ISSD Alumni Corner
The Iranian School of San Diego boasts a significant history, having been in operation since 1988, and has positively impacted numerous students and families over the years. The school takes pride in its extensive alumni network, consisting of successful individuals who have made notable contributions to both the Iranian American and global communities. Many alumni now have children enrolled at ISSD, establishing a strong multi-generational bond with the school. In an effort to showcase these accomplishments and underline the value of ISSD, Peyk is highlighting profiles detailing the lives and experiences of the school’s graduates. We are reaching out to select ISSD alumni to not only check on their well-being, but also to introduce them to current students and parents. These alumni could potentially serve as significant role models for the present and upcoming student body. Our guest in this issue is Negar Sadegholvad, whose son Borna is currently a student at ISSD.
Negar Sadegholvad
During my childhood years from 1990 to 1996, I had the opportunity to attend the Iranian School of San Diego (ISSD). My immediate reaction was to protest. After all, this required the sacrifice of my precious Saturday mornings in exchange for learning how to read and write in Farsi. Regardless, weeks later I found myself reciting “baba ab dad” with a group of my peers, not knowing at that time that a seed was being planted that would grow with me as I journeyed through life.
At ISSD, I acquired a group of girlfriends who quickly became my go-to favorite friends. The four of us would attend Farsi school, dance class, and then almost every Saturday after ISSD we would plan an outing. It was reassuring to have found a group of friends who understood and shared the same cultural background that my family came from, and I looked forward to seeing them every Saturday morning and sharing this unique bond with them. To this day, one of my best friends is from that same ISSD favorite girlfriends’ group and our children have now adopted their own friendships. I often wonder what my childhood and early teenage years would have been like without this support. My teachers and peers at ISSD taught me the value of culture and they created a welcoming sense of community outside of my everyday school and activities.
When I graduated from ISSD, I was approaching high school. Having attended ISSD for six years not only taught me how to read and write in Farsi alongside Persian dance, but it became a support system that I missed after Farsi School graduation. This longing for community motivated me and a group of twenty of my peers to create a Persian Club at Torrey Pines High School, where I was voted in as president. We would gather to plan fundraisers to support orphan children in Iran, an idea no doubt modeled after the fundraisings we participated in at ISSD. Even now, many years later, after acquiring my Professional Graduate Architecture Degree and moving on to work as a Project Manager for the City of San Diego—managing large-scale commercial and residential projects and presenting complex projects to the City Council and Planning Commission for approval—this sense of community is still with me. Alongside my professional career, I participate in the City of San Diego Iranian Association annual events such as the Nowruz Celebration where multiple City Council Members attend every year to interact with the Farsi speaking community. Ultimately, time and again my experiences as a young child becoming familiar with my culture, learning Farsi, and discovering my community have turned into values carried with me during my years in school, at work, in my personal relationships, in my travels, and much more.
Today, as a mother and an ISSD graduate, I have enrolled my seven-year-old son at ISSD in hopes that, despite the protests of not wanting to sacrifice his Sunday mornings for Farsi school, he will also acquire similar values and that same sense of community support. Just last week while I was picking him up from ISSD, I arrived just in time to catch him doing a happy dance at the back of the classroom to the beat of the “Ey Iran” song and it gave me the feeling that a seed has been planted for him as well.
