Former student Guevara gives back to RUSD, community

There are still moments when Angela Guevara feels like her former teacher is going to call on her and ask a calculus question. 

Today, Guevara and Dr. Chris Jackson are colleagues, working at Kolb Middle School. Guevara is a newly hired counselor. Dr. Jackson is the school’s math coach. But it wasn’t all that long ago they were in a classroom as teacher and student. Dr. Jackson taught Guevara, a 2012 Eisenhower High School graduate, in algebra and calculus in high school. 

Dr. Jackson said he still sees her as his student, and he still keeps a stuffed animal bear that Guevara presented to him almost a decade ago as a thank you in his office bookshelf. They both admit the “colleague” word is still a little odd, but Dr. Jackson beams as he talks about his former student.

“I’m just extremely proud of her just to see what she’s turned into,” Dr. Jackson said.

He has plenty of reasons to. She’s committed to giving back to the city and community she’s always called home, and she’s excited to do that at Kolb Middle School. At 26 years old, Guevara has spent most of her life, both as a student and a professional, in the Rialto Unified School District.

“We are excited to have Ms. Angela Guevara in the Kolb Family as our new counselor,” Kolb Middle School Principal Armando Urteaga said. “You can tell Ms. Guevara is highly motivated to utilize her talents and skills. She understands and empathizes with our students. Ms. Guevara has a positive attitude and is someone our students trust. I look forward to seeing the impact I know she will have on our students, school culture, and academic success here at Kolb.”

Although she loves to travel — she spent a semester abroad in Spain during college and visits family in Mexico during the holidays — Guevara has always felt passionate about making her community a better place. 

“A lot of people had the mentality of we have to leave to be successful,” Guevara said. “I had the mentality of why do we have to leave? Why can’t we just make where we are a place where we want to work and have our families? That’s one of the major reasons why I stayed.”

She attended RUSD schools Myers Elementary School, Frisbie Middle School, and Eisenhower High School. From there, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside in 2016. She also spent parts of three years working at schools across the RUSD as an intern, a substitute teacher and counselor, and at Kolb Middle School as an instructional assistant while working on a Master of Arts degree in Education: School Counseling from the University of Redlands. 

She graduated with her master’s degree in April 2019. After working at iEmpire Academy in San Bernardino during the 2020-2021 school year, she was thrilled to return to Kolb Middle School when she was hired as a counselor in mid-July 2021.

“I was really excited to come back to a familiar environment,” Guevara said. “The staff here is awesome. The student body is awesome. It’s a great positive culture here. Everyone is always willing to help out. Even though it was a transition, everyone was super happy for me. It feels like home.”

Dr. Jackson said he’s proud to witness Guevera’s growth. During a recent Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) team meeting at Kolb Middle School, he saw his former student leading the way, offering up ideas, and explaining the theory behind those ideas. 

“It was that proud moment,” Dr. Jackson said. “Now she is up in the big leagues, and she’s competing. She’s doing her thing. I think she’s always been a really hard worker, but she’s also been kind of quiet, kind of reserved. To see her in the professional setting where she’s using that knowledge she’s gained, and coming out of her shell a little bit is pretty exciting.”

When Guevera gave the stuffed animal bear, which appropriately dons a green shirt to represent Eisenhower High School’s colors, to Dr. Jackson as a thank you gift, she recalls that she said nice things to him. She told Dr. Jackson that she appreciated him pushing her, but she didn’t tell him the whole story. She still hasn’t but was willing to share the impact he made by believing in her during a crucial time in her life. 

Guevara’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was a freshman. Her mother is alive and well today, but dealing with the weight of that event led her to pull back socially and in school. She kept the news to herself. Her friends didn’t know. Her teachers didn’t know.

As one of the only sophomores in his Algebra II class, Dr. Jackson challenged Guevara during class and encouraged her later to take his calculus class as a senior

“He was like, ‘You have potential. You can be in an honors class.’ I really appreciated that gesture because he saw potential, and he pushed me toward it,” she said. “Even though I’m really, really shy, and I was like please don’t call on me, he made that effort not to just let me slack off. For his class, I was like, I have to do my homework because he’s going to call on me.”

Thanks in part to the confidence Dr. Jackson had in her, Guevara rebounded by her senior year. She became more social and took on advanced placement courses and extracurricular activities. 

Guevara said returning to the RUSD has given her perspective. She’s watched Dr. Jackson and other teachers she had in school grow and while making a positive impact in the community she calls home. It’s exactly what she aspires to do.

“My mentality was always to give back to my community,” Guevara said. “It was very good having so many people to look up to (when I was in school). I want to pay that forward.”