The Aguirre Siblings Bring Commitment, Not Competition to the Classroom
Upon exiting the testing room where he’d just completed a two-hour Math exam, Daniel Aguirre stops to chat with staff eager to know how he fared—test results can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours to be posted in a student’s GED online portal.
“I feel good,” Daniel reports.
He has every reason to believe his test was a success. He scored well on the GEDReady assessment that students take to determine their proficiency in a particular subject area.
“I don’t like math but I’m good at it,” Daniel confesses. He cannot linger. His sister, Michelle, is waiting for him in the car downstairs. She drove him all the way from Cortez to the testing center at the Durango campus. Daniel also cannot dawdle because he and Michelle need to prepare for their Social Studies tests coming up in a couple of days. Their oldest brother, Reynaldo (or Omar, as he is called at home), is also a GED student at the Adult Education Center’s Cortez campus.
Nature vs Nurture
Siblings develop unique relationships across the animal kingdom. Some become ruthless competitors, while others are fierce comrades. For instance, cattle egrets are known to drag their siblings out of the nest to ensure they get larger servings at mealtime. Meanwhile, otter siblings may team together and live as a cooperative unit their whole lives.
Siblings also exist in the plant world, but they seem to err on the side of “play nice in the sandbox.” Researchers first observed cooperative sibling relationships among searockets, an edible herb with fat, lobe-like leaves crowned with white blossoms. These plants fringe coastal regions from Mexico’s Baja California to Australia.
Unrelated searockets shoot roots deep into the soil to vacuum up more water and nutrients than their neighboring strangers, whereas siblings keep their roots shallow and avoid competition. In other plants, researchers saw siblings interact cooperatively aboveground, too. Whereas strangers grow rigidly and more vertical to avoid touching each other, siblings tangle and weave their stalks, branches, and leaves together. This way, they support each other’s growth.
Daniel, Michelle, and Omar—ages 19, 21, and 23–exhibit a similar support system inside the classrooms at the Adult Education Center’s Cortez campus.

Daniel, Omar, and Michelle are very close siblings.
Commitment vs Competition
“The Aguirres are here every day,” notes CAEC instructor and Career Advisor Paul Reagan. “They’re committed to their education.”
The siblings began taking English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes with Paul in September 2024 with Paul as their teacher. They nimbly transitioned to the GED program.
Although all three are enrolled in classes together, their overarching goals are diverse. Daniel explains that his brother Omar wants to be a mechanic. “He wants to go to the college,” he says. “My sister, she wants to be a lawyer—an immigration lawyer. I want to have my own business.”
At present, Daniel barbers to pay the bills. His own hair showcases a tapered fade from the temples down, delicately etched with artistic flares. He enjoys cutting hair but he is not sure he wants to be a barber his entire life. No doubt, his experiences have proven the expression that change is the one constant in life.
Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, Daniel and his family soon relocated to the Baja peninsula of Mexico. He grew up in sweltering deserts dotted with bristling yucca, flowering cholla, and hackles of organ pipe cactus. Average temperatures reach into the double digits beyond 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But then, there were times when Daniel wound up back in the U.S. He had to relearn all the English he had forgotten.
He recounts, “I was going to school in Chicago and I had to learn it. I was learning by myself. It was difficult but I need to learn. I learn a little bit. I move out to Mexico and I forgot a lot. For two years I was there and I forgot a lot of words.”
When he and his siblings relocated to Cortez with their mother, Daniel undertook the tedious task of relearning his English yet again. He practiced with the help of his cousins. But after enrolling in the ESL classes at the CAEC, his proficiency swiftly soared. Omar and Michelle also restored their English skills to the point where Paul recommended that they transfer into GED classes.
Even though GED exams can be administered entirely in Spanish, the Aguirres chose to take the English versions instead. Daniel notes that the added pressure to test in English spurs them to learn the language even faster.
Mr. Motivated

The Aguirre family with mom, second from left.
The siblings feel immense gratitude for their teachers at the CAEC. Daniel attests, ““The teachers got a lot of patience with everybody. So, if you got a question, they answer. It’s good. It feels like a good environment.”
That all classes at the Adult Education Center are free is a huge relief to the family. Any tuition multiplied across three individuals in one household piles up fast. Daniel further observes that the entire community benefits from a free education. “Everybody can join. That’s good. Nobody has excuses to not study,” he says, going on, “You don’t lose nothing. It’s free. You can go and use your schedule. You can go in the morning. If you don’t have time, you can go in the evening.”
Perhaps the most important lesson he has gleaned so far from his time at the CAEC is one that isn’t officially published in any workbook or teacher’s guide. It is, nonetheless, a lesson that roots deeply into the heart and soul of a student and feeds their dreams for lifetime. As Daniel puts it, “If I have motivation, I can do whatever I want.”