Eight years ago, they were high school students who spent every Saturday morning together trying to gain a foothold in their adopted country by drinking coffee, eating bagels and studying one of literature’s most revered and difficult masterpieces. [...] they’re busy professionals — some starting companies, some raising children — who, like most adults, catch up with each other now and then. [...] they say they credit their beloved high school social studies teacher and her unlikely Dante Club with paving their paths to success. On March 20, 2006, The Chronicle featured an article about the Dante Club, a group of a dozen students from San Francisco’s Mission High who got together each Saturday at the Morning Due Cafe to read Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” together over breakfast. The teenagers, mostly impoverished students who were new arrivals from Mexico, Central America and Asia, were still learning English and finding their way in a big, daunting, urban high school. In summer 2006, she took them to Italy, partly funded by Chronicle readers inspired by their determination. More than eight years later, Taylor e-mailed to ask whether Chronicle readers might like to know what happened to those members of the Dante Club. Like a proud mom, she rattled off her students’ successes — and there are many. The 2007-08 school year was Taylor’s last at Mission — she then went on leave for two years to raise her kids. [...] a mother of three sons, Taylor can’t put in as many extra hours as she used to and works as the librarian at Visitacion Valley Middle School. “I used to just sleep until noon and then watch TV,” he said in 2006 of his Saturdays before joining the club. Vo, now 26, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and later earned a certificate in construction management. [...] he said the club helped him form long-lasting friendships and built his confidence, which served him well at Berkeley. “Many students had come from private schools,” he said. Back in 2006, several club members, including Jimenez, said they were drawn into the masterpiece by the notion of hell, purgatory and paradise. Jimenez, now 27, works for the Good Samaritan Resource Center, which helps new immigrant families acclimate to San Francisco. Jimenez has also remained close with several former Dante Club members including Jocelin Duarte, who went to art school and works as a graphic designer at Google. “We always give her a hard time,” Jimenez said with a laugh, noting he calls her “Google” as a nickname just to bug her. Joyce Lam studied at UC Berkeley and is a housing advocate at the SRO Families United Collaborative, working on behalf of families living in often ramshackle single room occupancy hotels. Josselyn Alvarez graduated from California State University East Bay, studying health science. Who would have thought that a few inner city students would learn so much from the work of Dante Alighieri?
Reported by SFGate 13 hours ago.
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