I am a 1956 graduate of San Jacinto High School in Houston, Texas. The school no longer exists; it is now part of the campus of Houston Community College. When I attended San Jac, it was a thriving community of about 1500 students. Most of the teachers were old-timers. There were many clubs for after-school activities and many sports teams. We were known as the Golden Bears. As a senior, I was editor of the yearbook, the El Oroso. When my older sister went to San Jac, she was a “Golden Gaucho,” which was a girls’ marching group. The school was racially segregated, but it had a program for students with disabilities, which was unusual at the time. After the Brown decision was announced, I went to see our principal, Mr. Brandenburger, to ask why our school had not integrated. He told me that if we did that, all the black principals would lose their jobs. He did not mention that we had a very rightwing school board who opposed desegregation. I have many fond memories of San Jacinto. I am on the mailing list for alumni and saw this story by a woman who graduated 12 years after me. I was so moved by her story that I asked her for permission to put it on the blog. There is a message here about public education and its potential to change lives.
What San Jac Means To Me
By Annette Mazur Zinn, ‘68
zinn802@sbcglobal.net
I know I sometimes sound a little too passionate about San Jac, but there’s a reason for it. My circuitous path to where I now find myself gave me an appreciation for education, my classmates, teachers and others that I am forever grateful for.
As the eldest of 7 siblings, I grew up with a tremendous amount of responsibility. During the day, I was a surrogate Mom and, at night, I made money by cleaning offices and scrubbing bathrooms. My family was homeless most of the time, so attending school was not a priority. But I always wanted to go. I missed a lot of school starting in elementary school. My homeroom teacher at George Washington Junior High told me, “Education is the key to freedom.” At the time I had no clue what that meant, but I never forgot her words.
Somehow, I finished junior high and made it to Reagan High School. I attended when I could, but I was truant much of the time. I remember hiding from the truant officers because I knew that if I was caught, someone would go to jail. I suspected it would be me!
The Reagan years were especially hard because of my difficult home life and the stress and embarrassment that resulted. I had impetigo infections on my arms and legs, hair lice, dirty clothes that didn’t fit, and cockroaches sometimes crawled out of my school bag. I finally decided that I couldn’t stay at Reagan. I was too ashamed and embarrassed. Someone told me about San Jacinto High School.
Somehow, I managed to transfer, even though I didn’t know where the school was or how I would get there. It seemed like a world away. I got on the bus. When I began at San Jac, I didn’t know anyone. I was overwhelmed and afraid I would not last. During one of my truancy periods my counselor said, “If it’s true what you said about your home life, and you don’t move out, you’ll NEVER graduate!”
Fortunately, a friend offered me a place to stay. I continued working to support my family, but I began doing whatever I could to graduate. No one in my family understood why I needed to finish school.
Fortunately, for me, the San Jac students were more forgiving than those at Reagan. I kept doing childcare/housework and going to school when I could. I cleaned offices at night and lived with the constant threat that I would not have enough hours to graduate. At the same time, I wanted to be “normal”. I tried to make up for lost experiences and joined as many groups as I could – drama, speech, choir, and library club. Tim Zinn, a San Jac student, helped me tremendously with moral support, bus fare, and even lent me his yearbook so I could collect autographs. I graduated!
In the years that followed I married Tim and graduated from The University of Houston. In 1978, Tim and I separated and I became a single mom. Our daughter, Tara Zinn, was 7 at the time. I knew I had to set the right example for being independent and self-sufficient. Ultimately, I applied to graduate school at The University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH). Afterwards, I became an epidemiologist and then took a regulatory position at Intermedics, Inc. where I was responsible for obtaining approvals for cardiac pacemakers worldwide.
I applied to law school and graduated from South Texas College of Law in 1992. I practiced law for a few years – including business, intellectual property, immigration, personal injury, family, and criminal cases – and even had a murder case! Ultimately, I went back to medical devices at Cyberonics, Inc., where I was responsible for obtaining approvals for neurostimulators worldwide and handling legal matters. I also taught FDA-law for three years at University of Houston and started my Ph. D in health law/policy at UTSPH. In 2008, I began a career as a regulatory adviser for medical product start-up companies and finished my Ph.D. I also began volunteering in educational institutions and mentoring students, including my daughter, who just graduated from South Texas College of Law!
So, to my San Jac family, I owe so much — because of San Jac — I’ve had a rich life of learning and opportunity. I will be passionately and forever grateful!
Put chills down my spine. Walter “Sandy” Silvers
What an awesome, inspiring story! Thanks for sharing, Diane… Sounds like you came from an amazing school… and both you and Annette have contributed to our world in positive ways. Thanks, too, for your opinion and info. in the post about standardized testing… I live in central TX and we are facing this constant pressure to keep preparing for the test(s)… I teach special education so I stay demoralized about this… Here is something I have have been sharing with anyone who will listen:
“I am quite concerned about the state requiring districts to provide compensatory education plans for our special education students at this time and with so much extra paperwork. As you know, we created “temporary continuity” plans in the spring during the shut-down. As we have been struggling through the fall, in addition to our usual progress reports and ARD paperwork, we have been required to create “contingency plans” that will now be supplements to the IEP at all ARDs. Now we were notified that we must complete a “compensatory education” plan on each student. This plan has even more pages! and is supposed to be completed by December 4th! This requirement stuns me. Are these plans more important than providing services and social/emotional support to our students and their families? Are we teachers supposed to use all of the free time and Thanksgiving week working on lesson plans, ARDs, progress reports, and now compensatory plans? What if there is another shutdown? Will we be required to complete and file an additional plan? How can our system be responsible for an act of nature/global disaster? All this legal paperwork is baffling. The stress of the pandemic is enough for students and teaching staffs to handle. This does not seem the time to plan anything! There should be a moratorium on paperwork for special education services until a more reasonable plan is in place. Any explanation/ rationale would be appreciated.”
They are all trying to cover their legal as***. Special ed teachers have had to spend as much if not more time producing paper trails to protect against litigious parents for ages. (That is not to say that criticism isn’t justified on occasion.) Sometimes it felt like the districts for which I worked were more interested in a bullet proof legal document than an honest picture of the needs of a student. Now, when the situation is so complicated by Covid, it must be absolutely impossible. I feel for you.
ESL is often Title I supported. When the state wanted daily plans on each of the compensatory ESL students. I told them it was unrealistic for the approximately seventy students that I saw every day. I told them they could have my plan book, but a daily summary on each student was an absurd request. However, these were not IEPs.
Bureaucrats have no idea of the demands on teachers. They write their rules in a vacuum. Spending so much time on a paper trail does not make anyone a more effective teacher. In fact, it distracts from the actual work .
Breathtaking.
Public schools that are staffed by caring professionals can transform lives. I have seen many poor ELLs with minimal education in their home country, come the US, appreciate and work for the opportunities here, go to college and have middle class careers in a single generation. What helps a great deal are teachers, administrators and even a PTA that believe opportunity for all. My district provided lots of outreach to poor families and supports for students as well in our integrated school district. School districts that believe in helping, not just measuring students, can sometimes overcome the harmful impact of poverty.
By the way I have a few roach infested bookbag stories from my students as well. It happens mostly the first day of school in the fall when students return. Bookbags with remnants of food in them, thrown in a closet over the summer can become roach habitats. I can still see, John, the custodian, stepping on bugs and clearing the halls to spray bookbags. I also told students to clean out book bags at home before returning to school.
Incredible inspiring biography. Someone should do a documentary or a film of this woman’s life from abject poverty to a Ph. D.
It would be interesting to have data on the number of Canadian schools with infection rates. Maybe their schools aren’t in as bad repair or have as bad ventilation as U.S. schools or have class sizes which are normally smaller. It is hard to judge when we don’t have more information on what is happening inside the classrooms.
…………………….
In Canada’s second lockdown, schools remain open.
Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America, went into lockdown on Monday. But in contrast to New York and other big American cities, officials are finding it more beneficial to keep schools open.
“We cannot put in-class learning at risk,” Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said last week. Along with trying to avoid overwhelming hospitals and protecting older adults in long-term care homes, Mr. Ford said, educating students was “what matters most.”
Mr. Ford’s announcement illustrated how Canada has followed the lead of much of Europe, prioritizing the opening or reopening of schools, while just across the border, many U.S. states have focused on keeping businesses open…
In most places, there are no official thresholds for shutting schools down and there is little appetite to do so, according to Ahmed Al-Jaishi, an epidemiologist who is part of an academic team compiling school outbreaks across Canada. And, despite fears among parents that students would bring the disease home and among teachers that they would get infected, such outcomes have been rare.
Even so, some parents in Toronto have been reluctant to allow their children to return to in-class learning, particularly now, with the city seeing its biggest surge in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. Last week, the city reported a 6.2 percent positive test rate. That is more than double the 3 percent positive test rate in New York that triggered school shutdowns last week…
Annette’s story should be made into a film – so inspiring and testimony to her own strength of spirit as well as the place of acceptance and support she found at San Jac high school.
I agree! I was struck by her survivor strength.
I was 1953 graduate from Hillsborough High in Tampa Florida. Several school counselors enabled me to attend college by tapping their informal networks of support.
At that time, I was the last in my family to be out of the nest. I was also en route to a college education neither of my parents had.
I had decent grades in high schools and for the first year of college was housed off campus and worked part time, both of these opportunities arranged by my high school counselors.
I secured state “scholarships” In my sophomore year and continued to work part time. The scholarships were really loans for prospective teachers. Florida had a severe teacher shortage at that time.
The loans could be forgiven if I taught within the state for each year I had the scholarship. Other wise the scholarships became loans with 5% interest added from the date they were issued.
That jumpstart from high school had ripple effects for the rest of my life. It also made me really angry to see Bill Gates impose his money and will on the Hillsborough County Schools and screw all of that up, as usual.
Annette is awesome and inspiring. 🙂
I’m curious. What became of Tim? 🤔