In honor of Alisal’s 60th Anniversary, this is the 15th in an ongoing series of staff/alumni profiles.

Like the parts to a machine, every part of the school staff is crucial to making the school run smoothly. Rachel Torres, our community liaison, works tirelessly to meet the needs of students and their families and foster the ever growing community in and outside of the school. 

An Alisal Alumni herself, Torres graduated in 1973. Part of her experience at school was shaped by the discrimination students were facing at the time. “I grew up during the time where there was absolutely no bilingual education,” she said. “The discrimination was coming with people not being familiar with a lot of the people that were coming from migrant families. Some of the teachers weren’t nice.” 

Due to the injustice she witnessed, she joined the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO). One instance in particular led to her desire for change.”We used to have home economics class,” she said. “I remember there was a student who walked in and the teacher yelled at him for not coming prepared. She said something to him like ‘Why are you coming in late? You have no materials, nothing with you. You’re never going to amount to anything, you’re going to end up working in the fields.’” 

That instance stuck with her as a particularly disturbing moment because the comment seemed to just go over the student’s head. When she joined the organization as a freshman, the juniors and seniors were the ones running the program. “They [juniors and seniors] were the ones that were really involved with the movement,” she said. “A lot of us that were barely beginning to understand what was going on, we kind of joined with them.” 

MAYO raised money to involve themselves more with the movement. They organized a walkout, protests, some riots broke out, and they even got Teatro Campesino to come on campus and do some skits. The organization is still in operation but was renamed to the Movimiento Estudantil Chinanx de Aztlán (MEChA). 

After graduating from Alisal, Torres continued her studies at Hartnell Community College. She planned on becoming a social worker, given what she experienced at school. However, due to the financial issues her family was facing, she had to drop out of Hartnell to work. 

Despite not being able to pursue her original goal, a job opportunity opened up at Alisal. Torres applied to be an instructional aide here at school. “So that was my first foot into the door,” she said. “During that time, I kept going through different trainings with different people to be able to do the work.” 

Part of her job as an instructional aide was to translate for the students and teachers. In being in the classroom and working directly with the students, it gave her a much more profound understanding of what support students were still lacking. “Because working in a classroom, that’s where you know exactly what’s going on,” she said. “You have more one to one with the students. You find out what their needs are.” In addition to interpreting for the students, Torres also had to do home visits because she worked for migrant education. “I had to do home visits,” she said. “So then I really got a true picture as to how the students were living and what their needs were.” 

The attitudes towards education were changing and teachers needed to adapt as well. Teachers needed to be equipped with the tools to teach their students with dignity and respect.”It was really a lot of the teachers going back to school and having to learn different strategies,” she said. “So you had all these different people who were the experts coming in and helping them understand how to teach and understand the culture of the students.” 

Though working with teachers didn’t seem to faze Torres, not all teachers were eager to change their teaching methods. “It was a little bit awkward because it was kind of hard for some of them to get adjusted to that.” Torres said. 

But that didn’t discourage her from carrying out her job duties. “My mission was to help the student,” she said. “If there were things that were not right, then the students themselves would speak up. They would say, ‘Why am I being treated this way?’ and so they started to understand a little bit more about their rights.” 

When the position of community liaison opened up in 1994, Torres knew that job was for her. Before Torres, Maria Ceja was Alisal’s community liaison and at the time, the role of community liaison was more focused on conflict resolution rather than community outreach. 

Given what Torres had experienced as an instructional aide, as well as the change in job description, which now included working with parents, Torres applied for the job because she knew the help she could give would extend even further than the students. “I made the switch because I knew that it was going to benefit more the families as a whole, as opposed to just the student,” she said. 

The shift in job responsibilities posed some difficulty to Torres. Though she was happy to be able to help out the community on a larger scale, she wasn’t afforded the same one to one time with students like when she was an instructional aide. Nonetheless, Torres preserved and ultimately, has constructed the community we know today. “I knew a lot of them [the students] by name,” she said. “Because I was literally in six different classes, just like they are. So it took me a while to continue to build that connection with the students and to build a connection with the parents.” 

As our community liaison, Torres works with a lot of different people to offer a variety of support. “Every day is a different day,” she said. “I work with families, I work with students, I work with Youth in Transition.” Youth in Transition is a program for at-risk, homeless, or foster youth. 

Torres offers resources to organizations or other means of support to those in need that step into her office. She also hosts meetings with parents as a means of community outreach. “On a weekly basis, I have parent meetings every Wednesday at 10 o’clock,” she said. “Where I usually invite a guest speaker, from the community, and they come in and present on whatever information they have. And then after that, I give them the different announcements that we have here at school of the different events.” 

Torres is also a long time member of The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Through LULAC, Torres has helped organize dances to raise money and offer LULAC scholarships for students. 

Torres gives to the community and the community gives back to her. “So they [parents] come more. And more and more culturally embedded into the school as to kinds of things that we do as a school,” she said. “They’re helping us, but at the same time, we’re helping them understand a little bit more.” 

The benefits of the job are undeniable to Torres and have solidified her decision to come back and stay. “Rewarding is when you see people come back and tell you, ‘What you did for me really helped me out,’” she said. “ And ‘You don’t know what you did but you did something really special for me’ and that really helped me make my choice, my decision.” 

What makes Alisal so special to Torres is the students and how far the school has come. From not even offering bilingual education to having students proudly representing their culture is what makes Torres proud to be working here. Her pride for working here can probably be best summarized in an instance from when the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) came to visit for accreditation. “One of the review teams [WASC] that came to visit us,” she said. “I remember that, one lady, she came in and she was visiting the school, along her team, and she says, ‘You know this school is like a diamond in the rough. It’s a hidden jewel, that you have a unique, unique school where you have so much to offer and you could see it in the students. They’re here to learn. And that they respect, and they value their culture tremendously.’”

Updated 4/27 @ 2:13 pm