Power Autobiography: Yanira Canizales wandera
Yanira Canizales Wandera, Founding Partner
Power is something that is in motion. It transforms as we move through our different phases of life. As an undocumented Nicaraguan immigrant, my parents were my initial source of power. They instilled in me a deep value for education. My purpose was clear to me. My mother’s job was to clean rich folks’ homes while my job was to get good grades so that in the future, I would work “con tu mente y tu pasión, no solo con tu cuerpo” (with my mind on a passion, not just with my body). Home values strengthened my heart and resiliency.
As a teenager, my power came from understanding how our systems were failing black and brown students by design. Like many of our students, my family and I were failed by systems meant to protect and provide. Through college outreach programs, I spent my high school summers at UC Berkeley, experiencing college. Through youth community advocacy, I learned that equity is an action. Even with this additional support, my college journey was painful. After the elimination of affirmative action, the lack of equitable admission policies shut me out of acceptance to UC Berkeley. With encouragement from my dad, we advocated for UC Berkeley to reverse their admission decisions via an appeals process. On my first day at Cal, I felt both pride and pain. I was proud to have used my agency to fight a systematically racist system successfully and pained because it affirmed my existing imposter syndrome every day I was on campus. My success did not reverse the larger racist system at play, but it did give me purpose and set the stage for a lifelong career as an educator and advocate.
As a teacher, my power came from the Latinas in my classrooms, who were more than my students. We were each others' reflection and mutual inspiration. I will never forget the day I was most blatantly faced with the responsibility that came with my power of representation. One of my newcomer students, who had traveled for months in the desert, met me at my classroom door and gasped a breath of release as I greeted her on her first day. With tears in her eyes, she vulnerably shared her shock and comfort by confessing, "Usted es mi maestra? Yo nunca pensé tener una maestra como usted en este país." Strong student/teacher partnerships, my self-awareness, and the careful design of safe classrooms set the stage for the rigorous bilingual learning that my students deserved.
Twenty years later, my relationship with power as a leader is to transfer power to the community. For the past two decades, I have dedicated my professional life as a teacher, school leader/founder, and community advocate to co-creating the systemic conditions needed so that our Black and Brown youth experience learning as both identity-affirming and rigorous. I have witnessed the positive generational impact on Bay Area students and families when a school system is designed around high expectations and a college-going culture in partnership with students, families, and educators. My professional and personal work has been focused on interrupting and transforming racist systems and inequitable outcomes within our schools and ourselves. All of my experiences have prepared my leadership mindset and liberatory orientation. Our work is to see the system, reflect, authentically engage, partner with our community, and act differently to produce different outcomes.
In my current work as an educational advocate in Oakland, I have envisioned and built coalitions for multiple stakeholders (families, students, teachers, and system leaders) across Oakland schools to ensure those closest to the impact are closest to the power. Both school and advocacy work is complex and intentional, take time to build, and requires a village of aligned partners within the school and through community partnerships.
Transferring power to those most impacted requires resilient leaders. My resiliency, or my new source of power, has come to a full circle once again, pointing back to family. My mother, abuelitas, tias, and hermanas have been the backbone of my identity as a Latina leader. They’ve modeled how to step into my power with grace, humility, cariño for the community, and unapologetic advocacy for the underrepresented. Latinas are masterful at bringing our gente together and driving towards our own solutions. We are leaders as hosts versus leaders as heroes. Today, my “Blacktina” daughter, Aaliyah, influences my leadership. She code-switches like a ballerina and has taught me to uproot the anti-blackness that was forced onto our culture. These women make it easy for me to lead with my “Why?” and the power they have planted in me is deep-rooted and forever drumming.
