Women in Leadership, a local production of PBS Michiana WNIT is presented in partnership with Mr. Jerry Hammes.

Mr. Hammes is proud to present this program in memory of his late wife, Dorene Dwyer Hammes and all the women who continue to impact our community for the better.

Additional funding provided by NIPSCO, The South Bend Clinic and First Source Bank.

Thank You!

Women currently fill seventy six percent of teaching jobs in the United States public school systems, but the events of 2020 have demonstrated the need for innovative and non-traditional educational methods.

Three Michiana women: Amanda Russell, Samantha Shank and Dalila Huerta are making long-lasting and wide-reaching changes throughout the area by serving students whose needs aren't met with traditional teaching methods.

I'm not of the mind that just the high school equivalency is all that they need.

I think that--that we can package that with a lot of other opportunities for them to be more active citizens in their communities.

All of my resources are from a student's perspective, and a person who loves learning.

We understand that in order to thrive, to be our best selves, we have an obligation to ourselves and to one another to address every single need that we have.

While Amanda Russell may not have intended to end up working in adult education, her passion for helping others achieve their dreams by bettering themselves led her to the South Bend School District, where she is the Assistant Director of College and Workforce Readiness.

I was raised by a single mom who was very strong-minded.

We lived in a trailer park and I watched her go to work during the day and then at night go to--to classes and school and watched her go all the way up from her bachelor's to a doctorate degree in adult education, interestingly.

I do believe that watching my mom work so hard to--to move herself out of poverty really taught me that education is the way to get out of difficult situations.

The way that I came into adult education was I was teaching a bilingual class of fourth-grade students in the South Bend schools at Harrison Primary Center.

And I was approached by the then leader of this program to--he asked me to teach an English class in the evening for the adults of the students who I taught actually during the day.

And just like those things happen in life, I was--I ended up falling in love with teaching adults.

And what became--what started out as a nighttime position ended up becoming full-time.

In St. Joseph County, we are able to serve individuals from sixteen years old on up until--we've had students who are seventy-five and eighty years old.

The original program began as a GED program that started after World War II, when--when veterans went from high school to fight in the war and then came back and didn't have a chance to get their degree the normal way.

A common misconception is that the program is limited to helping adults achieve their high school equivalency, when in reality services include adult literacy programs, trainings and certifications, teaching English as a second language, career coaching, and more.

We're always attempting to adapt to the needs of the community by staying in touch with what it is that our students are in need of.

We work with community partners to find out what our shared clients are in need of.

An example of last year's COVID and the pandemic, the needs greatly changed.

We--we, for example, we discovered that there were English language learners at home with abusive husbands and didn't have the language to advocate for themselves.

So we--we were able to rally together and find resources for people like that.

So what we try to do is look outside of the classroom.

So, for example, we know that students are coming to us to get their high school equivalency, for example, so they do attend classes for that.

However, we like to offer a lot of other offerings for them in order to--to learn critical thinking skills and some other skills that are outside of--of that specific track.

So, for example, we are going to be offering a self-defense class this fall, just for women, and a variety of other things like cooking classes and other--other offerings that we would consider continuing education.

We are under the Department of Labor, which means that we are tasked with getting students jobs, getting them better jobs, helping them find out what their career goals are and we have a career coach for that purpose.

The trainings that we have that end in certifications include logistics, QuickBooks, paraprofessional, a welding course.

We have a family literacy site where parents, and they are primarily women but we have had men there, are able to bring their children.

We take children from six months up until kindergarten.

The South Bend school bus picks them up and--and--and the parents are allowed to work on their high school equivalency or practice English, learn English, or they can do some of the certifications online at that site.

So while they're focused on those goals, their children are taken care of in a--in a preschool setting down the hallway.

The-- the preschool is a high school curriculum-based.

It's very rich in literacy.

We work with the parents to--to not only promote reading and literacy for themselves, but to help instill that love with their children; so they take home books, they have parent and child time.

It's really a lovely site.

As the leader of the program every year, I am looking at ways to be innovative and to improve on--on our efforts from the year before.

And so, I don't know that I'll ever feel like we've reached a place where this is it and we, you know there's no room for growth or improvement.

And I think that ways in which we will grow will be more technological ways; our enrollment might shift and change.

We're constantly looking at what the needs are in the community as far as jobs.

So, for example, if there's--if there's a training that we're offering and there are no jobs available, then we would get rid of that and offer something that was.

We also try to keep an ear to what our students and our shared clients with community partners are really looking for.

So I like to think of us as constantly evolving and shifting to--to what those needs are in the community.

I would like to think that I am a good mix of humble and proud, and I am incredibly proud of this program and the staff that helps run it and the students that we serve.

And one of the things that I'm--I'm very proud of is our ability to embrace diversity and change.

And we get a variety of students; I think that there is a misunderstanding about the typical type of student who joins our program.

And I think most people think it's--it's the dropout who just couldn't hack high school.

And that's--that's not it at all.

I'm very much in awe of our students.

We get a lot of them who are entrepreneurs, a lot of them who are highly skilled in their home countries, for example, on the ELL side.

We had a student come through who when you looked at him, you might have just assumed that he was a gamer who worked in his basement in the evenings and he met with a career coach.

And the coach asked him, what is it that you want to do?

And he said, I want to be a drag queen.

And she didn't balk at that.

She immediately started to look at resources to determine what it was that she could help this person become a drag queen.

And I was proud that that was the stance that she took.

I want to be that kind of business that does that.

In the end, he ended up--we got him a job in I.T., which was great.

But we also were able to support him in his personal goals of getting that on his own.

One thing that I also am proud of is that we have, in growing and helping cultivate career paths for our students, I have hired several of our students on staff.

An example is, we have a student who was learning English with us and she ended up applying for a preschool teaching position with us and brought her son.

So she's--she was at the family literacy site.

And I'm currently prepared to offer a high school equivalency class in Spanish and have asked several of our Spanish speaking students if they're interested in applying.

So I love this idea of them not just being our students, but a part of our family as well, and working with us as colleagues after having worked with us as our students.

The literacy program is one of my proudest achievements as the leader of this program.

In the past five years, I've initiated a bunch of different things, but this is one that I felt like the community really needed.

And we put a lot of effort into making sure that we were equipped to be able to teach adults to read and--and hire the right people for that position.

If there was one thing that I wanted people to know about our program, it is that this--the group of people that work behind the scenes and in the classrooms and directly in front of students are the most fantastic group of individuals that I've worked with.

They are passionate.

They respect their students.

They--they're in it.

They go above and beyond to help them outside of their original goals.

You know, that they come into our program with.

If somebody would like to become a part of our program, they would need to call the front desk at 574-393-5801 or send us an email at AdultEd@SB.school.

Samantha Shank took her own experiences as an "unsocialized homeschooler" and founded LearnInColor.com, a blog that has attracted over five million visitors and provides educational resources for both traditional and home-schooled students.

I began homeschooling when I was in fourth grade.

The public school system just wasn't working for me, personally.

At the time, my parents didn't know a lot about home schooling and they both worked full time.

But we decided, hey, let's give it a shot and if we don't like it, we can always go back to the public school system.

But I ended up really enjoying my experiences and I was homeschooled from grades four through 12 and homeschooling allowed me to graduate both high school and college early.

I see myself as a student who loves learning.

I started Learn in Color when I was 14 years old, it actually began as a creative outlet and I needed a way to get out my love of history, books, movies, and so I decided to start a blog.

By recognizing that a traditional public school education does not work for everyone, coupled with a lack of resources available to older home schoolers, Samantha was able to use her own creativity and fill the void.

If you look up middle school home school blogs, there are very few resources out there for middle school students.

The early elementary area and niche is completely saturated, but when it comes to the older grades, there's not much resources out there.

And when it comes to home schooling, history in particular, there are very few quality blogs out there.

So that was a really-- like a big gap in the niche that I was able to fill.

Originally, the audience of Learn in Color was home school parents.

But after I did a survey of my audience, I realized that there were about fifty percent of teachers following me.

And I didn't realize that or predict that when I was fifteen, sixteen years old.

So since then, I've tried to shape and create my resources to be more teacher friendly.

I didn't have a space for the students' names and some of my very first resources because I just assumed it was a home school parent and they knew their child's name.

But a lot of my resources are book lists or compilations from other resources.

So it wasn't necessarily me writing and creating that material.

It was me recommending, like, Holocaust memoirs or biographies or some other published material.

So it wasn't necessarily me creating the material from scratch.

I have a lot of different movie and book guides, and even from them I'm always taking from original source material, not just from a questionable Internet site or just making up information it's me, like taking something from the fact and the source material.

Pinterest is actually how I first went viral on the Web and it's the original way that people were finding my resources.

Facebook is now one of my biggest traffic sources.

Google is really big.

SEO search engine optimization has been a really key part in me growing my website.

And from then on I've learned that social media trends fade and start up.

So that's why I haven't really joined the TikTok band.

It's nice because a lot of my business mentors and a lot of the bloggers who have inspired me and who have helped me along the way are always just a couple steps ahead of me in terms of their blog and their business.

So I'm able to quickly learn from their mistakes and adapt accordingly.

So when I see a new platform come out, it's not--I don't always rush towards that immediately.

However, if I see it has a lot of potential and starting to gain traction, I'll probably join it.

I am constantly updating my materials.

I think I update my own resources more than I create new resources.

It just depends on the area, my schedule, what's going on.

I wish I was more consistent with them.

When I start--was getting started blogging, a lot of people were saying, oh, you need to be posting once a week, once a day.

But I've realized when you're focusing on quantity instead of quality, the quality tends to lower.

So I try to only post when I have inspiration and sometimes I schedule them out so I have posts for a while so it's not just all in a big cluster.

But I don't try to create resources based on the schedule, I try to create them based on when I feel like there's a need.

Two years ago, Teach Them Diligently, a homeschool convention, had invited me to speak and I was able to speak at their Nashville convention.

I was supposed to go to Texas, but because of the pandemic, that was canceled, which I was super sad about.

But this year I was able to speak at Teach Them Diligently in Nashville and in Mobile, Alabama.

One of my greatest successes has been just looking at the sheer numbers and when those are humanized and when people tell me how my resources have impacted them personally.

One of my recent pieces of feedback was from a lady who worked at a juvenile delinquent facility and she said she used my movie guide for the Pursuit of Happyness to help her students.

And she said usually her students struggle with work ethic and trying to figure things out of life.

But the movie guide actually got them thinking a lot about their own life and they were all very engaged.

So when I get pieces of feedback like that, like, that's why I do what I do.

I want students to be able to make connections with the world around them, and I want them to learn how to love learning.

A lot of my resources are lists and compilations from people around the world.

I believe there are so many people in the world that are smarter than me and that have so much more wisdom to offer.

And just compiling all of those and their life resources into my blog and helping people find what they're looking for.

So, for example, with World War II, I don't believe that I need to write necessarily something about World War II, because it's already been written.

There are so many firsthand accounts that are so much more important than my singular voice.

So just compiling all the resources into one post so it makes, busy parents or busy teachers, it makes it easy for them to search up and look for what they're needing to look for.

I want people to remember my resources because they meant something.

When I was in my teenage years, I was being--having a lot of pressure to create a beauty blog or a fashion or make-up blog, because that's what kids my age were doing.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I love reading make-up blogs, getting fashion tips, but, for me, that wasn't what I know I was meant to do in life.

Around that same time, I had a post about the Holocaust go viral and it was seen by over a quarter of a million people within a week.

And I was getting so many comments and feedback from that post saying that post made them hug their loved ones a little bit more and made them text their parents, 'thank you for raising me' or 'I love you'.

And just like those little moments, I want somebody--I want people to get from my resources and from my life that, like, something of substance.

If people are interested in my resources, you can find me at LearnInColor.com and Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram under Learn in Color.

Thanks to her experiences as a child, Dalila Huerta has become dedicated to restorative justice and founded her consulting company Cempasúchil Cultural Equity Work.

In the middle of eighth grade, my father lost his job in Chicago and we relocated to northern Indiana.

And when I registered for school, during this time, they were starting to see a large increase in Latino students.

And when I first walked in, I was with my mother to register, the first thing that they told me when they saw me was, 'Oh, another one'.

And they put me in remedial English when I had been in advanced classes, they didn't look at my transcripts, my grades, nothing.

They put me in pre-algebra, even though I was already in honors algebra.

And so this--I had seen discrimination before.

You know, I don't want to paint Chicago to be this perfect paradise because there was a lot of injustice there that I had seen, but up until this point, school had really been a haven for me where teachers really, you know, they loved me and they took care of me and they saw me for who I was.

And to have that taken away from me when I enrolled in this new place was really hurtful.

Thankfully, my parents were able to advocate on my behalf and they got the situation resolved.

And through that process, I also met some really wonderful adults and really wonderful teachers who did see me for who I was.

But it was that process that I know that--that without those individuals, my life could have been incredibly different, that I could have lost all interest in school, that I could have internalized that--that idea, right?

That--that I was unworthy to be there.

After high school, I went to college in Indianapolis, and then I did a year in Madison for graduate school, and then I transferred to Delaware.

I ended up working in Philadelphia.

So I moved around quite a bit as an adult as I was beginning my professional career.

My parents were still in the area, they didn't live in South Bend, but they lived near South Bend.

I really wanted my son to be close to them.

My dad was close to retirement.

I figured I'd come here for maybe a couple of years until he retired and then we would move somewhere else.

And I just sort of fell in love with this community.

I loved the different relationships that I was able to build here.

Dalila helps create an open dialogue for those who participate in her programs.

They are able to bring their own voice, knowledge, and personal experiences to the conversation about restorative justice.

So restorative justice is a worldwide movement.

It's based on indigenous practices.

So the restorative justice learning that I've participated in is heavily rooted in indigenous practices from this continent.

But the circle process, these values have been incorporated in different indigenous cultures throughout the world.

So for me, restorative justice--there are multiple definitions but, for me and for--for other people here in South Bend that were working on restorative justice initiatives, we define it as relational accountability.

And that's at its core definition, which means that by being with one another, by building those relationships, we develop an obligation to one another.

We understand that in order to thrive, to be our best selves, we have an obligation to ourselves and to one another to address every single need that we have.

And so when conflict, when harm happens, we come together to try to figure out what is the best way to address that harm, to repair that harm, to address needs in the community.

What is the best way to do that, where every single person's dignity is respected?

I work with a variety of different organizations.

I am an educator at heart, so I work with a lot of schools from prekindergarten, from preschool age, all the way to adults, so the educators themselves.

I personally love working with middle school age youth.

They're my favorite age.

There's so much fun, so honest.

I love their energy, but I also work with small organizations and just regular people from the community.

So you don't have to be an organization, I do a lot of restorative justice circles around town.

So one of the most valuable partnerships that I have right now is with the South Bend Community School Corporation.

So I work with them to lead restorative justice trainings which are open to the public.

We primarily focus on restorative justice in education, so a large part of our participants are people that are involved in school: so teachers, social workers, administrators.

But again, we also--have we welcome lots of other--other individuals from the community.

We've worked with folks from St. Margaret's house, from Big Brother Big Sister, from the Civil Rights Heritage Center, I worked at La Casa de Amistad, which is a youth and community center, primarily focusing on the Latinx community here in South Bend and in the wider region.

And through that job, because it's very community oriented, I did get to build a lot of relationships and work with a lot of different demographics.

So I was--I was directing the preschool program there, also working with Afterschool Youth programing and then just also doing a lot of community outreach, especially with educators, which is something that we hadn't done before.

And so I think through that position, because I was looking at education holistically, right?.

So looking at family issues, socioeconomic issues, all of those different things that--that happen in our community, I do think that that helped pave the way for--for my career now, because now I've been able to build those relationships and really see all of the different facets about education in our community.

But there's also restorative justice within the criminal legal system.

I love the program called Common Justice.

It's an organization out of New York and they do phenomenal work with felons, right?

So some of the gravest harms that a person can commit, but they work with--with felons and with people who have been affected by those felonies.

But I think my role as a circle keeper is to be mindful of the different audiences that I'm working with, to be able to provide support for those.

Because when you're working with teenagers, right, and they're bringing this raw emotion there, how can I scaffold their learning versus, you know, when you're working with adults and they may have some of those tools already, how can I be there as a colleague or as a friend or as a supporter for--for that age?

I think a lot of the--the resistance to racial justice movements is a lack of knowledge or understanding or misunderstanding what has actually happened.

And so restorative justice provides a really great way of--of presenting information, not as an educator or an authority figure, but to bring those voices to the center where you can't argue against somebody's experience, right?

They're telling you their truth.

But pairing that also with other learning opportunities that are more traditional, like lectures or book clubs or things like that, where you're--you're diving into a topic is really important for--for this work.

And so one of the programs that I run is the Racial Justice Institute, which is specifically for eighth graders.

We've worked with Jefferson Middle School for--this will be our fifth year now.

And so we--we use artwork, right?

So students are looking at artwork.

They're visiting the Civil Rights Heritage Center and the Snite Museum of Art, looking at artwork, looking at the stories of activists throughout time to understand how people use their agency, their interest to advocate for racial justice.

But when the students come together in circle, now they're talking about themselves, their experiences, what they have experienced in school, in the community, and how they can use their skills and interests to fight for racial justice in their community.

So I chose the names Cempasúchil Cultural Equity Work, especially the word Cempasúchil.

It's a Spanish word for Marigold.

And for anybody who's watched "Coco", you'll understand that marigolds are the flower that we use for our Day of the Dead celebrations.

So we adorn our altars in Mexico, especially where my family's from.

We adorn them with marigolds, Cempasúchil, and they are the ones that guide the ancestors to the present.

And so I am very thankful to all of my ancestors, both biological ancestors, but also professional ancestors of people who have paved this work before me.

So I wanted to honor all of the people that came before me that brought me to where I am today.

Educators have long held an important and valuable role in our society.

And as these women have shown, being able to address a student's unique needs can make a tremendous impact on their health and happiness.

It's truly just a fantastic and supportive environment for anybody who wants to join.

I've always been a very firm believer about whatever works best for you or your children.

I'm just really excited that we've been able to come together to unite our different efforts to create a restorative justice hub here in South Bend.

Women in Leadership, a local production of PBS Michiana WNIT, has been presented in partnership with Mr. Jerry Hammes, Mr. Hammes is proud to support this program in memory of his late wife, Dorene Dwyer Hammes and all the women who continue to impact our community for the better.

Additional funding provided by.

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This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

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