“My only motivation is to be a person of service. A large part of my life, I was thinking about how to give back to my community. Having a conversation with a person [where] you can help to change their ideas about their life is very rewarding to me,” says Aragon English Learner Specialist Edwin Martinez.
Martinez’s motivation and passion for helping his community began back when he was a 14-year-old in his home country of El Salvador. Martinez noticed that there was only one man who played the guitar during his church’s mass service, and seeing the lack of involvement, he decided that something needed to change. “I talked to my friends, and I said that we should have more people involved in the choir. Eventually, we started selling little foods and things outside and by the time I left, we had a big choir, and we were able to buy two more guitars, electric guitars, and a battery.”
From there, Martinez’s involvement in the community burgeoned. “I was also a community organizer and did things to support my community,” he says. “I’m coming from a country that the only way to get a benefit for the community, in general, is to get the community together—like to bring public electricity or to help put up playgrounds, public pavement, and improve the community.”
From 1979 to 1992, El Salvador was in the midst of a brutal civil war, and Martinez, coming of age at the time, found himself caught in the political chaos. A student of the National University of El Salvador, Martinez and his fellow student council members were accused of supporting the guerrilla side and targeted by the notorious death squads. He left for America in 1990. Although he was reluctant to leave his native country, leaving became his only method of survival. “Once my professor was killed, I decided I [had]to go. [The death squad was] not playing. I didn’t want to move to this country—I had no choice.”
When he moved to America, Martinez took any job he could get. Leaving behind his days as assistant manager of finances at a large brewing company in El Salvador, Martinez worked as a dishwasher, a busboy, a waiter and a bartender.
After adjusting to American society, Martinez began directing his work back to his passion for helping the community. He helped at the General Education Development program in San Francisco and worked as part of the San Francisco Organizing Project, which focuses community efforts to influence public policy regarding San Francisco’s public education, health care and neighborhood safety. Following his engagement in such community-based projects, Martinez applied for his current job as English Learner Specialist.
“I know that there’s more money [being] a waiter, [especially] if you work in a good place. But [this job gives] the satisfaction you get when you help somebody. You get these kids, and they’re smiling and happy,” he says.
However, such satisfaction did not come without diligent work, as Martinez began by dividing his week between Capuchino and Aragon. Following his work, he earned his full-time role at Aragon and has worked at Aragon 15 years since.
As Aragon’s English Learner Specialist, Martinez builds relationships with students, as he tries to keep them on track, recognize those who do well, and even goes as far as getting legal aid needed for undocumented students. “I’m the Parent Involvement Coordinator (PIC). It is a part of the job to support students—any students. That’s something that I really feel is very rewarding for me,” says Martinez.
Although Martinez builds these relationships between students and parents, he is not afraid to make unpopular decisions. As a fluent Spanish speaker, Martinez sometimes receives calls from teachers when native Spanish speaking students do poorly. Martinez then sets up parent conferences to try to help students get back on track. “[Kids] don’t like it when I call the parents. Especially if it’s bad, like I tell the parents, ‘Your son’s not doing the work, and I got a call from his teacher.’ It’s part of my job though, and [the kids] understand that I do it in order to support them,” he says.
He also tries to use the relationships between the students and parents to mediate situations. “I love it when I have to come between parents and students because I have been telling them that when there’s a conflict, there’s always two positions, and someone has to hear it. It’s very good,” he says.
However, this same responsibility can be trying. In the beginning of his career, the troubling situations some students went through affected his personal life. “To know a student, that they are homeless, in my school? That is hard for me. I would take these memories, these moments that these students were taking with me and not be able to separate [them] from my job. But then I had to say, ‘You know what, I need my private life too,’” Martinez says.
The intimate relations that Martinez shares with these stuedents can complicate his voluntary role as Aragon’s interpretator. “I talk to the administrators and when they ask me [to translate] when they expel a student I’ve worked with, I say, ‘Don’t count on me.’ I mean, it’s hard. My feelings and my values get torn down,” he says.
Still, Martinez finds his job valuable. “A former student that came back for years after graduation, in a wedding suit, and he said ‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Martinez. I’m a manager of a Home Depot in Sacramento.’ That kind of stuff is amazing. In my opinion, it’s the simple things that make your day.”
