Thursday, July 27, 2000

Long lost friends' reunion leads to academic joint effort

Esther "Deedy" Ramos was racing down the hallway of a Del Mar College building when she caught a glimpse of a teacher lecturing in class. Ramos did a doubletake and in that instant was transported back to the Kingsville of her childhood, drilling the alphabet and numbers with Sister Julia and her kindergarten classmates.
   No, it couldn't be, she wondered. Could it?
   That face and the memories it triggered prompted Ramos to return to the teacher's doorway after class. Her hunch proved right - the familiar face was none other than her long lost classmate, Olga Garcia Herranz.
   "It was so wonderful to reminisce and know that several of our classmates went on to become teachers and college professors," Herranz said of their reunion.
   Herranz and Ramos went their separate ways after the third grade when Herranz's family moved to Corpus Christi. Adulthood brought marriage and children. Fifty years later, the two are back in the classroom, still poring over textbooks and keeping track of grades, this time giving rather than taking instruction.
   "What are the odds?" said Ramos, referring not only to their teaching at the same college, but how their paths have crossed once again, leading them toward a new collaboration this fall. Herranz, 55, a professor of English who has taught at Del Mar for 10 years, and Ramos, 55, a temporary full-time sociology instructor on staff for six years, will pair their courses this upcoming semester, structuring their coursework to complement each other's curriculum. The paired courses, which Del Mar began offering last fall, links one discipline to another.
   Although the paired course offering poses a challenge - the two are debating generating their own text - Herranz and Ramos can rely on the fundamentals they learned so many years ago. And what they learned and how well they learned it, Herranz said, empowered them to link to a bigger society well beyond the protective bubble of home and school, a sense of mission and purpose inspiring their accomplishments and contributions even today.
   "It all goes back to the 'you-can' attitude we learned from the nuns in school," Herranz said. "That was ingrained in us at a very, very early age.
   "Deedy and I share the same teaching philosophy. And part of that is to always model that 'I did it, you can do it too' belief."
  
 

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