Gilroy
– A man and two women enter a room. Fifteen pairs of eyes look
up. As the women walk around, 30 hands slowly move to cover the
papers in front of them, or stop moving completely.
Gilroy – A man and two women enter a room. Fifteen pairs of eyes look up. As the women walk around, 30 hands slowly move to cover the papers in front of them, or stop moving completely.
The women are Gloria Pollock and Kristie Loftis, and they are members of Leadership Gilroy, a group of about 20 professionals, that visited schools across the district to learn what it takes to be a leader by shadowing a principal for one day.
Pollock and Loftis chose to follow Mt. Madonna High School principal John Perales after meeting him in their Leadership Gilroy class, and learning about the small continuation school.
Leadership Gilroy is a nine-month course area adults take to learn leadership skills, often after being recommended to the program by their place of work. There they learn skills such as drafting proposals and writing grants.
The class meets once a month all day, and works together to improve one section of the Gilroy community as a final project. This year, the class unanimously voted to help Mt. Madonna get its music program off the ground.
For Loftis and Pollock, the experience of Leadership Gilroy has been eye-opening.
“I’ve lived in Gilroy my entire life and I thought I knew the city – but I’ve learned so much,” Pollock said.
However, what the women were about to experience would change their minds forever.
Surrounded by cartoon caricatures, abstract paintings and wax covered bottles, Loftis and Pollock watched the students in Rick Charvet’s art class sketching and painting their emotions onto paper.
Charvet produced two ‘inside-out boxes’ for the women to examine.
“This is their life,” he said holding a cardboard box decorated with Raiders paraphernalia, parental advisory stickers, and a photograph of murdered rap artist Two Pac Shakur. “It represents what is going on outside them.”
Inside represents what is happening internally to them. One box has Rest In Peace painted in white inside.
“We see a lot of that,” Charvet said. Also within is a personal letter students write to convey inner emotions.
Next he shows a wine bottle painted with intricate swirls in a shouting match of colors.
Your eye flows across the glass, stopping abruptly when they fall across two words denigrating peace.
“It is a kind of therapy for the students,” Charvet explained.
One student mentioned that he had never been in an art class before. He was at least 16. Loftis and Pollock’s eyes widened.
Later, before a roundtable discussion with about 12 students, Pollock whispered, “their art work – it just means so much more.”
The students shared personal experiences with the women.
Many described having similar feelings: They didn’t fit in. They got in to fights. They were afraid. No one believed in them. How Mt. Madonna was their last chance for redemption – and how thankful they were for the opportunity.
Back in Perales’ office Pollock was overwhelmed.
“A lot of those stories – I was fighting back tears,” she said. “Sitting in there, trying to hold my composure – God, I wish the whole community could hear this – to take the stigma off.”
Perales informed them about the type of student who attends Mt. Madonna, a student who has a high risk of failure for a number of reasons.
“Our kids are very mature – they’re very real,” he said. “They’ve experienced a lot of life. It just opens your eyes as to how tough life can be.”
