{ THE EDUC A TION REVIEW }

when her dreams were dashed by a teacher who wouldn’t believe she was ca- pable of writing a poem she’d authored. “So I was in the lunchroom, and she

was telling all the teachers at the lunch table: ‘She copied this poem. She could never write it herself. She doesn’t have the ability to do that,’ ” Tukeva recalls, fingering her thin-rimmed glasses. Her narrow face is framed by straight, shoul- der-length brown hair. “Up until then, I thought I wanted to be a writer and a poet. It’s the kind of thing that happens, and you get over it, but at the time it was really …” Her voice trails off. “School

Hispano de Salud. When she moved on to work as an educational specialist developing curricula for dropout pre- vention programs targeting Hispanics nationwide, she kept the complaints she’d heard from the immigrant parents in the back of her mind. Eventually, she started thinking about starting her own alternative high school. Tukeva worked with a team of edu-

cators and used as the model a success- ful alternative school that mainly served black students in Philadelphia. The De- partment of Labor funded the experi- ment, and in 1981 Tukeva launched the

oper and fundraiser. About the same time, the population

in Columbia Heights, Mount Pleasant and Adams-Morgan was changing dra- matically. In the two decades following the 1968 riots sparked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the neighbor- hoods had transformed from mostly white to predominately black and were becoming heavily Latino. By 1987, the city would have 80,000 immigrants from Central America alone, mostly El Salvador, local officials said at the time. The program grew rapidly, and a nonprofit board Tukeva formed to support it raised money to supplement the federal grant. But Tukeva pushed to become a part of the D.C. school system and in 1989 merged with Bell Career Development Center in Colum- bia Heights, forming Bell Multicultural High School. Tukeva kept the nonprofit board, which continued raising money to support the school. Some of the teens Tukeva enrolled

Tukeva, who is teaching an eighth-grade english class while a teacher is on maternity leave, gives Jardel Perrier paperwork to hand out to the class.

was an uncomfortable place for me,” she continues. “The teacher had low expec- tations for me. That made me want to be involved in a school where that would never happen to anybody.” After earning a degree in Spanish

literature and journalism at Pennsylva- nia State University, Tukeva received a master’s degree in linguistics and bilin- gual education at Georgetown Univer- sity. She then landed the job at Centro

Multicultural Career Intern Program. She obtained permission from the school system to use space at the Marie Reed Learning Center in Northwest Washington and to recruit Hispanics who had either dropped out or were on the verge of dropping out, essentially the students the schools didn’t want. Forty students enrolled, and Tukeva served in every role: executive director, principal, teacher, curriculum devel-

had fled poverty and civil wars with their families and had tragic stories. To this day, Rosalba Bonilla-Acosta, 42, remembers vividly when three military men in green uniforms and rifles took over her family’s home in El Salvador and used it as a staging area for their battle with the guerrillas. Then 15, she crouched on the kitchen floor with her father, older sister and younger brother as the soldiers and guerillas exchanged gunfire. She also watched in horror when a bullet struck her 12-year-old brother in the face. He survived, but when their father

died two years later, the three children moved to Washington to join their mother, who had been living here since 1978. Bonilla-Acosta says she and her peers found a sanctuary at Bell — Spanish-speaking teachers, a culturally sensitive curriculum and job intern- ships. Tukeva also opened the school at night so parents could get English lessons and information on housing, community services and public schools. Bonilla-Acosta even met her husband, Salustio Acosta, at Bell. The school

A former student: “If it wasn’t for this place that … gave me the guidance … it would have been impossible to make it.”

40 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | APRIl 11, 2010 Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184