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Photograph by George Sakkestad
Los Gatos students (from left) Jamie Bielski, Jacob Metcalf, Andy Fassler, Suzanne Humbert, Braden Smith and Maryah Cano, all high school seniors, each won a $1,000 Turnaround Scholarship award from the Kiwanis Club of Los Gatos for 'turning around' their high school academic performance. Principal Trudy McCulloch (third from left) joins them at the scholarship luncheon.
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Students start slow, but turn lives around
Kiwanis Club honors 'turnaround' students with scholarships
By Rebecca Ray
Maryah Cano slacked off in school and thought she could get by. School was a distraction, and her friends took up much of her time.
But this year, the senior, formerly of Los Gatos High School, was sent to the NOVA program, an alternative educational program for district students who are either on academic probation, have medical issues or are new to the district and starting midterm. Cano said it was her last chance or she wouldn't graduate.
Kirch De Martini, her academic advisor, helped Cano realize that without a good education, she wouldn't get anywhere in life. Cano didn't want to let down her parents or herself.
So she focused on school. She now takes eight periods at NOVA, as well as a night class at West Valley College, and works at a veterinary clinic four or five days a week. Last semester, she received her best grades.
Although she will attend West Valley College in the fall, she has already talked to an academic advisor at UC-Davis about the classes she'll need to transfer there. Cano, who loves animals, wants to major in animal science and would like to work with endangered species.
Cano is one of six students from Los Gatos--and one of nine students in the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District--to whom the Kiwanis Club of Los Gatos gave a $1,000 Turnaround Scholarship this year. As other Kiwanis clubs have done for many years, the Kiwanis Club of Los Gatos has awarded seniors in the Los Gatos-Saratoga district $1,000 scholarships for making "turnarounds" in their academic work since 1998.
The Kiwanis Club, an international organization, acknowledges these students because Kiwanis members feel that the students' poor starts in high school may prevent them from receiving certain scholarships and awards.
Before she received a Turnaround Scholarship, Jamie Bielski, also of NOVA, said she felt like no one gave second chances. But when Kiwanis awarded the scholarships, she said, she felt honored that someone saw how she had changed.
When Bielski started high school, she said she cut class and got involved with drugs and the wrong crowd. But during her junior year, she lost everything, including her parents' trust. A juvenile hall judge also said she was one of the brightest girls to walk through the door and didn't understand why she was there.
It was then, Bielski says, that she woke up.
Now Bielski, who's been in NOVA since September, gets all As. She plans to attend West Valley and then transfer to UC-Davis or Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
She says she would like to be a pediatrician because she likes to work with children.
Scholarship recipient Andy Fassler has mixed feelings about the award. Although he hates the fact that he has made mistakes, he likes the fact that the Kiwanis Club is acknowledging him.
As a freshman at Los Gatos High, Fassler failed all his classes except one in which he received a D. The school sent him to NOVA, where, he says, the other students gave him a hard time. That experience made him want to get out of there.
So Fassler got better grades. And at the end of the semester, after he spoke in front of a panel of judges about why he wanted to return to Los Gatos High School, Principal Trudy McCulloch invited him back.
After he was readmitted to Los Gatos High, Fassler dropped his old friends. To help with the transition of losing them, two of his classmates, Kirstin Horn and Julia Pugliese, befriended him. They showed Fassler they cared about him when no one else did, he says.
The summer after Fassler's sophomore year, he met his brother's neighbor, Roger Ver, the CEO of MemoryDealers.com. Ver gave Fassler a job at the company, which sells computer components.
Fassler saw that Ver had good people skills, and he decided that he wanted to be like him. So he asked Ver to help him dress better and act better, which Ver did.
Fassler, who started out in shipping and receiving, moved up to being a supervisor of the shippers and receivers and working in an office next to Ver's. Now Fassler runs his own home business selling computer components.
He has also focused more on school. At school, he has taken as many classes as he could fit in, even during lunch.
Fassler will take an acting class at West Valley this summer and hopes to work for a casting company. Fassler, who would like to be a movie actor, hopes to transfer to UCLA's theater department.
Another Los Gatos High senior who the Kiwanis Club is acknowledging this year is Jacob Metcalf. For Metcalf's first couple of years at the school, his grades "weren't too good," he says. During the second semester of his junior year, he dropped out of four of his six classes. Although he was never in danger of not graduating, he says, he always had "stuff" going on.
Metcalf says he saw school as something he had to do and not as something that could help or hurt him in the future.
But last summer, he realized that if he wanted to go anywhere, he had to do well in school. And because people had stopped hassling him about his grades, he says, he figured it was up to him.
So even though he only needed to take two classes at Los Gatos High School to graduate, he took six.
Metcalf, who has done maintenance work at the school for the past two or three years, plans to do maintenance work there again this summer, and then enter an apprenticeship for plumbing. He'll go to school for five years to learn the trade.
Two other Los Gatos High students who won Turnaround Scholarships this year were Suzanne Humbert and Braden Smith.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
