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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
