Former NASA astronaut visits namesake school in San Jose, donates more than 5,600 books

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- On Friday, former NASA Astronaut Jose Hernandez spent the morning with elementary students at his namesake school in San Jose.

"It's really exciting like we're talking about him all the time, his name's everywhere but some of our students are like whoa this is who I'm representing when I'm here at this school?" Julianna Parra, principal at Alpha: Jose Hernandez School said.

Jose Hernandez is the son of immigrant farmworkers who went on to become an engineer and a NASA astronaut.

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NASA Astronaut Jose Hernandez inspired hundreds of farmworkers and their families after sharing his achievements with them Sunday afternoon.

The Stockton native stopped by Alpha: Jose Hernandez School Friday morning to share a few words of wisdom.

"I was telling these kids over here in the fifth grade in the back that I was their age when the dream was born of me wanting to be an astronaut," Hernandez said.

Hernandez talked about how he became an astronaut and how NASA turned him down 11 times before he was hired.

But before he put on that orange spacesuit, he said it was reading that first inspired him and what helped him learn English.

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"It's not being afraid to pick up a book and not put that down until you finish it," he said. "Reading interesting things, things that interest you is what makes you read more."

Not showing up empty-handed, his visit also came with a generous donation of 6,500 new books from Gordon Philanthropies and the Reaching for the Stars Foundation, including a few about Hernandez becoming an astronaut.

Principal Parra says two of the three books with his namesake were bilingual.

"Which is really, really big," Parra said. "We get to serve a community that is majority Hispanic, we have a very large population of students that are learning English as a second language and so being able to say you have this book to learn about who our school's named after and even if you're still learning your second language, you can still have access."