Farewell and Congratulations to Teacher Lisa

Teacher Lisa Wins Award

Wonderful SMAS ESL Teacher Lisa Dolehide won a special award last week.  She won a CCAE Bay Section 2017 Excellence in Teaching award.  CCAE is the California Council for Adult Education.  The Bay Section is all the Adult Schools in the San Francisco Bay Region. 



2017 CCAE Bay Conference

Lisa was not able to attend the CCAE 2017 Bay Section Conference so when the award was announced, student leaders accepted the award for her. 

Lisa has a special relationship with student leaders because she was the Student Council Coordinator for many years.  She is a mentor for student leaders. 

What is a mentor?  A mentor is a guide or counselor.  A mentor helps someone along the path.




Surprise for Lisa

At school, on Monday, they surprised her with the award.  As you can see from the photos, she was very surprised!  

SMAS Assistant Director Tim Doyle surprises Lisa with the award.
SC Coordinator and English Learner Specialist Marina presents her with flowers.
Student Leaders Edwin, Denise, Lupita, and Sayaka and Teacher Lisa
watch Teacher Patricia's video of the CCAE award ceremony.

Leaving for New Adventures

A few days later, student leaders surprised her with beautiful cards.  This is because not only did Lisa win a special award for her teaching, but also she is leaving SMAS for new adventures for a few years.

Mr. T and Lisa look at her beautiful cards.
Cristina presented Lisa with the gorgeous flowers.

We will miss her many wonderful contributions to our school, our Regional Consortium ACCEL, our community, and to the well-being of Adult Education across the state.

Lisa with SMAS Leaders Old and New

Teacher Cynthia, current SC Secretary Sayaka, SC Coordinator and former Student Leader Marina,
former SC VP Cristina, current SC VP Edwin with thumbs up,
SMAS Director "Mr. T" Larry Teshara, Teacher Lisa
current SC President Lupita, former SC President Denise

You can read more about Lisa here:

Lisa Dolehide, ESL Teacher – San Mateo Adult School

Lisa has a question she always asks when we’re organizing events, planning new programs, or campaigning for more funds for Adult Education: “Who’s going to own that?” Lisa understands that to make things happen, someone or some people have taken ownership for seeing something through from an idea to a reality. She is a master at this - and gifted at teaching this skill to others, especially students, and most especially student leaders. She knows that leadership and bringing events to success is founded on a combination of vision, organization, and taking on many steps along the way - owning the idea, process, and outcome.

Lisa served as Staff Advisor to SMAS Student Council for 14 years nurturing it from a small exercise in democracy to a powerhouse of action and advocacy. Working with students with a wide range of home languages and English skills, she mentored their abilities to lead, plan, organize, advocate, and respond to problems with solutions. Many students in Student Council have shared that voting in Student Council was the first times in their lives they had ever voted. Lisa helped students understand the democratic process, elections, how to facilitate meetings, plan for events, prepare workshops and presentations, connect with administrators, local community leaders, and elected officials. She also supervised the finances of the Student Council – which is no small matter. The Council, thanks to the creation and sales of Student ID cards and other various fundraising efforts, generally has about 10,000 dollars in its account.

Under her guidance, the SMAS Student Council presented at numerous CCAE Conferences at both the local and state level. Last year’s CCAE State Conference in Burlingame was smoothly run in great part thanks to the student leaders and volunteers - who were all coached by Lisa. The student officers themselves gain leadership and peer mentorship skills by presiding over student government meetings and by attending the yearly CCAE legislation action day in Sacramento, where they get to share their experiences as students and express their ideas and concerns about adult education with of the office staff of state assemblymen and senators. Students under Lisa’s guidance have organized letter writing campaigns in support of CCAE’s advocacy positions and have attended legislative hearings on the future of Adult Education at the Capitol. SMAS Student Council system is now a role model for Adult Schools around the state. Underneath, behind, alongside our amazing student leaders was the wind of Lisa, giving lift to their leadership wings.

Lisa has been a leader since the beginning of the consortium process. She has made certain that the teacher and student voices are not lost in the planning process. As the local San Mateo consortium, ACCEL, moved to creating governance structures, Lisa joined the Steering Committee and represented teachers’ interests for the county’s Adult Schools. When ACCEL moved to the implementation phase, Lisa became the co-facilitator along with a community college faculty counterpart, of the Central Collaboration Action Team. This body brought together the faculty, support staff and administrators to design alignment processes, pilot new classes and drive the innovation that the legislators called for when they developed the Adult Education Block Grant, AEBG, and legislation. Lisa is currently involved in a number of change projects which continue to push change in San Mateo County schools. All of these other organizing activities occur while Lisa continues to be an exemplary teacher in the classroom. She has been at San Mateo Adult School for 17 years, primarily teaching at the Low Intermediate ESL level. In her spare time she has managed to contribute to the textbooks series Ventures and to help Burlington English with expert advice to refine their software to be more teacher and user friendly.

Lisa Dolehide is a wonderful colleague and an extraordinary adult educator