Aug 01

Poverty to Professional

We first met Angela Sanchez when she and her father were living in an emergency shelter in Pasadena.  Angela, a 16 year old at the time, requested a tutor for one of the most difficult subjects – Calculus.  Despite her difficult living situation, Angela graduated high school with 4.23 GPA and went on to pursue a degree at UCLA in history with a double minor in education and English. She continued on to receive her Multiple-Subject Teaching Credential, Elementary Education and Teaching, as well as certification from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Angela founded the School on Wheels club at UCLA, recruiting new tutors from the school to volunteer with our program, served on our scholarship committee, and continues to speak on behalf of School on Wheels and advocate for homeless students.

Angela has started a weekly blog about her time as a homeless student. We will be posting the link to her blog every week. Join us in following her journey.

Story Time
August 1, 2016
“Wait, she KILLS George?! You can’t do that!”
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The Homeless Equation: Gentrification and Unaffordable Housing
July 26, 2016
It’s changing in ways that mostly comes with phrases like “up and coming” and “improving” and “being more walkable.”
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The Secret of Outstanding Volunteers: How to Really Help Out at a Homeless Shelter
July 18, 2016
Having been homeless as well as having been engaged in regular community service through high school and college, I can thoroughly describe both sides of the volunteer experience at a homeless shelter…
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College Acceptance and Decisions
July 12, 2016
Everyone knows the season when college acceptance letters materialize in mailboxes (both physical and digital)…
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College Costs HOW Much?! Scholarships and Financial Aid 101
July 4, 2016
I give motivational talks to students in grades 7-12…
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Dad
June 22, 2016
If home is where the heart is, then I lived at my father’s side…
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Criminalizing Homelessness
June 16, 2016
Being homeless is a tremendously difficult position to navigate…
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5 Tips for Homeless Teens Writing College Essays
June 6, 2016
Personal statements: That one section of the college application where you really do have to put your soul into writing…
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“Normal”
May 31, 2016
There is nothing more a student who is struggling through homelessness wants than to feel normal…
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The Funny Post
May 25, 2016
It was a bright, cheery Sunday morning in May 2008…
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Faces of Homelessness
May 16, 2016
Today’s post comes courtesy of the Social Work Degree Center, who provided us with this insightful infographic that discusses the most common causes and risks behind chronic homelessness…
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Mothers in Homelessness
May 12, 2016
This week’s post comes in the wake of a widely observed, and usually beloved, holiday: Mother’s Day…
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School on Wheels, Inc.
May 1, 2016
The life-blood of any nonprofit worth its salt is its community of volunteers…
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College Apps: Technology and Homelessness
April 26, 2016
“At least I’m not running low on minutes. Hey? Hello? You there?”
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The Study Sanctuary
April 19, 2016
My ten o’clock ritual at the Pound is one I still reflect on with mixed feelings…
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Crunch Time
April 11, 2016
Test anxiety’s culminating and perhaps most highly profiled form for many high school students is none other than the Scholastic Aptitude Test…
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Better Stay Healthy: Dental Care
April 5, 2016
At the end of 2015, I saw a dentist for the first time in five years
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Better Stay Healthy: Food (In)Security
March 30, 2016
Winter break of my senior year had just started and I felt like my stomach was trying to claw its way through my naval…
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Better Stay Healthy: Sleep and Homelessness
March 21, 2016
I never fell asleep in class until I lost my home…
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Better Stay Healthy
March 14, 2016
If being homeless is akin to being in a burning house – where everything is going to pot and you can’t think straight under all the pressure – being sick while homeless is like having a helicopter dump gasoline all over the burning house…
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Avoiding Pitfalls: Being Homeless and Female
March 7, 2016
Last week’s post discussed age as a factor of my experience and how I was fortunate to have been in my teens while homeless…
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Counting Blessings: How Lucky I was to be a Homeless Teenager
February 29, 2016
At the Pound, when I looked around at the other kids I knew I was “old.”
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Shelter Rules
February 22, 2016
“This is like being in prison, but you haven’t done anything wrong.”
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Pound Puppies
February 17, 2016
It didn’t take long for my dad and me to come up with a euphemism for our new place of residence…
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Teen Counseling
February 9, 2016
At this point in the blog, we’ve established that homelessness is stigmatized in the US…
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Admitted!…To a Shelter
February 1, 2016
I was born on a Wednesday in early February…
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8 Necessities to Surviving and Escaping Homelessness
January 25, 2016

Last week’s post focused on more social and psychological skills related to slogging out of homelessness…
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Secrets to Survival
January 19, 2016

When you lose your home, you lose a lot: privacy, security, consistency, and a sense of control over your circumstances…
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A Wolf and No Door
January 12, 2016

The title of this week’s post comes from the old saying, “To keep the wolf from the door.”
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Nowhere
January 4, 2016

Humor me for a moment: Let’s say you’re homeless…
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Home for the Holidays
December 22, 2015

I double-clutched posting this piece so close to the Christmas holiday given the general weightiness of the blog…
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Finding Shelter
December 8, 2015

One of the most popular reasons circulating for why Los Angeles, and Southern California by extension, is experiencing a surge in homelessness is chalked up to our modest weather…
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Eviction
November 24, 2015

This is perhaps the hardest entry for me to describe, so I’m glad my sixteen-year-old self did most of the grunt work…
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Why P2P?
November 20, 2015

In the United States, November is marked by national holiday that celebrates what we have; traditionally, this includes good food, family and friends to share it with, and a home to enjoy it all within…
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