The past two years have been filled with change for Walla Walla Community College student Sofia Machado Gomez. Interrupting her first year of college to move with her family from Medellín, Columbia, to the Walla Walla Valley meant learning a new language, adapting to a new culture and navigating a new educational system.
But through all that change, there’s been one constant that has kept her going: the dream of becoming a teacher.
A WINDING ROAD TO WWCC
In a way, education has always been central to Machado’s life. Her grandmother founded a nonprofit organization in Colombia to help children and adults have access to education. Machado herself volunteered there, and the experience inspired her chosen career path.
“I taught children to read and write and learn mathematics,” she says. “This experience was beautiful to me, and it inspired me to go to college to become a teacher.”
At 18, Machado was in her first year of college in Colombia, studying elementary education, when her family decided to move to the U.S. She arrived here with her mother and younger siblings in 2022.
It was an unexpected detour, but she didn’t want it to derail her dreams. So her first step to keeping her education on course was to enroll in WWCC’s English Language Acquisition (ELA) classes, which help non-native speakers learn to read, write, speak and understand English.
“In the beginning, it was very difficult for me because everything was in English, and school here is different from the educational system in Colombia,” she says. “I got different answers from different people, but then I met Roxana Gaytan in Outreach. She knew a lot about the programs here, and she helped me with all the first steps to get enrolled.”
GETTING BACK ON TRACK
For her first two quarters at WWCC, Machado focused on her ELA classes. But she didn’t lose sight of her longer-term goals. Even though she already had a high school diploma from Colombia, she learned that she would need one from the U.S. in order to go to college here and continue pursuing a teaching career.
From other students in her ELA classes, she learned that WWCC had a program called High School Plus (HS+) designed specifically to help adult learners like her earn their diploma, and they encouraged her to talk with Education/Career Navigator Kendra Coffeen.
“I met with Kendra, and she helped me with my credits and created an education plan for me to follow,” Machado says. With Coffeen’s help, Machado enrolled in HS+ in 2023.
At the same time, she learned about the Ability to Benefit provision of the Higher Education Act, which allowed her to access federal financial aid. So in addition to her ELA and HS+ courses, Machado was soon able to start taking college-level Early Childhood Education (ECE) classes again.
Back in the classroom, Machado began to thrive. She could tell her teachers—especially her ELA teacher Courtney Kress-Vanslyke and ECE teacher Doretha Frederickson—really cared about her and wanted her to do well. “I also loved meeting my classmates from other countries and learning about their culture and background,” she says. “It’s nice to have friends that I made from my classes.”
NO LOOKING BACK
Machado graduated with her U.S. high school diploma this spring. And she’s not stopping there.
“When I moved to Walla Walla, my dream moved with me,” she says, “and I worked really hard to learn English and get my diploma so that I could study elementary education in the U.S.”
Now with her diploma in hand, the 20-year-old says she’s working toward her Early Childhood Education degree and looking forward to joining clubs and becoming more involved on WWCC’s campus.
And she’s still making plans for the future. She wants to continue her education beyond WWCC, eventually earning a master’s degree. “I hope to become a good teacher and get a good job,” she says.
To others who might be considering a similar path, she says: “If it’s something you want with your heart, you can achieve it if you stick with it and work really hard. It’s a long process, but you start with the first step and keep going little by little.”