By: Susan Martinez
FACES for the Future
Supervisor

I wish you had been at dinner last night. I had the privilege and honor of celebrating 22 young men and women as they graduated from high school. These students are the FACES for the Future, a three-year program at Children's Hospital and Research Center at Oakland, which helps underrepresented minority high school students achieve their dream of becoming health care professionals.

This was the second FACES graduation. Last year, 93% (24/26) seniors who graduated from the FACES program also graduated from high school in spring 2003. The two students who did not graduate at the end of last semester failed to do so because of severe familial problems, which significantly affected their academic performance. In the first graduating class, 92% started college this past fall. More than half entered directly into a four-year institution, including 31 percent who entered various campuses of the demanding University of California.
This year 22 students graduated -- only two young men made it through -- and the stories they shared in their speeches, songs, and poetry inspired me. Many students were considered at-risk, though not all were from impoverished economic circumstances.

There was Marqeus James, a tall, thin, handsome young man in a well-tailored suit who gave up his love for basketball to pursue something he thought less attainable, a career as a surgeon. At age 17 he found himself scrubbing in on an operation but he "couldn't take the blood." He didn't give up though. During his rotation in the Intensive Care Nursery, he was taken under wing by two nurses of color. He helped care for the most fragile newborns, many born prematurely, some weighing as little as a pound and a half and easily cradled in his large hands. Marqeus will become a nurse, a field he once thought was for women, and as he told of his future the excitement in his voice was contagious.

There was Patricia Warfield, a vibrant young black woman. Patricia wanted to become a lawyer but signed up for FACES in order to get out of school early twice a week; she liked that idea. She has lots of energy and many things to do in life. After her first week with FACES she asked to stop. Her mother insisted she stay -- "You've made a commitment and you're going to see it through." Patricia stayed and came to love the program. For her senior clerkship, Patricia worked with a hospital labor and delivery department. The first few days bored her -- watching monitors and measuring the timing of contractions -- and again she asked to be relieved, and again her mother insisted she follow through. Then she saw the birth of a baby (from across the room, as close as she wanted to get), but there was the second birth and third, and many more. She's decided not to be a lawyer after all, and at summer's end she heads to Tuskgegee University inAlabama to become an Obstetric Nurse.

Janderra Landry had a black hooded parka over top her beautiful graduation dress, and even in that coat she looked slight til she sang "Thank You" a cappella. During her first year of FACES, she rarely spoke -- not in class, nor to her counselors, tutors or other students -- and here she was, microphone in hand and in full voice, bringing a roomful of people to their feet with cheers and applause and shouts of "Marifly!" and "You go girl!"

I wish you'd met Luz Gomes, headed East to Williams College on a full scholarship, and Concepcion Solis, who said even though she loved the program she'd decided to become a lawyer. She added, "With a health care bent," and described in great detail how she will commit her life to advocating for the health rights of undocumented immigrants and migrant workers. Maddie Blanco was my intern for six weeks and is a future RN/mental health specialist, and Yolanda Montoya, future midwife, sobbed uncontrollably when she received her plaque and certificate. We burst into tears with her except her parents, seated next to me, smiles on their faces. Her father held her plaque, touched his daughter's name lettered in gold, and said admiringly "I'm putting this on my office wall." She said, "That's going on MY office wall."

I know for a fact you will hear from Andres Martinez. Andres is going to be a fine physician but is already a passionate speaker. He decided to become a physician at age 4 when he witnessed his mother's heart attack, but it was when Dr. Tomás Magaña, co-director and founder of the FACES program, spoke to Andres' freshman class that Andres was inspired to apply. Andres also participated in the National Youth Leadership Forum in Medicine, an intensive summer camp for teens interested in health care careers. Students spend each day during NYLF visiting a health care facility and Andres found himself as a local participant amongst a group of privileged high schoolers from around the country. Andres' group visited the local adult trauma center; the other kids hadn't experienced an environment like Oakland and it disturbed them but Andres felt at home. An ER surgeon talked to the students about his work and then took questions. Andres told us, "One girl asked the surgeon 'What kind of car do you drive? How big is your house? How much money do you make?' I went home and I cried." He paused for a moment to catch his breath. He said he saw the future standing alongside him and he didn't like it. He knew he needed to be part of changing it even as people told him he couldn't.

Andres and many of these teens come from neighborhoods with no full-service grocery store and attend school in portable trailers considered temporary decades ago. The words and the physical environment say "No" at every turn. They are poor people, not bad people, and it is OUR policy decisions and inaction which cause their suffering.

An instructor in the Chicano Studies department at UC Davis said this fall his students had a discussion about the lack of minorities in the class. They said things like "If they really wanted to be here, they would be. Where are all the minorities?" A young woman who'd been quiet all semester finally raised her hand. "They're in Oakland," she said, "in the FACES for the Future program. I was one of them." She'd been at the top of the FACES class until one semester her grades fell off. She couldn't stay awake during rotations; something was wrong. It turned out she was the sole breadwinner for her family, working double shifts at fast food joints while going to school, trying to study and complete her internship. She couldn't keep up with the bills, could not feed her family, and when the electricity was turned off she could not study her textbooks. The family was evicted, until the FACES staff found out and intervened. She told what it's like to have unthinkable challenges instead of basic human rights. She made clear she wasn't the one minority student in class because she just wanted to be there. She got there because people reached out, repeated over and over and over "Yes you CAN." Doctors, nurses, teachers, people like me, worked with her, counseled, tutored, mentored, comforted, fed her breakfast and lunch when she was hungry. They believed in her when she could not believe in herself.

Last night was an evening full of realizations: applauding the achievements of these strong young men and women, as well as recognizing the network of people who helped. There will be more graduates next year, but they need more than the desire to walk to the podium. They need my support, and yours, every step of the way.