A Chat with Mr. Grow

By Davi, Axel, Emiliano and Norman Photos By Perris

Things have changed at Cal Prep since I started as a history teacher and I’m proud to have been here since the beginning, ( although Ms. Ruben began teaching a few months before me). Cal Prep was co-founded in 2005 by University of California, Berkeley and Aspire Public Schools with the goal of transforming the high school experience for underserved youth.

We began began in a narrow hallway in a building shared with Berkeley Maynard Academy in North Oakland. The hardest year for me was the first year because the school was brand new. I was new. Students didn’t know me and trust me. Everything was a struggle. The copy machine broke down every day, we had no space.

We wanted to have a school with our own identity and space. We finally found a Catholic school that had shut down in Berkeley. We moved there but it was an old school, a far cry from our present-day campus.

The school didn’t even have a playing field for students. It was just concrete and had blacktop in the backyard. There were homeless people sleeping there sometimes when staff arrived early in the morning. The heater often didn’t work and wheezed in the Wintertime. One morning someone jumped out of the shadows and beat our building manager up.

Cal Prep had major growing pains then as we tried to create the school and the culture around it. We didn’t have the credibility or track record of sending kids to college as we have now, resulting in a lot of pushback from students. Discipline was more intense back then.

Then we moved again to our present location, a beautiful campus on Hilltop Road. This purpose-built building, where we are now, is so much better in every way than our first two choices. For one thing, there’s more space and light. The murals painted by Ms. Ruben and her students’ art displayed on the walls make this a super environment in which to be, to teach and learn. However, I do wish we had a full-sized field with a track that we didn’t have to share with another school. But you have everything, can you?

Cal Prep has grown, things have changed and I’m proud to have been since the beginning. Students now know that if you do what we ask, you’ll be eligible to go to college. You’ll be qualified and prepared, if you work for it.

It’s important we all understand we are trying our best every day. And that our best as teachers doesn’t always look perfect. I’m trying hard for you guys. You try hard for me. I trust you guys, you trust me.