San Luis resident gets inducted into college honor society
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — San Luis resident Jose Luis Reynoso recently was inducted into the Alpha Chi National College Honor Society, having ranked in the top 10 percent of his class at Grand Canyon University.
Reynoso, a former assistant principal at Southwest Junior High School in San Luis, maintained a 3.8 percent grade point average while pursuing a doctoral degree in educational leadership at the Phoenix-based university.
College juniors, seniors and graduate students who rank in the top 10 percent of their classes are invited to join the honor society. Reynoso was inducted into the society in a ceremony on Feb. 18.
For his doctoral thesis, Reynoso focused on strategies for reducing high teacher turnover, a problem he says is particularly detrimental to schools in U.S. border cities that educate large numbers of students from recently immigrated families.
“Teachers come and go, and all that remains is the option to hire substitutes,” said Reynoso. “For children who are coming to the United States for the first time, it’s not the same thing to put them in front of a teacher with a degree as in front of a substitute who is not so well trained.”
Reynoso faces his own challenges as a student. At 20, he dropped out of a university in his native Baja California to work in the agricultural fields in nearby Imperial Valley.
He then began taking English as a Second Language classes at Imperial Valley College in what was a first step toward resuming his education. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and psychology from San Diego State University.
Moving to San Luis in 2001, he began his career in education as a teacher in that city’s Gadsden Ele- mentary School District. In 2004, he received his master’s degree in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University, and in that same year he was named assistant principal at Southwest Junior High School.
Reynoso, who today teaches at a private college in neighboring San Luis Rio Colorado, left the Gadsden district as he began pursuing his doctoral degree.
While the assistant principal at Southwest, he taught classes to parents of Gadsden district students to prepare them to take the U.S. citizenship test. He said now that he’s left the district, he hopes to continue teaching the classes independently.