Our third guest
speaker of the series, Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, is the current Los Angeles
Unified School District’s Chief Executive Officer and former Assistant
Secretary of Education. Due to her outstanding career, Thelma had
a wealth of knowledge and stories to share with us. Her encounters with presidents and the
insider scoop on how education policy and positions occur are some of the
highlights of our time with her.
In our first session, Thelma
told us she was going to provide us with tools to share about the self. She called it, The Leadership Story: Who I Am. The tool, done right, should show (1) how one
teaches, (2) how one leads, and (3) who they are. Thelma opened up to us about her own story. She first showed us a photograph of her kindergarten
teacher, Mrs. Silverman, and herself reading. Thelma showed this photograph to illustrte one source of her motivation for the field of education, her Ocupassion as she calls
it. This Ocupassion has motivated her and motivates others. Stories, she illustrated to us, are powerful images that can rise people to action. She then showed us an old logo of UCLA and how she wanted to attend UCLA as a high school senior but was told it wasn’t a possibility for her by her counselor. As
I heard these stories, I could see my own stories: I
had a third grade reading specialist, Mrs. Black, who tutored me every week
when I was behind a grade level; and, I had a high school counselor who also didn't believe I could go to university. Thelma described these stories can be powerful
motivators and can serve as the inspiration of our
work.
Continuing to share about the power of stories, Thelma discussed how she had
been writing a blog about her experiences teaching. She had written about one
mute boy whose family had very little. A
local couple had read about the boy on her blog and decided they wanted to
donate a bicycle to the boy. She then showed us a photo of bell peppers that were given to her from a couple in the
Santa Ana school district where she served as superintendent.
After Thelma’s
presentation, we conducted an activity that helped us to illustrate our own story. We were to ask to write down what is the
change you want to make in the world, specific experiences that have shaped our
story, and a personal story that will help others understand why we want to
make that change. I wrote down the
following:
The change I want to make in the world is to promote diversity between different people of ethnicity and language, to build a more harmonious world with the natural environment, to help ensure our forests survive far into the future, that current generations appreciate and have genuine experiences with the natural environment, that schools foster these beliefs, and that I stay true to my convictions even if it means resisting the path of success.
Thelma shared
with us that our experiences lead us down certain paths and that our story
includes all of those twists and turns we make in our lives. She shared writing down our stories helps to
motivate people little by little.
Thelma’s Take Home Points:
- "We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own” Cesar Chavez
- Why do I want to be a leader and why would people want to follow me?
- Marshall Ganz’ three stories:
- Story of self: Why am I called to do this work?
- Story of us: Why is my cause your cause too?
- Story of now: Why is inaction no longer an option?
- “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance” Robert F. Kennedy
- The four C’s of education: courage, collaboration, capacity, and commitment.
I like the idea of occupassion and the encouragement to develop an ambition that is broad enough to include the prosperity of the society we live in. However, as a student of SUA, I understand that to mean having an occupassion for helping people anywhere in the world to fulfill their aspirations and needs while showing care and concern to one another. In order to create this kind of society, we need to find ways to make all aspects of life work together, as a unit, toward achieving this goal. In my view, it is the work of every human being and also the UN or all multilateral organizations to help create an environment in which we can all unite toward this great undertaking. A society infused with a culture of care is possible when we realize that businesses, education, health care systems, governments, and the like, in the grand scheme of things are working toward the same goal. The major task is to create the space for individuals who are used to the idea of looking out for their self-interest to embrace the idea that self-interest must not only mean a single "I" but must continue to be expanded in a way that is most natural to them until they can feel affinity with the entire universe. This is not only an intellectual connection or a symbolic connection but embracing life in it's entirety. The point is making sure that even though we may all be working on different things, all our efforts as a collective should be moving toward the same goal. This requires each one of us to develop a broader definition of "I" and "mine". This is how I understand your beautifully written blog post. Thank you, Stephanie, for writing this blog.
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