This has been a great school for the last 20 years! I went to this school from 1991 to 1995…read more Having emigrated only 3 weeks before school started, I did not speak or understand much English at all, and I was placed in ESL classes. Thanks to great teachers and a caring and encouraging counselor (Mrs. McDonald), I was able to learn English fast, and transfer to the honors program starting 11th grade. I ended up taking AP English and Honors English 11 simultaneously in the 12th grade! I graduated taking all my A through G UC required classes, and got accepted into several UCs and Cal States. And once at UC San Diego, I was able to keep up and even graduate with honors with a major and two minors.
And why did UCs want me, despite my low SAT verbal score? It was thanks to the abundance of clubs and activities that I was involved with at Reseda High. There were so many clubs at this school, you had your pick of several for each day of the week. And teachers encouraged students to join things, like a very active student cabinet, journalism, a second newsletter put out by ESL students for ESL students, a great drama program, cheer, flag, all sorts of sports teams, choir, band, 18 different clubs, volunteering opportunities such as planting trees on earth day, and more. My ESL teacher (Mrs. Worman) encouraged me and my best friend to run for office and join Student Cabinet, and I am so grateful that we did. We ended up becoming very involved with a whole lot of things, not knowing that colleges would like that, but because teacher after teacher made it feel good to be involved. And now, long after high school I have remained involved wherever I go, because I learned the value of being involved.
This school was full of very caring teachers and office staff, who went out of their way to engage and teach students. The only staff members I did not like were one Spanish teacher who could not control her class (Mrs. Swanson?) and the college counselor (Mrs. Stanzberry). She stuck out, because she was not friendly and was intimidating. The rest of the teachers I had were fantastic, especially the ones in the social science department (especially Mr. Kaz and Dr. Shaffer) and the ESL department. Now, years later, I have tracked some of these teachers down via facebook and we have become facebook friends. I was shocked that they even remembered me 18 years later. They tell me that they remember most of their students. And they do! They remember distinct things about personalities of my classmates and cousins who went to the same school. (Meanwhile, for the few months that I attended Taft High school, 2 teachers didn't even take the time to properly learn my name then, and I couldn't tell you any of their names either cause they did not connect with me in any way.)
The campus was beautiful, complete with its own little forest at one end, and clean. The kids were nice, and inclusive. My lunch group looked like a mini united nations, complete with two white guys and a white girl who hung out with us Persians, Rumanians, Armenian, El Salvadorians, Mexicans, and Russian! And others came and went, hanging out with different groups on different days as they pleased. Because of this, I got plenty of opportunity to practice my conversational English, and people marveled at how well I spoke English for the amount of time I had been in the US. This could be because in some schools the culture is such that different races self-segregate and recent immigrants end up together with others who are not fluent in English and fluent in a different language so they speak to each other in that language. Me? I don't speak Rumanian or Armenian or Russian or Spanish. The only way to communicate for my lunch group was English.
And now the there is a magnet program on campus too, and I hear that it is wonderful. My cousins went through the magnet program and loved it. Interestingly, most of their teachers were the same as I had. And for the relatively low socioeconomic neighborhood full of recent immigrants, Reseda high and its magnet have unusually high test scores, college admissions, and scholarship recipients. I attribute it to the school culture and the attentive teachers and staff who go above and beyond to pull kids up and encourage them to explore different avenues and apply for all sorts of different opportunities.
