Vicente Santos: 'You should be proud of your roots'

Vicente Santos

Lead Custodian

Los Arboles Middle School

According to Rosetta-Stone, just over 1 billion people in the world speak three languages. That’s approximately 13% of everyone on Earth and Los Arboles Middle School Lead Custodian Vicente Santos is among the 13% speaking his native language Spanish, English and Italian.

Vicente migrated to the United States from Mexico at age 21 and didn’t know how to speak the English language. At the time he was doing carpet restoration and taking classes to learn English at Monterey Adult School. He went on to earn his GED from the adult school, as well as complete 60 units from Monterey Peninsula College. Currently he is taking classes to earn a certificate as a translator interpreter.

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Vicente began as a sub custodian 12 years ago at the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District and worked at 14 of MPUSD’s schools. For the past nine years he has served as lead custodian at Los Arboles Middle School, and plans to retire from LAMS before pursuing his dream of becoming a tour guide in Mexico.

At LAMS he enjoys the ability to interact with students and to acquire more vocabulary when he speaks with teachers. “Everyone is nice,” he says. “When I ask for help or have a question they ask ‘why are you asking me’ and I reply because you have a higher level of education than I do.”

While on the LAMS campus, he encourages teachers and students to speak in Spanish. “I tell students don’t be ashamed. You should be proud of your roots. Any language is a beautiful language. We can learn a lot from them,” he says.

An avid reader, Vicente often reads a book in both English and Spanish to compare phrases and sentences. He was inspired early on by the book Runaway Girl: Escaping Life on the Streets by Clarissa Phelps about a young girl escaping an abusive household and the juvenile justice system, and going on to pursue two masters degrees. “After I read the book I thought if Clarissa got out of a deep hole and she did it, Vicente you haven’t not even been close to those things so what is holding you back?,” he says. The book was a wake-up call for him, and led him to his secret formula - the three Ds - desire, dedication, and discipline. 

One of the wisdoms he hopes to impart on students is to let them know how lucky they are to have access to the many resources, such as tutoring before and after school or Saturday Academy. He encourages them to take advantage of them as he did not have that opportunity at a young age.