buellton.
Laura knows her way around Mexican cooking, and can also create Persian recipes taught her by Touraj, Rameen says.
Both sons have Hispanic middle names: Rameen’s is Alberto, his brother’s, Edwardo. Rameen says he is bilingual, learning Spanish from his mom. English is spoken at home.
His school, Santa Barbara High, had 2,249 students last June, of which about 52 percent were Hispanic, according to school records. The June graduating class had 517 students, of which approximately 50 percent were Hispanic.
Responding to a reporter’s question about a teacher he will carry in his memory, Rameen says Claire Carey, a biology instructor, was unusually supportive. “She would always be there when I had problems,” he says,
As for his parents, he says they were there for him if he had questions about schoolwork. “If I was getting B (grades), they pushed me to get A (grades)” in honors classes to raise his grade average, he says.
“I told them B is hard enough, but they didn’t care. They kept saying, ‘Get better grades, work harder.’”
Apparently, he did. Rameen says he achieved a string of A grades in high school, in addition to accumulating top grades in a number of honors classes. His grades and activities impressed schools besides UCSB: UC/Berkeley and UC/San Diego were among schools accepting him, he says.
Rameen plans to ask his UCSB freshman dorm counselor if Fiasco can share his quarters, albeit in a cage. His dorm roommate might like an introduction, too.
Danielle Castellanos
Danielle Castellanos’ grandmother stuck to her guns when she fled Cuba and Fidel Castro’s regime almost half a century ago.
Gloria Castellanos, a college mathematics professor in Havana, her husband, Jorge, a chemical engineer, along with their three children, including a 2-year-old, boarded a plane for Miami, ostensibly on a vacation.
They never returned to their homeland that Christmas Day, 1960.
“She did not like communist values and ideas,” says her granddaughter, Danielle, 18, of Santa Barbara.
Moreover, says Danielle, she refused to teach communist ideology in a classroom setting. “She didn’t believe in it.”
Such genes were passed on to Dani (her nickname), a graduate of San Marcos High School. She began her freshman year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on Monday, Aug. 27.
Dani’s goal is to be accepted into USC’s renowned film school to study a curriculum for which she says she is utterly passionate – motion picture direction, production and writing.
Of the big screen, she says, “I love analyzing it and watching it and am moved by it emotionally. Film, (combined) with many other parts of the arts, really connects people emotionally and brings people together.”
“High school really motivated me,” Dani says.
Student population at San Marcos, as of June 2007, was 2,117 students, according to the school’s assistant principal, Roxanna Stern. Approximately 44 percent of these students are Hispanic. The June graduating class had 467 students, of which 38 percent are Hispanic, Stern said in an email.
San Marcos High provides a performing arts foundation in legitimate theater and music, Dani says. She recalls the excitement of performing in two of Shakespeare’s comedies at the school, “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Winter’s Tale.”
So, she says, it was a no-brainer for her to leap at the chance to attend USC, although several other institutions of higher learning also accepted her, including Vassar College.
“It would be crazy not to go into their film department,” Dani said in a telephone interview.
Great timing, Dani.
USC’s cinema program, which first offered courses in 1929, will begin moving into a new 137,000-square-foot complex on the campus at the end of next year. Its new name is the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Filmmaker George Lucas, a 1966 graduate of the cinema program, provided the financial muscle for the new arts center, $175 million for construction and endowment through his Lucasfilm Foundation, according to USC’s Web site.
Dani recalls that she was almost an A student at San Marcos High, and, for a time, was dually enrolled at Santa Barbara City College where she took two courses in film studies and film production.
Sergio Castellanos, her father, the 2 year old clutched by Dani’s grandmother while boarding the flight from Havana to Miami, is a guidance counselor at San Marcos High. Her mother, Maureen, born in Ohio and raised in Westport, Conn, holds a master’s degree in special education from UCLA and teaches disabled children at Roosevelt Elementary School in Santa Barbara.
Dani has one brother, Jake, 15, who attends San Marcos High.
As education professionals, it follows that Dani’s mother and father take an interest in their children’s academic progress.
“Both parents were very supportive with my education and encouraged me to do well,” Dani says. “But they didn’t put a lot of pressure on me.”
Beyond her parents, Dani recalls two teachers at San Marcos High who inspired her to stay focused on her studies.
One was Desa Mandarino, who taught an English honors program. “She had great passion in her teaching and motivated me to become passionate about English literature and reading and writing,” Dani says.
Eric Burrows, who teaches U.S. History, is the other instructor to whom Dani gives high marks. “He pushed me to my limits,” Dani says. She characterized him as “a very intense teacher, very dynamic…He takes teaching history very seriously.”
Now, at USC, Dani has an opportunity to reach a platform that may allow her to break into the intensely competitive genre of motion pictures. To be sure, she’s aware of the pressures, in a town where the myth of Hollywood attracts myriad young people with similar ambitions.
Dani is not intimidated.
“I’m not in a setting where I have to get a job right away,” she says. “I don’t feel obligated to compare myself to others. It’s my responsibility that I should take advantage of this education and make it as meaningful as possible.”
Juan Manuel Gonzalez, Jr.
Talk about stress.
It’s your first week away from home. Suddenly, you’re on your own in a freshman dorm at Westmont College grappling with a psychology reading assignment.
But already you’re confronting a critical decision. The timing couldn’t be worse. Your beloved Yankees are embroiled in a critical series with the hated Red Sox.
To read or watch, that is the question (apologies to Shakespeare).
“The people down the hall have a TV in the room,” recalls Juan Manuel Gonzalez, Jr., 18, “Mano” to his friends and fellow students. “I was stressed between finishing my psych chapter and checking out the Yankees.”
Psych won, kind of. ESPN posts Major League Baseball inning-by-inning scores on the Web.
Mano (Mah-no)—Spanish for “hand,” a moniker acquired in the 5th grade when he played soccer – is a graduate of Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta. He began his studies at Westmont on Aug. 27, and rooms with two guys from San Diego.
Unlike most high school graduates applying to several colleges and universities, in a competitive scramble to be accepted into a quality school, Mano focused on Westmont after visiting the Montecito campus in his junior year.
He made the cut, based on a high scholastic grade average, near A, school activism, including varsity offensive tackle on the Chargers football team, and a driving ambition to ultimately be accepted into the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“I really liked it, a small academic school, with rigorous courses. Westmont keeps us moving. It’s challenging me a little more.”
In a telephone conversation, it’s apparent that Mano enjoys life and that the “all work and no play ethic” is not for him. Still, the bar is high at Westmont; he’s in a competitive, more demanding academic milieu.
By his own admission, at Dos Pueblos, using his natural gift of intelligence, Mano was able to score high grades “just by paying attention,” as he put it, sometimes taking scant class notes and not always cracking assigned books.
Sometimes, he says, with the innocence of a teenager, “I hardly touched a book…I was always the smart one…if asked to do (some work), I would do it,” including homework assignments.
Reflecting on his academic record at Dos Pueblos, with a touch of self-deprecating humor, he says, “I have no idea how I got good grades.”
Well, really, he has some clues. There are teachers at Dos Pueblos who take an interest in each student. His junior year, for example, was rocky. Mano was enjoying courses such as chemistry and math, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing. “I had a lot on my plate,” he says, including football practice balanced against a clutch of honors classes.
Larry Vranish, who taught an honors U.S. history class, “helped me pick myself up” with personal tutoring, he recalls.
Last June’s enrollment at Dos Pueblos was 2,227 students, of which 33 percent were Latinos, according to school records. Mano’s June graduating class numbered 523 students, 27 percent Latinos.
Now, of course, the emphasis is on classroom scholarship, not so much on his athletic ability. At 5-feet, 7-inches tall and 205 pounds, he says he’s fit and can bench press his weight. Being realistic, though, Mano adds, “My football days are over.”
Welcome to college, Mano. You’re one of 388 students in Westmont’s Class of 2011.
Colleges and universities, public ones like those in the UC system, and private ones like Stanford and Westmont, are expensive. Total cost for the 2007-2008 academic year, covering tuition, fees, room and board, is $40,834, according to Westmont’s Web site.
To soften the financial burden, 85 percent of Westmont’s students receive financial assistance from the school, the site says.
Several thousand dollars of Mano’s cost was offset by a Dean’s Scholarship, based on his grades, and funds he was awarded on the basis of an essay he wrote on cultural diversity.
His parents help with the cost, too.
Letty Pulido Gonzalez, Mano’s mother, emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. when she was 6 years old, about three decades ago, along with her mother, Eloisa, and her father, Rogelio. Two sisters and three brothers also made the journey with Letty.
Mano’s mom is a dental assistant. His father, also tagged with a first name of Manuel, emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. at age 17. The elder Manuel is a landscape gardener and owns his own business.
Mano’s sister, Cindy, is 13 years old.
Including his grandmother, Eloisa, the family lives in Goleta. Usually, Eloisa, who doesn’t speak English, but understands the language, prepares Latino dishes in traditional Mexican style, Mano says.
A jumble of voices at the dinner table, mostly in Spanish, discusses the day’s happenings. Often, Mano says, he was peppered with questions like, “How did you do in school?” “How is your dislocated shoulder (a football injury)?” “Does it still hurt?” “Did you wash your car yet?”
Both parents speak English, but Mano says his father prefers Spanish when speaking at home so his children don’t forget the language.
Besides inquiries at the dinner table, Letty tracked her son’s high school grades with some precision, checking weekly on his progress. That was possible because Mano gave her his secret school identification number that is required to unlock the Dos Pueblos student Web site.
Far from being an intrusion, Mano says that didn’t bother him at all. “It was nice taking the time to look into my academics,” he says.
At Westmont, however, Letty cant’t check on Mano’s progress because he chose not to give her his private student number. “I decided it was time for me to be responsible for my own grades,” he says.
Now, he’s ready to show he has the right stuff.
Mano is a chemistry major while also taking a cluster of pre-med courses at the four-year college. “There’s no downside,” he says. “Now, when I get to the dorm, I have to read a chapter and check out my notes.”
Every weekday, that translates into two to four hours of classes and up to four hours of homework. That adds up to “a lot more reading to do, and the courses move at a faster pace,” than high school, he says.
“I still know a lot, but there are people here that know more than me.”
Listening to classmates handling themselves in his calculus group during the first days at Westmont, Mano concedes, “they understand the subject better than I do.”
Still, he says, “I think I know what’s going on.”
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