Personal Narrative: La Cumbre Junior High School

For the past two years, on the 1st Monday of the month I have participated in Site Council meetings at my high school along with other Associated Study Body (ASB) members, our principal, school administrators, parents, and teachers. Frequently it was brought up that minorities were not as involved in our school as majority groups. ASB has always been dominated by white students and as a Latina, I found it very intimidating when I joined.
When I looked into why my school’s ASB was dominated by one race, I realized that it stems from junior high. A big difference between the two major junior high schools in my area-La Cumbre Junior High and La Colina Junior High, is that one has an ASB while the other does not. La Cumbre- a school with an overwhelming majority of Latino students-sends most of its graduates to my high school, however it was the junior high without an ASB.
I realized that I had to do more than attend Fireside Chats with incoming 8th grade parents to convince them that our school was great.
I needed to make sure that no one else would have to feel what I had felt -- like I didn’t belong or that I wasn’t good enough. I decided to start an ASB at La Cumbre to encourage students to go for something that might be out of their comfort zone. Over the summer, I shared my ideas with the principal at La Cumbre about how we could make the school even better ; she was on board with it all.
Since the beginning of this school year, I have been visiting La Cumbre twice a month to help coordinate school events and elections and advise students about leadership. This experience has allowed me to make a difference in my community by helping students grow, while growing more myself. My hope is that, in the future, leadership programs involve all students. I believe that school leadership needs to be representative of all the demographic groups, not just the
majority.