This unique project, Poised for Change: Stories of Personal and Organizational Transformation, is an attempt to capture patterns of change at the midway point of a five-year partnership between the Ball Foundation and Rowland Unified School District (RUSD). The stories are told by a diverse group of people: teachers, principals, district administrators and parents, among others. The stories are told from a variety of perspectives and relate to diverse experiences that the storytellers had of the Ball Foundation partnership. Taken together, however, a coherent message emerges from the various stories.

It is a message of growth, renewal, and courage to change in the face of increasing adversity. RUSD, like most school districts in the country, is going through a period of severe financial cuts. In addition, an era of increased accountability is calling upon school districts to dramatically improve student performance. The stories from RUSD demonstrate the system’s increasing capacity to adapt and grow, a capacity that is allowing RUSD to face ongoing challenges while maintaining a sense of mission and purpose. The storytellers speak about new ways of thinking; these new ways of thinking are a precursor to changes in practice—what people and the system do in service to their students.

The work of building capacity is by no means complete. Since the time that these stories were collected, the Ball Foundation partnership has deepened its focus on instructional, leadership and organizational practices that lead to positive results for students. Sustainability measures are also being put into action to ensure that the impact of the work continues after the formal partnership ends. Another round of stories with a specific sustainability focus is planned for 2010-2011.

In the meantime, please enjoy this treasure trove of nuggets. We at the Ball Foundation would love to hear your thoughts and comments as you read through the following stories of personal and organizational transformation.

Finally, I want to thank our thought partners in this journey, Vicki Zakrzewski and Hallie Preskill, who first brought the idea to us, tirelessly interviewed people (driving around a 24-foot RV, no less) and most importantly, helped to organize the stories in an accessible and easy-to-read format. We hope you have as much fun reading the stories as we had collecting them. Happy reading!

Srik Gopalakrishnan

Director of Evaluation

Rex Babiera

Director of Learning and Communications

rbabiera@ballfoundation.org

The Ball Foundation Education Initiatives

My first encounter with Ball was when I worked on one of the strategic planning teams for the district. My principal proposed that I be a part of the process, so I said, “Okay. I’ll see what this is all about.” Quite honestly, I didn’t know anything about Ball and I had no idea what I was getting into. Basically, what we did was meet and talk about where the district is currently, and where we want it to be based on our vision.

At first I was really skeptical and felt intimidated. Our strategic planning group was made up of teachers, principals, and parents from throughout the entire district, and I was a first-year teacher – straight from college. But in the end, I think it was good that I had just come out of college. During the process, I remember thinking, “Okay, what do I want?” So I read my old essays that I wrote in college about what I was going to do as a teacher and how the kids were going to do this and be so great. When I read that, I thought, “Wow, that’s so not what it is.” But I knew we could get there – and that’s what I think I brought to the process.

Ball gave us the opportunity to have an open forum to talk as if there were no limits on what we could do. They said to us, “Forget about the limits. We’ll worry about that later. Let’s talk about what you want.” So every day we started by saying, “Don’t have limits. Don’t say we can’t do this.” Instead, we talked about where we wanted our students to be, and about what we could do if there were no testing or monetary limitations. For me, it was really refreshing to sit down and get back to basics, and to see what everyone wanted for the students. We all wanted the same thing, but we all felt that testing prohibited that. The process also changed my thinking to, “Let’s think beyond testing, and maybe eventually we’ll get rid of the things that are holding us back.”

One thing we started talking about was technology. A lot of students have access to computer labs, but not their own computers. So we said, “Imagine a day where kids have their own laptops and can access the internet at any time.”

I think the greatest thing that we talked about was changing the whole report card system. Instead of having letter grades, have an individualized action plan for each student based on their strengths and needs, and actually have students demonstrate their knowledge through different means – not just test taking. For example, if students like to work with their hands, say to them, “Build this for me.”

Talking about the whole structure of education, and especially the report cards really made me think, “Wow, I’ve been stuck with the same model and haven’t thought of other ones. But thinking about these new models – wouldn’t that be a great thing to see happen with the kids?”

The hardest part of the process was the word-smithing that we did. We would develop a couple of objectives for our action plan, and then someone would say, “I don’t feel comfortable with that word, let’s change it.” Or we’d say, “We agree that we all believe this should happen for kids,” and then someone would say, “You know what? I don’t quite believe that.” So, we’d go back to the drawing board day after day, and we’d e-mail each other, “Is this okay? Do you think this would work?” We’d think we were done with our action plan, and then the next day someone would say, “Well, I don’t quite feel comfortable.”

So that was the hard part. We kept going back and changing it. Every single time we did that, my ideas changed. In fact, everyone’s ideas changed and we’d be back at square one. At first, it was pretty annoying. I was like, “Come on, guys, just settle for it.” But I think that was the best part because people had so much buy-in – they didn’t want to just settle for it. They wanted something that everyone was proud of, and that everyone felt comfortable with. I think that’s what we ended up with, too. So that was a very good thing.

I’ve been able to implement some of the things that came out of the strategic planning process, like the APA principles that we talked about. Honestly, I may have heard about the principles in college, but here we actually looked at them and dissected each one. I have them on the wall in my classroom now, and I look at them when I do my lesson plans, trying to accommodate the students’ needs. I also have little notebooks in which I make notes about the kids and what their strengths are. For example, in a science lesson I’ll let the students use different ways to show me what they learned. That’s really helped me out a lot.

I’ve noticed that the enthusiasm of my students is changing because now I’m targeting their strengths and letting them show me that they know something. A lot of my kids can’t pass a paper and pencil reading comprehension test, so instead I’ll ask them verbally to explain what’s going on in what they read – which is something they can do.

My relationship with other teachers has changed as well. During meetings, I now express different points of view, and I open my mind to new things. I also participate more, and I think I add a little more to conversations because of what I’ve learned and what I’ve learned from others.

Being part of this process was a great experience for me. I’ll be honest with you, it wasn’t the easiest thing. It was a lot of work, but at the end, I think we all looked at each other like, “Wow, we all gained a lot from this.” So, it was definitely worth it.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

I think that we are fortunate to be in a partnership with Ball right now, because they have helped us go through the budget crisis. Our district, as we know it, has been — I do not want to say destroyed — but pretty much decimated in the sense that it is going through some difficult changes.

At this point, we are in the process of rebuilding, and part of that rebuilding is creating a strong foundation on which to build. I think that this year Ball has been very instrumental in helping us build that new foundation by helping us see new ways of working, new ways of thinking, new ways of designing.

The new way we are working is more organic. We are more relaxed. We are more concerned now with the content and the quality of the conversations, and we have allowed ourselves the time to think, to share, to question; whereas in the past, that was not really the practice.

We do not know what next year is going to look like. We have some ideas, but they are changing every week. Part of what we have had to deal with is the uncertainty and being okay with the fact that we do not know. I personally have not been told what my role for next year will be. However, it is okay, because I know I am going to be part of the new Rowland. Therefore, whatever role I end up in, I feel that it is going to be a place in which I will be able to continue to grow and develop as a professional.

We all respond to change differently. The fear in change is not knowing or not having the information or the knowledge about the change. The fear is based on the unknown. I think that is the piece. That is the bloodline that Ball is giving us, because they are constantly talking to us about the change process, about how it is chaotic and it is uncertain. Therefore, instead of just experiencing all the confusion, the chaos, the uncertainty, and not having anyone, Ball staff is telling us, “It’s okay. This is what happens. You are going to feel this way. These reactions are normal.”

If it were not for the Ball staff, I do not know that I would be able to say what I’m saying. I don’t know that I would be as hopeful. You know how when somebody is not doing well and cannot take care of himself or herself that they actually need somebody else to help them through those hard times? That is how I see Ball for us.

The next two years are going to be important because they are going to create the foundation of the new Rowland. I see Ball playing a very important and critical role as our partners in this process. Our critical friends – that is what they are – critical friends.

I am very hopeful for our district, because we have to go through this. We don’t have a choice, but we’re in good hands with the Ball Foundation.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

It’s been nice to have had a chance to talk with teachers from other schools at the district-wide meetings arranged by Ball. I taught in elementary before this year, and the only teachers we ever communicated with during workshop trainings were from elementary. So it was really interesting to hear the perspective of high school and middle school teachers, and what problems they were dealing with. A lot of their issues were similar to what we were dealing with at an elementary level, like motivating students.

We tried to come up with ideas of how to motivate students, but first we discussed why this lack of motivation exists. What is it that happens to the students? Why do they lose their motivation to learn? What kinds of experiences can we create for them to become motivated? One of the high school teachers felt that some programs were made too available for the kids. For example, the Mt. Sac Community College program that helps Nogales High School students catch up with classes. They’re allowed to take night classes when they fail a subject at school. So we thought, “The students know they can make up the class so they relax about doing well at the high school, and then later try to make it up during the summer or in the evening.” I thought that there are probably many students who actually need to re-take those classes, but I could also see how some would rely on that opportunity. The next time the teachers get together, I would love to hear about some strategies for motivating kids that other teachers have tried that I can take back to my class right away and use.

It’s been interesting and beneficial working with different people. You don’t realize that there are so many other people with so many ideas. And that’s what I’ve enjoyed – talking to others and seeing the excitement in their eyes about what they want and plan on doing. It motivates me to say, “Okay, I’m going to try this.”

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

The work with Ball has made me more cognizant of the idea of having more people involved in discussions and decisions regarding what we do on a daily basis. I think I’ve been trying to encourage that more. Personally, I feel like I’ve always been pretty collaborative in the way I do my work, but I think I recognize now that it’s not just a matter of having a collaborative leadership approach. You might have that, but in order to make that real, you almost have to make a conscious effort to get more people involved. I’ve always known this, but I think it has become clearer that a lot of people don’t have access to information that could be helpful.

For instance, there have been times this year during some open public meetings where questions were being asked about delicate and difficult matters regarding layoffs. Some of the questions didn’t have to be answered, and I had a choice there, personally. I could have done the administrative two-step and shuffled my way through those questions without answering them. But I thought it would be better for me to be very upfront about the challenges that the district was facing – to try to be as clear and transparent as possible.

Now, was my choice to do that a result of the work that we did through the Ball Foundation and our strategic plan? You know, it’s hard to say exactly. But I think it did have some impact. I think you have to practice those behaviors of being clear and transparent, and I think I’ve been practicing them because of the work I did with strategy eight. And I think as you begin to practice that, it becomes part of a fabric of what you do.

So, the impact of me being open, transparent, and just laying it out there for folks was very positive. I don’t think anybody was crazy about my answer or said, “Way to go!”, but I think it settled that particular audience. They could accept the reality that we had to deal with because they understood it. I also think the fact that I didn’t have to answer any more questions about the subject once I spoke about it in a very open way was evidence that the approach was the appropriate one.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

My last meeting with Ball was a really good learning experience for me. We watched the video about the artist from a Scandinavian country [Andrew Goldsworthy] who was putting together rocks on the beach to make a nature structure that would eventually be torn back down. My first reaction was that this art was pointless because it just gets destroyed. But then when we discussed the movie in our groups, the people in my group pointed out that the movie shows the building up of something and the learning from mistakes.

What the artist was trying to convey is that even though he was frustrated by the process, he was learning and progressing every time he rebuilt the structure. The structure got larger, and the artist was becoming more competent. He said, “That’s my art. I’m getting to know my stones better.” His goal was to make it look like some kind of a conceptualized idea that he had. He said, “I would like it to be this big, this tall, this wide,” but it kept falling in on him. He built the structure like four or five times. I don’t think he ever completed what he wanted, but it just shows that even though our goals may be higher than our achievements, we can still see growth even though we fall short of our goals.

There was an analogy that could be drawn from the movie. Building the structure was like working with your students. You learn to work with whatever stones you have and build the best you can. It’s very much like getting to know your students better even though all of them don’t necessarily build the house that you had anticipated or you don’t always get the cohesiveness of your goals. The structure getting torn down is similar to your class getting rebuilt ever year. Each year you get a whole new set of stones and you have to try to build your model again. You have breakdowns and trials and tribulations, but as you get to know the stones better, you can make a better structure out of it. Then hopefully the structure is better in June than it was in September.

I can see that analogy now, but I didn’t get it initially. My understanding of the video was brought out by the other people. So I think it’s important that people have the opportunity to interact because you can see so many different things from different perspectives. It helped me see a more positive message from that video than what I had understood on my own. I would have never gotten that in a traditional meeting where I would have just sat down, watched the video, smiled and said, “Thank you,” and then walked out the door.

I appreciate the fact that we have an opportunity to interact collegially for we don’t usually get to do that. I am sure you have heard many times that teachers are such isolated professionals who get very little chance to interact. With the Ball Foundation, we have gotten the opportunity to really discuss and collaborate on our thoughts and ideas without a lot of pressure or time constraints. It’s nice to interact with people that I have known for years and find out that some people still have real positive attitudes towards school and are looking on the bright side rather than the dark side of life.

I also shared the story of the film with my students, and like I am doing right now with you, I did the same thing with the kids. I said, “I went to a meeting and here is what I saw. I got to see that the point of this film was that we can learn from each other, and that sometimes, even if we don’t understand something, if we work together, we might be able to help each other understand it.” The students responded positively. They got it, they understood it. I’ve got a really good group of sixth graders, and we’ve done a lot of collaborative work together doing our science lab investigations. The kids are learning to work together and they can see the value of all that interaction.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

For me, our second trip to Chicago was pivotal. I felt that there was an energy and a real commitment to change by a broad group of people that was so exciting. At the first Chicago meeting, we were all in square one taking baby steps. We were defining our roles and talking about how we would work together. In fact, I think we left that first summer with more questions like, “How is this going to work?” Whereas, after the second Chicago meeting that happened the following summer, we actually had a commitment to change and an action plan. We had a group of twenty-five people who collectively said they want to be part of this change and will help to lead this change.

We took the same people who went to the first Chicago meeting to the second meeting, and we also added some new folks. As we were planning the second Chicago trip, I was worried about how we would bring this new group of people together. The original group had really bonded. We had done some excellent thinking together, and now we were bringing in another fifteen people. It turned out to be so successful; it was just thrilling to watch.

One of the funniest things happened the first night we were there. I thought we should do some kind of team building, so I asked Sue Cook who drove her motor home to Chicago if we could have a cocktail party in her RV that first night. There turned out to be a huge storm with a tornado warning that night (Sue didn’t mention the tornado warning in this interview, but I remember her talking about it in another meeting). It was pouring rain, 95 degrees with 100 percent humidity; people were running out to the motor home. You have to picture this really big RV with twenty people crammed into it and lightning and thunder all around. We couldn’t move. But you know what? It began the process of getting to know each other. We laughed so hard. It was like the beginning of this group coming together.

The next morning we went to the meeting with lots of excitement. The Ball team had done an excellent job of designing activities in which we discussed where we had been and where we are right now, along with a lot of reflection about where we wanted to go from here and how we might want to work differently. I happened to be in the group with our new teachers, and just to see their eyes and watch them start to participate – they said to me, “This is so powerful. Do you think this is something we could do?” and it was like the door opened. I said, “Absolutely. Let’s talk about it.”

That spirit of “let’s be part of this change” was so strong in the whole group. You could feel the electricity. You could feel people saying, “I want to be part of this. I want to do things differently. I want to take this back to my school and share this.” It was at this point that we decided we wanted to work differently with each other and we wanted to work differently as a district. It was one of those soul experiences where you say, “This is what it should look like.”

It was almost like a catharsis in that we were leaving behind some old ways of doing things and we were opening new doors that would lead us into a much more collaborative and more creative way of working together – you could feel it. Everyone in the room could feel the electricity, could feel the commitment. That’s when I really knew that this was going to significantly impact every aspect of our work and that we would feel this impact in every classroom. After that second Chicago summer, we knew we were going to make a difference.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

My most memorable experience is an awareness of a personal transformation that happened to me just this past Wednesday at a meeting that Ball Foundation staff facilitated. I was in a big group working on the district strategic plan, and there were a lot of what I consider to be very important people in the room: the superintendent, our school leaders, our principals. Because the district is going through a huge restructuring, we were talking about ourselves as a system and the great changes that will have to be made due to budget cuts. We talked about what these changes might look and feel like and the consequences that would befall our students.

We were given a question to discuss with our small groups and then we had to share out. Now, when I’m surrounded by a lot of people, I can be shy by nature. I usually sit back and listen to what other people have to say before I make comments or share my ideas and thoughts. But I did something I have never done before. When the question, “Who has something to say?” was asked, no one raised their hand. No one raised their hand. And then I did.

I got up, and I talked about how if there’s danger within a system, in order to survive, systems have to be able to change, adapt, and modify themselves so that they can renew themselves. I equated it to my experience as a third grade teacher when I was teaching ecosystems. I felt that it was important to express that we’re in the emerging phase, and we have to change and adapt so that we can renew ourselves. It was the first time I had ever done that, and I did it for two possible reasons: I had made a personal connection with the ideas and the process, and I had been doing reading that my Ball mentors recommended. So I wasn’t just thinking out of the box anymore—I was acting out of the box. Consequently, a couple of principals came up to me and thanked me for having said that.

I find myself in a place of great passion and that I am realizing my voice. In my experience with Ball from my first Immersion Day to this last meeting a few days ago, I find myself realizing that, for the first time ever, every person in this district is going to be given an opportunity to voice what they feel in their heart. And a heart voice is as valued as a logical voice. That’s why I’m so excited and not afraid of the changes we’re going to be facing. I think it’s even more exciting because the voices we are going to hear will be a combination of heart and mind, and what a better connection that will be for the children.

I’ve always felt this passion as a teacher, but the more I go through this process with Ball, the more I’m not afraid to have it and to share it. This passion is more courageous. I’m able to walk away and be okay with anything I say because my passion is very focused and also open-minded. I will allow my passion to be guided along a different path if I believe that path is better than the one I may be following. I’m open to allowing my passion to emerge, to adapt, and to change along with the entire district.

Change is difficult, but the experiences that we have had have caused a lot of people to step up and be interested. More of us are volunteering to learn and grow. I believe it’s the example of Ball because they are unwavering and consistent in their practices. They model it, live it, and breathe it, and every time we participate in something that Ball has to offer, we know to expect integrity. When you live it, it’s not fake. It’s sincere and it’s consistent. I think that consistency shows people that it’s a valuable experience for us. Ball has taught me the importance of all of us needing to be at the top of our game. We need to build our capacity so that we can be better for the students. We can’t build a child’s capacity unless we build ours.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

At first, I wasn’t quite sure how the Ball Foundation was going to work with our district. I assumed it was strictly a teacher enhancement project. However, Ball recently held a mini-conference for classified staff – school office managers, instructional aides, anyone in the classified field that wanted to go and get a little more insight. When we started hearing about the different strategies Ball is using not only for the teachers, but for the entire district, I think that’s when I had an “aha” moment.

I realized that this work with Ball gives you a revitalization of why you’re actually here. It’s not just about our jobs, our paycheck, or our benefits, but to truly make a significant change with the way we work with kids. I’ve been around other staff development trainers, and I know they use a lot of strategies to make learning fun for kids, etc., etc. But in this instance with Ball, I felt like it was changing my own mindset. People come to work. They do their job. Some do an exemplary job, and some do a so-so job, but it’s always that drudgery kind of a thing. But this conference with Ball was transformational in that I realized this is not just a day-to-day coming to work. Instead, it’s like you’re truly touching people, and not only students. Like myself – I’m not in the classroom and I don’t have one-on-one interaction with students. But now the things that I consider nondescript and do every day take on a little more meaning. What I’m doing really means something as it trickles down to the students. I feel that my work has more relevance and more meaning.

Since Ball has been here, Dr. Ott has challenged me to do things more on my own, and I’m happy to do it because I enjoy the challenge. I think this is what Ball is doing with our staff. They’re challenging them to step up to the plate even more, and low and behold, the staff is enjoying the challenge again.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.

When I came here to Hurley, I had just spent seven years of life working for the Internal Revenue Service. I was coming back to teaching because I had taught before, starting as a volunteer parent, then as an instructional aide, and then I went to college and became a preschool teacher. By that time, I was divorced with three kids. When I first finished college, the preschool didn’t have any teaching positions open, so I became the parent-trainer coordinator. I did that for a year until a teaching position opened up. I taught for a while, and then was recruited to teach 4^th grade at Loma Vista School. The beauty of that position was that there wasn’t a single student in my class who hadn’t gone to preschool with me. So, it was a script for, “Everybody’s going to win here because you know me,” and I knew the parents. It was a beautiful experience.

Unfortunately, as a single parent, I had three kids – two in high school already – and every summer I was struggling to make ends meet. I saw that the IRS was hiring, so I decided to go out on a limb and try that. I got picked up and thought, “Well, I’ll do this just for a while until the kids grow up,” but then I did really well. I was teaching new auditors how to audit and I hated it. I hated every day that I went to work. But I made the best of it.

It wasn’t until one summer after I had remarried and the kids were out of the house that I went to a conference in Spain with my husband who teaches at Cal State Fullerton. I attended all these workshops with these women who had their doctorates and were doing exciting things in education. I began to wonder, “What the hell am I doing at the IRS?” which I hated with a passion. How excited can you get about Mexican exemption cases?

By the time we left the conference and were traveling down to Granada, I told my husband, “You know what? I think I’m going to make the move. I’m going to go back to teaching.” I was in my 40s at that time. I said, “I’m going to be working for a long time and I want to go back to what my passion is.” By the time we got to Granada, I had made my decision. I figured the majority of my time is spent at work and I’ve got to have a passion for it. And I have always had the passion of working with kids because I’m a firm believer that they have absolutely no voice at home, at school, wherever.

I remember my own traumatic upbringing in the schools. I came from a school like this, and all it took was one teacher to really instill in me that I could be more than I thought I could be. It was my 6^th grade teacher. She believed so much in me and was the only positive influence in my life at that time. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it only takes one teacher to make a difference – and that was what happened with me. Up until that point, I had had a horrible experience in school.

I started school in Kentucky in 1951 or ‘52. My dad was in the military, and since there wasn’t a school on the base, I had to go to school across the border in Tennessee. When I was a young kid, I was a lot darker skinned. I had jet-black hair and looked very, very Mexican – only there were no Mexicans in Kentucky or Tennessee. The teachers didn’t know what to do with me, especially because I had a sister who was white (my dad was half Irish, but my mom was 100% Mexican). When I started first grade, I was put into a 1^st and 2^nd grade combination class. My sister was in my class, only she was in 2^nd grade. And sure enough, they seated me with the black students. The white students were up front, including my sister, and I was in the back with the black kids. The black students looked at me because they could tell I wasn’t black. They thought maybe I was a “high yeller” which is what they called people with mixed blood. “Well, maybe she’s that,” they thought because my hair was curly, but it wasn’t kinky, and I was really dark.

I also had to sit with the black students in the cafeteria. My mom always packed two burritos in one bag for my sister and me, and I would go over to where my sister was sitting with the white kids, get my burrito, and go back. I didn’t question it because I was a child. My sister was just sitting there like it was the most natural thing that I was sitting in that section. She probably thought I had been bad. Also, when we took the bus, I went to the back of the bus while my sister sat up front.

Then my mom started noticing. Her English was limited, but she noticed that the way I spoke English and the way my sister spoke English was different. She asked, “What’s going on? How come Arlene speaks like that?” My sister said, “She sits with the –,” and at that time they used the “n” word. My mom went off on me, “Why are you sitting with those kids?” “Because they make me. I have to sit there. That’s my seat.”

So my dad went down to the school, and when he got there, no one believed that he was my dad because he doesn’t look like me. They said, “You must have adopted this child somewhere.” And my dad answered, “No, I’m her father.” Apparently he told them, “She is Mexican and she needs to be with her sister.” Well, it didn’t work because my friends were the black students so I’d just naturally gravitate to them. Plus, the white kids wouldn’t play with me anyway. They were already so ingrained. I also wouldn’t wear my shoes because none of my black friends wore them – they didn’t have any. To fit in as a child, you’re going to do what you have to. So, that was my first identity crisis.

By 4^th grade, we had moved back to Tucson. My dad was out of the military, and we worked and lived on a ranch with my grandma. Of course, it was all Mexicano and everybody spoke Spanish. My sister and I had these southern twangs, and I spoke like someone out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We were bizarre kids.

Then we had to learn Spanish. We could understand it, but we couldn’t speak it because my mother wouldn’t allow us to speak Spanish at home. I went back to school, and I was so happy because I saw kids who were my color and spoke Spanish. When I tried to be friends with them, they would wonder where I had come from. “How come you talk like that? You talk funny. How come you don’t speak Spanish?” That kind of thing. So I quickly began to try and assimilate with them, and started speaking Spanish. I said, “Well, I’ve got to do this. This is where I fit.”

My school was 99% Latinos. We also had  kids coming in from Nogales, Mexico, because Tucson is close to the border. They didn’t speak any English, so the teacher would sit them in the back. These kids were huge with mustaches growing on them. They were older and their voices were changing. Because I was probably one of the only Mexicans in there who could speak English, the teacher would send me to the back of the classroom to teach these guys. They would say all these horrible, nasty little things to me, and I had to play teacher. I was robbed because I wasn’t keeping up with my studies and these guys weren’t paying attention.

My life at home was also very troubled because my parents became alcoholics. My mom was a domestic and cleaned houses for the rich Jewish enclave on the east side of Tucson. On the days when she had big houses to clean, she would pull me from school to go clean houses with her. So, I’d be on my hands and knees with my mom scrubbing and she’d encourage me by saying, “You know, when you grow up, you’re going to make a lot of money because you’re a very hard worker and you can get lots of houses to clean.” I was a very precocious child, and I remember being in a bathroom and scrubbing, thinking, “Hell no, I ain’t gonna do that.” But I wasn’t going to say anything to her because it was noble work. It was an honest dollar that she was earning.

The sad part is that she would take me even if it was a test day at school, and I can remember that I wouldn’t eat because we didn’t take lunches. The lady that we were cleaning for was supposed to provide us with lunch. I remember this one lady would give us a plate of her lunch leftovers like we were a couple of dogs. And my mother would look at it like, “They’re so nice to me and they don’t have to be.” And I’d say, “Why not? Why don’t they have to be nice to you, Mom? They should be nice to you. You clean their house.” “Yeah, but they pay me.” “Yeah, but they could still be nice to you.” Then she’d get mad at me because I always had to question. I was very, very consciously aware of my surroundings and what was going on. I think that’s where I developed my sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.

My mom and I would have to take several buses to get to the houses we had to clean, and we used to go by the University of Arizona. I was in 4^th grade, and I remember seeing this huge red, really nice building, and I’d ask my mom, “What is that building?” And she’d say, “Don’t even think about it. That’s the university. That’s where the rich people get to go to university,” like she was afraid of it. So I thought, “Guess I’ll never go there if we’re not rich and I’m on my way to go clean somebody’s floors.”

But then I got to 6^th grade with Mrs. Jaeger. I’ll never forget her because I had never been treated with such respect and encouragement. She took a bunch of us to go sing at the university, and I can remember like it just happened yesterday. I saw girls with books walking on campus, and I thought, “Wow! It’s like what I read in True Confessions.” (I used to buy those True Confession books with titles like, I Was a Teenage Mother, or My Husband Beat Me. I had to hide them from my mother, but by reading them, I knew people lived in a different way.) So, I was at the university, and I thought, “One of these days, I’m going to go to a university.” It took me till I was 32 years old to get to my first university class. I had just finished junior college where I had gone only because my daughter’s preschool teacher dragged me there and made me sign up. She had said to me, “You’re going to do this because you have a knack for this and you can do it.” Then I transferred from the junior college to a 4-year institution. And I can remember that first night. I could not believe it. I stood in the middle of the quad and just cried, saying, “Man, if they could see me now, the ones in the barrio.” It took me a while, but I did it.

When I was in high school in the 60s, we weren’t really aware of things. I remember in 1963, my girlfriend and I were in a math class in the basement with the football players who couldn’t add. So we were showing them how to do math while the teacher was just sitting there, goofing around. Finally, we got upset and said, “You know what? We’re not going down there.” We knew that it was unfair for us to be in there. Of course, we got suspended, and what did our parents do? Beat the crap out of us for stirring up trouble. But it made a difference because somebody said, “You know what? They’re on to something. Let’s put them in another math class.” And they put us in consumer math where we learned how to write checks, how to balance our checkbooks, how to fill out a 1040a form. We were not tracked for college, but at least it was better than teaching those big old bozos down there.

I remember there was one teacher who was a real trailblazer, and she became the dean of girls – Ms. Urquides. She would chase us all the way to Nogales. A bunch of us girls stole a friend’s mother’s car to go to Nogales, and Ms. Urquides was right behind us. If it hadn’t been for her, none of us would’ve finished high school. But she said, “You’re going to go.” She even pulled me out from under the bed one time because I hadn’t gone to school. When my mom ran into her years later, she asked my mom, “How is that Arlene doing?” My mom answered, “She’s a bilingual teacher.” And Ms. Urquides said, “I knew she’d do something with her life.”

So this is my story – how I’ve ended up here. When I think of those situations, it always takes me back to how I felt as a child. Nobody would stick up for me. My parents wouldn’t because at that time, anything the school said was, “They’re right and you’re wrong.” There was no voice for us. The point is, if you have parents that have an inkling that you can do something better – that’s a huge part of education. Let’s say that my mother had been more educated. She probably would’ve said, “You know what? My daughter does get good grades. She’s always in trouble, but she does get good grades. I need to support that.” But she didn’t know that. So when I talk with my parents, I say, “When you see that your child has potential, it’s your job to fight for every ounce that you can get for your child. If you don’t do it, nobody’s going to do it.”

My whole thing about parent involvement is educating the parent. If you educate a mother, you educate a family. I really believe that because she is the strong one in the family most of the time. Culturally, a lot of these Latino women don’t have the language skills or the legal status. They’re trapped, and that’s a reality. People have to start dealing with what’s real.

When I start a class for parents, everybody comes for the first couple weeks. But pretty soon it starts to dissipate. When I ask what’s going on, I hear, “My husband says I can’t go.” But who am I to go in there and scare this marginal idiot? There are boundaries you really cannot cross. But by ingratiating myself to a lot of families, a lot of the fathers will allow it. By the same token, things do come up. It’s not that they don’t want to be educated. It’s just that they don’t always have the liberty to come on a regular basis. I think people that don’t understand this, come away thinking, “They’re not interested. They don’t care.” But they do. They value education. They want the best for their kids or they wouldn’t have come through that town or through the desert. The stories I’ve been told of what people have been through…

I think all of my history that I’ve just shared shows my commitment to parent involvement. And I don’t feel that we’re there. There are very few people that feel like I do and it’s probably because they can’t connect. I don’t know if it’s because a lot of people have different experiences. I’m not saying that you have to work in the field and know Cesar Chavez in order to connect, but I think that if you’ve never really been hungry, how do you know what it feels like? You can read and read and go through the empirical data, but unless that helps you to connect, what good is it?

It’s like that sometimes with young teachers who have not had children. One of the things that I’ve often said when I’ve mentored young teachers is, “Look, one think I ask is that you always respect the parents. When you’re talking to them about their children, you have to remember that that’s an extension of them. That’s a part of their body you’re talking about. And you don’t have the right to scold or disrespect them. Whether you think the parents are right or wrong, you’re still attacking them personally.” I always tell the parents that their child is with me only for a little while. They are always the first teacher. They taught their children how to talk and go to the bathroom, and to put on shoes. And when they come to school, my job is to teach them the curriculum.

I find that keeping that kind of perspective on things helps me keep it real. And then when I see the kids I had come back to me, it’s really interesting. Just this last year, I hosted a Hurley Homecoming and recruited kids that had graduated from Hurley and were now in college to come and talk. One gentleman in the audience came and told me Miguel was here. I was trying to remember Miguel, and then his little face came to mind.

The first year that I taught 3^rd grade here at Hurley, my husband who is a professor at Cal State Fullerton came and read to the class. He talked about being a professor and what it took to get there. The kids were really interested in Cal State Fullerton, so my husband told them, “Well, maybe one day, you can come visit me,” meaning, “You’re going to come and go to school there.” Then later that year, I got some money to go on a field trip. I asked the kids where they wanted to go, and one kid said, “Let’s go see Dr. Cardenas at Cal State Fullerton.” I said, “Really? You guys don’t want to go to a museum or something?” “No, let’s go to Cal State.” I said, “All right. Let me find out if we can do that.” And I thought, “Oh my gosh, I remember how excited I was when I was taken to the U of A.”

That night I asked my husband, “What would it take to bring these kids to Cal State Fullerton?” And he said, “You know what? We can make this happen.” He happened to be involved in outreach. So I went to my principal and told him, “We’re going to have a day at college.” It was amazing. The PTA paid for the buses, the university paid to have t-shirts made for the kids that said, “I’m going to college.” There was an opening ceremony, and college students were the guides. The kids got to participate in a classroom in the computer science building and in the anthropology department. They saw where the kids live in the dorms and met some of the soccer players. It was such a success. We did that for ten years. It became a tradition. We eventually lost the funds for it, but this year we managed to start it up again.

So to go back to the Hurley Homecoming night – Miguel had been a student in the first class that went to Fullerton and now he is an architect in a firm in Brea. I went over to him and said, “You get on up there, Miguel, and you tell them how you did it.” And he got up there and spoke to the parents – the place was jam-packed – and he said, “I remember when Dr. Cardenas and Mrs. Cardenas took us to Cal State Fullerton, and I knew I could do that. My mom said, ‘I will help you,’ and my mom, no matter how tired I was and didn’t want to do my homework, would be on me. ‘If you want to go to that school, you’re going to go to that school.’”

Half of the teachers at this school graduated from Cal State Fullerton, and they were former students of my husband’s. Isn’t that neat? One went off to be a principal. He was so awesome. But those are the changes that have to be made. And these are kids that, at one point in time, were probably written off. “Oh, they’re not going anywhere.”

You’d be surprised how even in our world of teachers, we’re supposed to be a compassionate field, but it’s amazing that there are those that don’t see it that way. In the Ball Foundation World Cafés, I’ve come across that a lot in the district. A lot of times, I have to ask myself, “Do I want to get in on this battle?” And I don’t know. I look at the aids and say, “I’m not changing this person.” But if they’re young, recent graduates, there’s a chance. I’ve found that you don’t have to be Latino to be able to work with Latinos. You have to understand Latinos and want to help and be committed. I’m not professing that if you’re not brown, you can’t do it. No, I don’t believe that at all. I’ve seen too many non-Latinos be successful here.

I had an instructional assistant that went on to be a teacher. A blond, blue-eyed surfer guy. He was young and going to school, and he started seeing some of the things that I would talk to him about. Pretty soon, that guy was running around with Chicano power. I didn’t want to make him that radical, but he became so loved by the kids that when we would do self-portraits, they would color their hair blond and their eyes blue because they wanted to look like him. I told him, “You know that imitation is the best form of flattery. These guys love you.” He learned so much just by opening his eyes. He had a lot of respect from the kids and he went off to teach in another school with the same demographics – and he’s very successful.

But then I have another story about a teacher who was placed in a situation where there was no cultural understanding. My girlfriend did her student teaching in Compton in an all African-American classroom with an African-American teacher. One day, the teacher told her, “I want you to get up and dance with these kids. Teach them how to do the bunny hop.” So my friend got up and said to the kids, “We’re going to do the bunny hop, boys and girls. Come on.” And she put her hands by her chest like a bunny and said, “Let’s get like a bunny.” And the kids were just looking at her, so she started to sing and hop, “Here comes Peter Cottontail…” She looked back at the kids and nobody was following her. So she said, “Come on. Follow me. Here comes Peter Cottontail…”, and they wouldn’t dance. After about three tries, the teacher came over and said to my friend, “No, no honey. Sit down. This is the way you do it.” And the teacher starts to wildly shake her whole body and sing, “Oh, here come the bunny! Oh, here come the bunny up and down the lane…” and all the kids were following, dancing just like the teacher. My friend had no cultural connection to them, and she couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t follow her. She’d been there every day and the kids knew her, but that wasn’t their thing. Instead, the kids were looking at my friend like, “There couldn’t be no bunny like that.” When she told us that story, we were dying laughing because it is so true. I love that story because it really shows a cultural disconnect.

When I first started working with the Ball Foundation, I was in a fog, but then I started to see the big picture. I understood that they wanted to have a shift in paradigm, and I bought into it. Not right away, though. I even asked one of the Ball people, “What is it exactly that we’re going to get out of this?” But I’m on board if it means that we’re going to start what I call the “Cesar Chavez” approach, meaning that we’re going to start from the bottom. We’re going to work with the people who are on the front line – the teachers – who are crying all the time, “Everybody’s making decisions for us, but we’re the front liners. We should be the ones to show them.”

I remember telling Joann about a time when I was driving around with Cesar Chavez when he was at Cal State Fullerton, and he said to me, “The one thing when you’re working with people is you’ve got to give them an opportunity to tell you what it is they need and how they can go about it because they’re the ones that are doing the work. If you don’t, you have no credibility because you haven’t heard that voice.” I really believe that. And I think the Ball Foundation is trying to do that. They want to bring about change from the bottom up. I think the hardest thing is to get people to buy into it. But Ball really, really wants everyone’s voices because we keep going to these meetings and people aren’t getting it. You can tell they’re not because they’re not participating. And I think it’s because of attitude. A lot of people are already in their comfort zone, and if you’re not the kind of person who likes change…But I think the goal of the Ball Foundation and the district is good, and the way they’re going about it is good because times have changed and people have to learn to change.

I do still feel that the parent component is not given the weight that it should be in this process. I know that Strategy 6 of the strategic plan has to do with parent involvement, but I still haven’t had the interaction with people about how to encourage it. Every time I go to these meetings, I feel like asking, “What’s happening with parent involvement?” I’ve gone to the Network Days and put up my interest in creating a Community of Practice around parent involvement, and there was only one woman who was interested. But I will not give up. I will be there. The next day is a new day. If the good Lord lets me have a new day, I’m going to try it again. I am so persistent that I figure if you keep knocking me down and I keep getting up, eventually you’re going to get tired of knocking me down and I’ll be up.

I really thought that by working with the Ball Foundation, I was going to be building a network and share all this because somebody over there might be doing something that I don’t know about that I could implement over here, and vice versa. So my hope with the Ball Foundation still is to be part of a network that works together and does research about what really works because I don’t have all the answers. But we’re going to see what really works, knowing that in your community it might not work because you might have the Asian community, and you may have a heck of a lot more money and more involved parents.

I think the Foundation really needs to make parent involvement a priority because it’s not being highlighted. That’s my main concern. If you’re going to have a shift in paradigm, that means you’re bringing in the parents.

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