It is impossible to write my power autobiography without sharing the source of my power. This “autobiography” highlights my family’s immigration story and the legacy of struggle and perseverance which I am committed to upholding as a mom, partner, educator, anti-racist, and member of a larger justice-minded community.  In sharing our story I use the concept of power as my family’s ability to act upon and intervene in crucial moments during my schooling experience, which created lasting positive impacts on my educational and life trajectory.

Even at the age of six, I understood that we had done something brave. As the first grandchild of a hardworking family in the mountain range of northern Nicaragua, I was used to the hustle and bustle of the family recycling business, my grandmother’s store, and the general fun of having my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles under one roof. It was the mid 80’s and Nicaragua had been at war for some time. A few months after my birth, the Sandinistas had managed to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship but were now fighting the U.S.-backed Contras to maintain power. Those first few years, regardless of which side you were on, in order to survive, families had to provide meals and resources to whichever troop showed up at your door. Although thousands of men and women lost their lives in the war, we weren’t directly impacted until the early 80s when my oldest uncle miraculously survived after being struck during combat.  Around this time, the word was spreading about the military recruitment of teenage boys and girls. With teenage sons at home, my grandparents planned their permanent exit from Nicaragua. As a small child, no one explained what was happening, all I knew was that slowly, my aunts and uncles were disappearing from my life.

My dad, the eldest son, was the only one to graduate from college in Nicaragua and the only one with a family. Oftentimes people ask me why we were the last to flee Nicaragua? The answer lies in understanding a young family man from humble beginnings, disobeying his father’s wishes to join the family business and instead pursuing his passion for seeking knowledge as an economist. During my dad’s time of self-discovery, a revolution promised to expand rights and access to all people by overthrowing a dictatorship; this new reality created the possibility of building a life as a professional in his country. Leaving all of this behind and renouncing the power he was slowly building to join the Nicaraguan exodus - was a hard pill to swallow. But that’s just what my parents did. In 1985, we immigrated to the United States and began a new life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My dad, an intellectual and determined man, let go of his power and instead began to dream for his daughters. In the U.S., regardless of one’s knowledge or talent, undocumented immigrants have limited opportunities for work. Name any job in the labor industry and my dad likely did it; plumber, electrician, janitor, waiter, he did it all. Over and over, I witnessed the humiliation and humbleness that came with being undocumented. I remember the stern and derogatory looks and interrogation at the immigration offices. I remember the “poor you” sentiments when we picked up free food and Christmas gifts. With every interaction, my parents held their heads high and proceeded to work and to dream.

Eventually, I came to realize two important things about my parent’s power. First, my mom’s power, although soft-spoken, would be vital for my academic trajectory. And second, my parent’s power was never really gone, it was always there, waiting to be activated when needed; and it always made a presence when it came to my sisters and me. I first saw it when after finishing our first year of “new-comer” school for recent immigrants we were assigned to a school across the city in Chinatown. My mom somehow managed to meet with a San Francisco school board member who facilitated our ability to enroll in our local Spanish Dual Immersion School in the Mission District - Buena Vista. The power popped up again when my parents convinced my principal to allow me to skip the 4th grade due to my high achievement. Their collective power resulted in the purchase of a home, where for the first time we had more than one bedroom to ourselves. My parent’s power, with its emerging English and lack of familiarity with the system, always made an appearance at parent-teacher conferences, performances, back-to-school nights, parent workshops, promotions, and many graduations. Despite their physical exhaustion, constant financial concerns, and fear of deportation, their power was relentless.

Eventually, my two sisters and I all graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, and collectively hold 7 degrees and 5 credentials. We have all chosen professions in the field of education, not by accident, but because we are a testament to the power that families have and the opportunity that education provides for the activation of such power.  

Oftentimes power is only credited in examples of grand and public achievements. Power is often seen as something that one has or doesn’t have. My family’s story challenges these notions of power. Every time my parents intervened in our schooling, they helped us build and store power. Despite external perceptions, my parents never yielded their power, but rather held on tight to it and used it strategically and with love.

It would be naïve of me to believe that everyone’s sense of power or opportunity to activate it is the same. The truth is that my parents had a community network and soft skills (communication, problem-solving, leadership skills, etc.) necessary to plan and achieve the objectives that lead them closer to their family vision.  As educators, it is important for us to see the power in students who thrive, students who struggle, engaged families, and families we struggle to connect with.  As our chosen path, we have a responsibility to see the power and facilitate the opportunities for students and families to activate their power as they work towards achieving their own goals and vision for their family.

“Youth, Identity and Power” a book by Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr. was handed to me while I was in middle school and it forever changed me. I began reading critical race theory at 11 years old and I never stopped - my entire world was shaped by the authors and professors that my older sisters were studying at UC Berkeley.  At the end of every semester they would hand over their old books and I would pour over them.  My power lies in being the youngest of three sisters, the only one in my entire family with the coveted blue American passport and the silent unearned privilege it carried within my community. 

I was born into a one-bedroom apartment in the heart of San Francisco Mission District shared by 11 family members, all of who had recently immigrated from Nicaragua. The real power was my parents’ hustle and their inability to settle for anything less than their wildest dreams, no matter how many toilets they would have to scrub.  As new immigrants who barely spoke English, they moved their three daughters and took many other families into their home in Hayward, CA where my neighbors were Japanese, White, Black, Hawaiian, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Mexican among many other cultures.  Hayward, the “Heart of the Bay”, is known to be one of the most diverse cities in the country and it was this diversity among a working and blue-collar population where I learned the power of allyship in the shared struggle. 

On the weekends, my childhood consisted of accompanying my mother to the hills to help clean beautiful homes.  Throughout high school, my evenings revolved around accompanying her into cold office/factory buildings where my task was to take out all the garbage and vacuum. Admittedly, I didn’t always do a great job as I was rushing to be able to finish homework and complete college and scholarship applications. This family experience went on for years and it was not rare to come home for the weekend from UC Berkeley and hear my father say, “vamos a las oficinas” and it was then when I knew that my classmates in my public policy seminar truly had no idea who I was or where I came from.  I wanted to share my experience, share my truth and it was then when my work with young Latinas in my community fueled my desire to become a teacher.  

As an adult, I feel most alive in a classroom and I believe that young people have always been on the right side of history and adults just need to get out of their way for them to truly reveal their power.  At the beginning of my teaching career, I was a young, Brown, bilingual teacher at a turn-around title 1 middle school that was about ½ Latino and ½ Black students; I once had a colleague describe my classroom as, “magic that felt unattainable”, but to me, it felt natural.  I tried to describe it to her, and at best all I could say was, “To me, it feels like I am teaching a room full of my nieces and nephews.”  Her response to me was, “how do you get them to like you?”.  It was a sincere question, one she truly didn’t understand, to which I replied, “I think the relationship works because I genuinely like them”.  This was the precise moment when I felt called to shift and position my work to teach and empower other educators to own their own power in order to harness, unlock and ‘get out of the way’ of their own students’ talents and power.  

Now, almost a decade into school leadership, 7 of which I spent as the principal of Oyster Adams Bilingual school, I learned that my power lies in courageous leadership.  I am often asked where I get my courage from, but, if I am being honest, I often experience feelings of fear, but I push through it.  I push through it because I am more afraid of what society will allow if I do not interrupt the status quo.  American schooling is not designed to center around Black and Brown children, and even less to recognize the innate talent and socio-cultural capital and power that emergent bilinguals are naturally born with.  In fact, our country’s monolinguistic norms design schools where Latino children from bilingual homes find themselves in “English-only” strands even within bilingual schools, not having been lucky enough to have “lotteried in”. Dr. Ofelia Garcia, describes bilingual children in monolingual schools as a student with a drum in front of them, one hand is holding a drumstick and playing loudly, but the other hand is tied behind their back.  Their full power will never be unleashed until monolinguistic norms are dismantled and their other hand is let loose so that the music the child produces will fulfill its full potential and beauty. 

Oyster Adams allowed me to play music with both hands and operated entire days, meetings, professional developments in Spanish and English and became a place where I felt whole and my most authentic self.  I owe much of my liberation, joy, and power to the bilingual communities I have been a part of; starting with my own home and family, the schools that I attended as a child, the schools that I led, and the colleagues I met on the journey.  I hope for a society where more emergent bilinguals can have the opportunities that have been afforded to me, it is my duty to help create them, so they can play music with both hands and so that the powerful music they create can be heard and danced to for generations to come. 

Yanira Canizales Wandera

Power Autobiography

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 that were meant to protect and provide. Through college outreach programs, I spent 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 road to college was a painful journey.  Post 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 successfully fight a systematically racist system, 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 partnership, coupled with my own self-awareness and the careful design of safe classrooms, set the stage for the rigorous bilingual learning that my students deserved.

20 years later, my relationship with power as a leader is to transfer power to the community. For the past 2 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 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 within ourselves. All of my experiences have prepared my leadership mindset and liberatory orientation.  I believe our work is to see the system, reflect, authentically engage and 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, intentional, take time to build, and requires a village of aligned partners both 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 for me how to step into my power with grace, humility, cariño for 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.