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R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find out what it means for Arvin High principal

ARVIN — Blanca Cavazos is all about respect.

As principal of Arvin High School for the last 10 years, Cavazos wants to make sure her students respect her, but even more importantly, she wants them to respect themselves.

“It’s a key catchphrase at our school, and culturally, in the Latino community, respect is everything — it is a core value that we use in our education setting, which reinforces what parents have instilled in our students,” Cavazos said.

Cavazos, who grew up in the Lamont/Arvin area, received her bachelor’s degree from CSUB in 1981 in liberal studies with an emphasis in bilingual education, then continued her education at CSUB where she earned a master’s degree in bilingual and cross cultural education and administration.

Her experience as an educator goes back to when she was a freshman at CSUB where she worked for the California Mini Corp, a program that hires students going into education to help tutor migrant students.

MÁS recently caught up with Cavazos out at AHS — the sole high school in the city of about 13,000, though students are also pulled from the nearby community of Lamont — and asked her a few questions:

Q: What is something you are proud to have accomplished at Arvin High School?
A: I encourage students, staff and the community to see our students at Arvin as capable of achieving any goal they set. We want to convince students that they are capable of anything, regardless of their socio-economic background. We have have added more AP courses at Arvin, we are constantly making sure our academic programs are competitive and we go after the best teachers available.

Q: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as an educator?
A: As both a female and a Latina, one of the challenges is for people to see you as an educator first and not as a gender or an ethnicity. Sometimes people see these first and respond by stereotypes. In fact, as a Latina, a minority in administration, especially in high schools, one of the challenges is convincing people that you're not just a token, that you earned your way to where you are.

Q: What are some challenges you see facing students at Arvin?
A: No. 1 is believing that they are capable of achieving and constantly challenging themselves. We tell students who are struggling that they can go anywhere they want to go in life, if they really work hard. Realistically, gangs and drugs are a problem, but they only represent a small population of students. Should parents be  worried about temptations in school? Absolutely. But it’s important for students to believe in themselves, especially for minority students, for students of all races, who live in poverty and feel that they are not as good or capable.

Q: What must students do to succeed academically?
A: They need to believe that upon birth they were given the same tools to succeed as everybody else, the only difference is they might have to work harder to get where they want to go. My advice to students is to challenge themselves, find people who believe in them and push them into areas they might not explore otherwise.

Q: What is unique about Arvin High School?
A: Arvin High School students are very caring, very respectful young men and women who place a lot of emphasis on relationships. Teachers who develop positive relationships with students–the students are so grateful they will give them the shirts off their back. Parents in Arvin and Lamont instill core values in their students that they take to the school.

Q: Who has been an influence in your career as an educator?
A: A lady who has had tremendous influence on me is Dorothy Dominguez Tuttle. She is a retired educator who worked for the Bakersfield City School District; she worked in migrant education and the Kern County Superintendent of Schools. She was the coordinator for the Mini Corp program when I worked there as a student at CSUB. The way she handled things, the strategies she taught me for teaching and working with peers — she taught us how to better ourselves and to believe in ourselves.

Q: How many games will the Arvin Bears football team win next season?
A: Ha! (she laughs) I don’t make bets on those kind of things. But regardless if they win or lose, the young men have tremendous coaches that teach them to believe in themselves. If you had asked me that about last season, I would have said that it’s going to be a long season because our team looked so small. But we won our league, so who would have thought? Every year is different and the young men work really hard.