Teaching In Tongues

Luz Marie Jimenez, a bilingual instructional assistant at Home Gardens Elementary, proves indispensable to her school and community.

CORONA—The woman with the curly salt-and-pepper hair often likes to look at the mantle clock in her room, the one with the inscription in Spanish that reads, “Mrs. Jimenez, thanks for your time.”

The timepiece was from a woman to whom Luz Maria Jimenez gave free English lessons for 18 months.

It is one of Jimenez’s most treasured gifts, and among the many she has received from people she has helped.

Jimenez’s day job is as a bilingual instructional assistant at Home Gardens Elementary School, where she has been for 21 years. But she reaches out to educate more than kindergarten through fifth-grade pupils at the school.

Throughout Corona and Home Gardens neighborhoods for about two decades, Jimenez has taken on extra teaching duties to meet the community’s needs, from citizenship classes to literacy classes to English as a Second Language, often without pay. All she wants is to help Latinos who want to be literate in Spanish or English, whether they are young or elderly.

“I feel the need to teach. There are so many people who want to learn but are afraid to go (to school),” said Jimenez, a 61-year-old Riverside resident. “I relate to them and they relate to me.”

Her dedication over the years has paid off.

She beams with pride when a student, who a few months ago couldn’t read in Spanish, stands in front during Sunday church service and reads Scriptures from the Bible.

A Thanksgiving play by a group of adult students learning English warms her heart.

Other proud moments have been when students pass their citizenship exams and become American citizens. She has tutored at least 30 people who have since become naturalized citizens.

“She’s highly trusted within the community,” said Linda White, principal of Home Gardens Elementary School. She has known Jimenez for 13 years.

Jimenez is willing to volunteer her time to help others because she said she knows the end result will be a better life for her students and their families. Some of her former adult students have been inspired to continue their educations and seek careers.

“For me, when you want to do something, there’s nothing that can stop you,” said Jimenez, who emigrated from Mexico in 1978. “I give thanks to God. I go to my work and I get paid for something I love to do.”

With her bilingual skills and teaching experience in Mexico, Jimenez had a job lined up at the Corona-Norco Unified School District before she arrived in the United States.

Once she and her family were settled in, she enrolled at Chaffey College and then Riverside Community College, where she earned an associate of arts degree. Although she doesn’t have much free time, Jimenez plans to continue her education and one day receive her credentials to be a public school teacher in California.

But she has never lost sight of what is most important to her.

“My priority was my family and my children,” said the grandmother of eight.

So, even with all the time she has made for other people, her family still comes first. She and a sister share caring for their elderly parents.

When she’s not with family, however, she can often be found at the heart of the community.

Before the morning bell rings at Home Gardens Elementary School each day, Jimenez teaches basic skills to children who recently immigrated to the United States as part of the school’s newcomer program to bring them to their grade level. The school’s pupil population is 94 percent Latino.

She continues to teach parenting workshops in Spanish, which she began in the 1980s, at the school. She has also led the workshops at other schools in the Corono-Norco district.

“Living in Mexico, I didn’t know all the troubles and differences our people go through in this country,” Jimenez said. “I noticed our students were not able to communicate. The children are learning English, but the parents are not.”

Jimenez also helps guide recent immigrant families through the educational system at Home Gardens Elementary and acquaints them with medical and health services they may need.

“She’s very invaluable,” White said. “She becomes really a liaison between the families and the school. Just the school institution as a whole is seen as an obstacle She really helps break down those barriers.”

For eight years, Jimenez has spent at least three hours every Saturday morning at St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Corona volunteering to teach Spanish literacy classes to people who received little or no schooling in their native country. Once they learn the basics in Spanish, she and Home Gardens Elementary teacher Jolinda Curtin start lessons in English.

Students who gather at the church’s convent to become literate in Spanish credit Jimenez’s patience and enthusiastic teaching style for helping them learn what they didn’t have a chance to while they were children. As adults, they find it difficult to retain some of the lessons.

On a recent Saturday morning, Gloria Castro, a student in the Spanish literacy class, presented Jimenez with a bouquet of roses for her birthday.

Castro has attended the church’s adult Spanish literacy class for all eight years. There she and others learn to read in Spanish, do basic math, learn science and social studies. Jimenez has often driven to Tijuana, Mexico, to purchase books, out of her own pocket, for the class.

Now that she is literate in Spanish, Castro is taking English lessons so she can get a job.

The Saturday class is attended by no more than a dozen people, sometimes with their children, allowing Jimenez to give each person individual attention. Jimenez’s husband of 42 years, Rafael, helps her tutor the Spanish literacy students, too.

Jimenez credits him for being supportive of her through all the years she was in school, raising a family and working.

Rafael Jimenez is proud of the work his wife does and the impact she’s made on the lives of hundreds of people.

“I know she’s doing good,” he said. “It’s for her benefit and for the benefit of many people.”



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