Alumnus Profile: Jose Cabeza BA '14

Jose is Mexican American and English is his second language. This was another reason why he decided to attend Saint Mary’s. He felt that the small size of Saint Mary’s would help with his adjustment to college as compared to attending a larger school. Additionally, he was compelled by the tight knit community and small class sizes as he liked the idea of getting to know his professors and classmates personally. Jose described the relationships that he created at Saint Mary’s as “long-lasting and memorable,” and include the relationship with his wife, who he met during his first year on campus.

Jose’s career path has already included a variety of experiences. During college, he worked for his dad’s landscaping company mainly doing physical labor. After graduation in 2014, he started working in the sports business industry as an Assistant Manager at the Oakwood Athletic Club where he gained a lot of business and managerial skills while on the job. While doing so, he decided he ultimately wanted to find a position that would allow him to help kids in need. Jose’s next job was providing home-based therapy for kids with autism as a way to help them develop the skills needed to address some of their daily challenges. A few months later, Jose transitioned to working at Piedmont Middle School where he continued doing skill-based therapy with neurodiverse kids. For example, he would help kids manage their class schedules and would talk with each kid in order to best understand how he could support them. Providing a shoulder to lean on was what Jose loved the most about doing this work. He found a love for working with little kids, and thrived off of the energy and spirit they brought to his job every day.

Jose continued doing therapy work until the end of 2016, when he was offered a job as a physical education teacher at Glenview Elementary School in Oakland. The move to a more permanent job at an elementary school (as opposed to a middle school) and the opportunity to keep an active lifestyle compelled him to accept the position. While teaching P.E. online due to COVID-19 was a challenge, Jose made the most of it, keeping up with the curriculum and providing other types of support to his students as well. Since being back in the classroom, he has spent time helping students rebuild some of the social and emotional skills lost during remote schooling. Jose plans to keep working as a teacher at Glenview into the foreseeable future but has dreams of becoming a licensed counselor or therapist someday.

Jose says that the skills and relationships he built with the SMC community still stick with him today and have “prepared him for a life outside the classroom better than he ever would have thought could be possible.” In his time with the men’s soccer program, Jose accumulated a plethora of awards and accolades, including earning All-WCC Second Team honors his junior year and All-WCC First Team honors his senior year, due, in part, to having played more minutes than any other defender on his team that year. His graduating class was also the most successful class in Saint Mary’s men’s soccer history at the time with an impressive record of 40-25-16. Jose’s favorite memory at SMC was scoring the game-winning goal to win the WCC title in 2011, and a few places he would love to visit one day are Italy, Barcelona, and England!