as parents educators and leaders of the next generation how do we emphasize the joy of creativity while inspiring our children to think in new and unconventional ways tonight we meet a creativity crusader who can tell us how we can make this a habit it's good to have you here from los angeles this is klcs pbs welcome to everybody with angela williamson an innovation arts education and public affairs program everybody with angela williamson is made possible by viewers like you thank you and now your host dr angela williamson simone thank you so much for being here thank you for having me angela simone tell us a little bit about yourself well um i'm a creativity crusader i used to be an artist and i kind of transformed myself into a creativity crusader uh only because i felt that the word artist needed to be updated and so i think that it means so many different things in so many different directions for so many people i thought that a creativity crusader was a little bit more appropriate for the goal that i have in mind at this point in my life in terms of what i do i'm a former migrant student i grew up picking fruits and vegetables up and down the state of california as far north as oregon and washington state every summer i'm the only one of 11 kids to actually go off to college and graduate and according to my parents i made a mickey mouse decision to have art as a major they didn't find much value in that and so over the years it's been my mission to basically kind of engage in understanding what happened to me and to try to reproduce that for other people so i do public speaking i got into public speaking i've been doing art for almost 30 years now i started off in illustration i went to the art center college of design in pasadena california not too far from here i graduated illustration in 1986. i did that for a few years but it wasn't the thing that i wanted to do and i sort of got engaged in public demonstrations you know proposition 187 and some of the other stuff that was happening at the time and so i felt that i needed to use my art to bring about a different consciousness in people and also cultural pride as well but that has kind of evolved into more of the creativity aspect in trying to bring about some equity uh for all of our students uh regardless of age gender uh social status this is something that can create a level playing field for everybody out there you mentioned public speaking so do you tell us a little bit about who is your audience when you're doing your public speaking it varies typically i do a lot of education uh conferences educational conferences all over the country i do a lot of parental involvement stuff with a lot of parents and it's wonderful to work with the parents because the parents have what i call the the beauty and the simplicity of learning they don't have any hidden agendas they have purity about their learning capacity and so i love being able to share uh these complex ideas and kind of evolve them to in a way that they can understand it and i see it in their eyes that you know they're everything is clicky for them and they find education um very interesting and exciting so i do a lot of parental a lot of business people um uh i do a lot of educators as well and a lot of students so you talked about parents and you talked about educators you also mentioned business people why do you think it's important in the corporate arena well if you just do a simple search online you're going to find that creativity is you know basically the new mba out there the idea that if if you don't bring something new to the table especially in the times that we're living right now with you know kovid the fact that a lot of people are stuck and there's a a lot of jobs that are going to go away they're not going to come back so being able to diversify being able to bring something to the table like improvisation creativity uh thinking outside the box and being able to transform yourself constantly i think is definitely the 21st century skill that every everybody's going to have to have in order for you to be successful in the 21st century job market tell us a little bit about your background you mentioned you are one of 11 children so tell us about that and how that's made you simone silva today well there wasn't a lot of food so i'm definitely a foodie now so uh i look for the good places in la um well basically the hard work uh has kind of propelled me to be able to be in the mindset where uh working in the fields obviously was very difficult especially from a young age but i think that being able to just understand that hard work there is no magic pill there is no substitute for hard work um you know whether you're starting off or you're a successful person i think hard work is just at the center of being successful uh so you know growing up in a big family not having a lot of support because there wasn't a lot expected of me i think that it was kind of refreshing to have that you know that opportunity to say well if i fail i fail so it was kind of a good thing to to be that one person and be in a position where no one expected anything from me at that point most of my brothers and sisters were actually pulled out of school in junior high or high school and the same thing was going to happen to me so i'm glad i chose correctly i think the arts have been wonderful but obviously i still continue to kind of find other abilities and abilities that i have as a as a person and when you are giving this presentation to teachers and i'll put slash educators what do you want them to walk away with so that they can pour into the next generation like you were poured into well i think it's it's very important for us to especially in the times that we're living in we need to make sure that we understand the role that the arts especially the visual arts need to play in education for all of our children for creating that level playing field i still think that art unfortunately is being looked at as all about the pretty pictures but for me art the visual arts is an extension of my learning and i think that if we teach the arts correctly and effectively it should enhance what's already naturally there because i believe that everyone on the planet is born with upwards of 90 of the so-called 21st century skills so we're not using the arts effectively in the lower grade levels we're using it mostly for um you know following directions and things like that and what what the arts can do is enhance the individuality because i believe that that's going to be the greatest asset and has always been the greatest asset that we have as human beings the fact that there's no one else in the world like you and the fact that that equates to uh jobs it equates to money it creates equates to success the fact that there's no one else in the planet quite like you and the arts if taught effectively can nurture that extensively and based on that last statement i want to talk a little bit why you are here today i want to talk about your book so let's talk about a little bit about this book and how important it is in the visual art form well this is a book that came out uh about a year and a half ago two years maybe um basically it's a compilation it's a non-threatening way to look at creativity creativity can cannot be taught it can be enhanced and it can be drawn out by what we do by the projects i do believe that everyone's creative but i think that a lot of creativity in a lot of human beings a lot of students a lot of individuals is dormant because of what they were told you can't draw you can't paint you can't write but i believe it's dormant i don't believe that we can actually teach creativity but we can definitely enhance it and inspire motivated so what i've done with this book cultivated creative mind is basically a layman's way of introducing projects that are fun that are simple but they're also easy to understand the benefits of these different projects to draw out the creativeness in the individual and to enhance it and what have educators said about this book and how they use it in the classroom well first of all we we need to understand what's happening out there in the education system number one in most districts that i encounter around the country art is only done when there's time left over so they're not really looking at the arts as an integral component because i think most teachers including my wife who's a teacher most teachers unfortunately are told are not told the truth about what the arts are about the objective and the benefits of it so most teachers are only required to take one art class in order for them to teach art in the lower lower grade levels and that's not enough so what's happening with the arts unfortunately is that they're being left towards a rainy day or when it's a friday or extra extracurricular kind of thing and it really has to become an essential part so that we can again enhance and draw out what's already naturally there the 21st century skills that all of our kids have naturally from day one and in your thoughts can parents help this become essential as part of their learning oh absolutely i think the the parents i meet a lot of parents even with you know phd's uh who still even within that kind of context of education a lot of them really still don't understand what art is about or what it can be just because somebody knows how to draw and paint really well that's a talent that's not necessarily being creative so there's a big difference between talent and creativity they're not necessarily the same thing they can co-exist but they're not the same thing so being able to get parents to number one understand and the book talks a little bit about that it talks a little bit about the differences between talent and creativity they're not the same thing so we need to get everybody on the same page to understand that red is red and green is green so we need to get the parents involved because the greatest education does start in the home period not in the school but in the home and there are a lot of parents watching right now that would love to get one major tip from you of how they can bring this into their homes right now since most of the children will probably be doing remote learning so what advice could you give them well uh what i would advice i would give them is number one buy the book i think it would be great for them to have there's a lot of really cool fun interesting just small projects that they can do with their kids that is not you know not going to break the bank number two i think it's important for us to understand that there's all these lessons learned uh for example just by doing a self portrait for example uh one of the projects that i've done over the years with you know in the workshops that i do around the country is we do a self-portrait and you know obviously a lot of people have in their mind the idea of what a self-portrait is all about you look at yourself in the mirror or in a photograph and you know you do a self-portrait but in fact if you do a self-portrait you're going to learn how to slow down which is something that most people need to do there's uh the idea that you're gonna learn uh what things about yourself right what is it that you haven't noticed about yourself so being able to uh pay attention to details even before the coven 19 hit my wife and i went to put some gas at a gas station they had the uh hand sanitizer and i thought wow you know the attention to details i would have i would go back to that gas station you know even before this whole thing start uh started just because of the detail of that you know so i think that people who learned how to pay attention to details are going to be people who have extra successful lives and careers because most people are running you know 300 miles an hour that's just who we become as a society so being able to understand more about what you like is being able to understand more about yourself and the more you understand about yourself the more individualistic you become do you like color do you like texture do you like line what are the things that really stand out for you in this thing that we call reality because i think that's what art is it's the interpretation of what we call reality it's not about realism if you want realism take a photograph it's not about realism it's about your interpretation of things i want to see how you interpret things in your brain so even a simple self-portrait is going to tell you look you know there is no black people there's no brown people there is no white people you know if you look at yourself closely in the mirror you're going to see you're a multitude of different colors and that's a beautiful thing for our kids to understand at a very young age especially what's happening now wonderful thank you so much simone for your crusade and everything that you're doing to enhance visual arts not only for children but for parents and educators as well thank you [Applause] [Music] you'll see [Music] i believe renee thank you so much for being here thank you for having me tell us a little bit about yourself renee wow where do i start well i'm a very proud immigrant as you can see and i think it's important to say that these days uh because being an immigrant is a is a positive thing that i'm very proud of i am an immigrant from mexico city and i've been dedicated most of my life to be an age to become an educator so i've been in education for over 20 years and i'm very passionate about it and i believe that there's nothing that can change your life more than education and because you believe that you actually have some research that you've done in response to education i want you to talk a little bit about that yes so i recently received my doctorate from lmu in educational leadership and i focused on the voices of latino immigrant males in the community college system i believe that as educators we don't listen enough to what students need for their success so i wanted them to have the opportunity to reframe their own success by telling us what they need from us and i believe that a student's lived experiences is also knowledge and that's something that we absolutely need to incorporate into how we teach them and what we teach them and because you resonate with that you actually work with a lot of students in the community college system so tell us the community college you work for and tell us what you do sure i am uh the transfer center coordinator at el camino college um i believe that it is 50 of the mission of the community colleges but i believe that i should be 100 of the mission just because i feel like we need to educate people to the max right education is the number one life changer in this world and i think that it changed my life and so i feel that why not give that gift to others so i run the transfer center with an amazing team i don't do it alone and we bring transfer to the campus we make sure that they know about their transfer opportunities about any guarantee programs of the universities that we have we bring them university fairs to speak to the university reps to speak to them at fairs in our transfer center itself we take them on tours of amazing universities so they can see what that's like for themselves so those kinds of things is what i do and how has that changed now that a lot of your services are online how do you get them connected with all of these opportunities that's a really good question it's been difficult to be honest to do it via zoom but i think that at the end of the day what students want is for someone to listen to them and to hear their story and to hear their challenges so even though it's a little more difficult to connect via zoom i think that it also gives us more time to to take a breath and just like relax and be more ourselves and i feel like that in some ways has helped to facilitate that you mentioned that you resonate with a lot of their stories and so now i want you to tell us a little bit about your personal story and you can also include your educational journey as well sure well i like i said i'm a proud immigrant from mexico city my parents brought me when i was six years old so i started my education in the u.s but i had to learn english i had to get acculturated with what the educational system is like in the u.s i grew up in lynnwood that's another thing that i'm very proud of linwood california and i received my bachelors from ucla in sociology with a minor in education i received my master's from san diego state in multicultural counseling which is what allowed me to become a counselor and i just recently received my doctorate like i said from lmu and educational leadership so it's been amazing because i've been able to experience public schools private schools and really be able to tell my students what it's like to attend all of those my family matters a lot to me my parents you know i did this for my parents as well it wasn't just to advance in my professional world i really knew that it meant a lot for my parents to know that their sacrifice was worth it and so that was my gift to them giving them a doctorate was an absolute gift to them wow and so how do you help other students who want to take your same path and continue their education how do you help them in your position i think the first thing you have to do is let them know that you're listening you know like that's really important to me and that and let them tell you their story because i feel like often the reason why students don't transfer it's not because they're not smart enough or because they're not college material like that term exists right because simply they just don't know the mechanics of it or the information or there's just like a lot of lack of information out there and i think that that's what we could do a better job of so just that's the way that i help them just teaching them the basics teaching them that yes you can go to college yet yes you're smart enough and here are financial resources that will help you get there and can you tell us because you've been doing this for over 20 years can you tell us one of the success stories of the students that you one of any of the students that you've been able to help to actually help them achieve their goal yes i have an absolute favorite story his name is eduardo he is a lawyer in texas when i met him he was undocumented and he was attending a community college a student that didn't absolutely believe there was no way he was going to go to ucla and i helped him i guess he says that i was the first person to ever tell him that he could and every step of the way from getting his bachelor's to earning his law degree he kept calling me and calling me and asking me i don't know if i can do this i don't know if i can do this and at one point i said what is it going to take for you to believe it you keep achieving things why do you keep doubting yourself and he told me you know what maybe i just need you to maybe i just need to hear you say it it's not that i don't believe it but maybe because you were my champion at from the very beginning of my career maybe i just needed that reassuring voice and that fed my soul as a counselor right and so he's now a lawyer in texas he opened his own law firm and he's helping undocumented communities in need and i cannot think of a better way to contribute to society than to have been a little bit a part of that and based on your story and his story what could you give other educators and administrators what advice could you give them to help continue what you started i think that we need to first of all represent the students that we serve that's very important i i think that we need to be very mindful of hiring more faculty of color more faculty that look like our students so that students can identify with who is talking to them and who is teaching them so that's that's a must for sure um but i think listening i don't think that we ever as administrators and as faculty we have tons of meetings where we believe we know what's best but we never turn the mic sort of speak to the students to ask what do you need how do you think we can support you in being more successful so i think that would be really key i think if colleges did that we could learn a lot from them and we would implement amazing policies that would actually help the students more so let's talk about why you're here today let's talk a little bit about your role in the faculty association of california community colleges sure you know i was the least political person you would have ever met i resisted it all the way because i thought no i'm an educator i'm not a politician right but i really learned the power of advocacy through fact we call ourselves factivists right um and i was uh a person that came up with an idea for a bill called ab595 that that passed in 2019 and it was to allow undocumented immigrants to be able to go and join programs that were that they were not allowed to due to a lack of a social security number and now because of this law they can use an itin number to be able to do careers like nursing or any apprenticeship that wants a background check so to me doing that through fact really taught me the power of advocacy of how i do have a voice and how my history and my story can contribute to others uh success and and it took a lot of courage to like testify at the state level and to be able to just do that and i i think i kept pinching myself that as a former undocumented student myself how could i possibly be a part of a law that was created to help students like me and so that's the kind of work that i love doing with fact yes definitely um working with my colleagues across the state is important and what have you but i think the legislative part has become really important to me and speaking of that you talked about your colleagues what do you think are some of the challenges right now that your colleagues face in community college system that they have never faced before what are some of those challenges well with kobe 19 definitely you know a lot of us getting used to the technology and the delivery of both teaching them and counseling them via technology has absolutely been a challenge i think that a lot of our faculty members to be quite honest maybe didn't have the training and are catching up with that training now to be able to deliver that um but i think just maybe the pedagogy too like to learn how to to speak to all types of students and to really immerse themselves in not just diversity but really the understanding how we have different learners in our system right we need to tap into the way that our students learn and that's always going to be a challenge but i think it's become more of a challenge in covet 19. now let's talk a little bit transition a little bit over to the students because you help a lot of students too what do you think are some of those issues that are really impacting students right now especially the student generation that you're trying to hit right now with online learning and the difficulties there well i did i do think that a lot of our students that are low-income first generation have acts that have lack of access to technology i think that that's an assumption that we make that everybody has a laptop everybody has internet service and the reality is that they don't right so a lot of our students we're hurting a lot of our students by not having our doors open because sometimes in some ways our institution is where they do their homework where they can use computers etc and so i think that's definitely something that's affecting our communities um i also think that not every student has a study space at home that's devoted just for them because they have a family they live with they contribute to the household income and so just kobe 19 has also i think have driven students to help the family more than ever for those that already did because of the economy and so i think that that's another challenge so my biggest fear is a lot of our students are going to stop going to school because of the need to work and i think we need to work harder and making sure that that doesn't happen and how do you think fat can help with that challenge and bridge that gap well i think that we do a lot of great work through fact to teach each other best practices and ways that we can help our students one of my favorite things about fact is we do this this thing called great teachers seminar every year and what we do is we get all the best teachers that we believe we have in the community college sector and we have them teach each other whether it's theory whether it's best practices in the classroom whether it's how to connect with students better and how to tap into those learning styles for students so i think that just as simple as a concept as that sounds just getting the greatest teachers to talk to each other is an absolute thing that we don't do enough and the fact facilitates really well wow now some final thoughts you you've been all over just helping students helping faculty helping the california community colleges what do you think is next for renee wow well apparently being here is something that's next for me um i never thought i'd be in such an amazing show that highlights education i mean that's for sure but i think that i've been i'm a person that once i reach a goal i need to look for that next goal right um so i think that i need to develop more my leadership skills one of the reasons why i got involved with facts is because i felt that i had reached the ultimate goal within my own college but i needed to now work on issues that were statewide right so i think i it's hard to know what i want to do in the next five years but i would love to teach at a university maybe like in a master's program or a doctorate why not i would love to teach at unam which is like the ucla of mexico city that's been one of my dreams i never got to do it as a study abroad student so i figured if i didn't get to do it as a student maybe i can do it as a professor so those would be great goals that if i achieve them would be would make me really happy thank you so much dr lozano for being here and everything that you do for the students and the faculty in the state of california you are such an inspiration thank you so much and thank you for joining us on everybody with angela williamson viewers like you make this show possible stay in touch with us on social media good night and stay well [Music] you