Teen mom earns diploma, honors
Published: June 6, 2007
A high school diploma didn’t come easy for Edelmira Lopez.
As the daughter of Mexican migrants, Lopez spent a fair amount of time in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, where her parents are from. Speaking Spanish so often slowed her progress in English, which made schoolwork back in the United States even harder.
Getting pregnant when she was 16 didn’t help either.
But while holding her 2-year-old son Anthony on her lap Tuesday, the wide-eyed teen said receiving her high school diploma from Hart High School will pave the way for a brighter future.
“I plan to go to college to become an English teacher,” Lopez said. “I want to help kids who are having trouble with English, like me.”
Lopez, who will graduate with a 3.2 grade-point average, a Principal’s Award and a $500 Bank of America scholarship still remembers coming home from school in tears when she was in grade school.
“I would get so frustrated,” Lopez said. “I just couldn’t understand.”
Those days are gone though, said Hart High English teacher Diane Babko, who nominated Lopez for the elite Principal’s Award.
Babko remembers meeting Lopez in the 10th grade, when she was expecting her son.
“She was a remarkably mature student then,” Babko said.
The teacher, who has taught at Hart High for 10 years, was shocked when the teenager was back in class only a week after giving birth.
Now, Lopez tutors students learning English as a second language, and she has excelled at it so much that she’ll be working with the Hart Union High School district’s Intensive Literacy Program through the summer.
“She is probably one of the hardest- working students I have ever had,” Babko said.
Lopez credits her mother, Ophelia, for helping her focus on her goals. A housekeeper for many years, her mother said she always told her kids they had to be better than she was.
“I want their lives to be better than mine,” Ophelia Lopez said.
Edelmira Lopez plans to heed her mother’s suggestions.
“I want my son to know that despite the obstacles, you can make it,” Lopez said.
“Kids don’t need to let obstacles block their path,” she said.
“They just need to jump them.”
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