Me, as a Leader. Parent, Teacher Community Leader

Me, as a Leader (I know it's I ). There's a Leader in everyone; it just needs to be fostered

I am a mother of three, a wife, daughter, sister, and aunty. I am a mentor to my community and an advocate for humanity. I am what you would call an outlier in a statistical graph. That mark doesn't fit with the rest of the data. I dropped out of High School at 16 because my dad sent me to the Dominican Republic to live after running away from my stepmother's home for physical, sexual, mental, psychological, and emotional abuse. I was a straight-A student with horrible home life. I looked forward to going to school every day and cried on the weekends. I was not too fond of holidays.

To this day, Thanks Giving, Christmas, and all those breaks from school felt more like a prison term for me. I dreaded staying home because of the conditions of my environment. The best part of my life was my schooling. At a very young age, I wanted to be a teacher because of my love for school. Even though I had many erroneous gaps in my education, I was able to succeed, and now I am a secondary school science educator. Sometimes I think about it now, and it feels like I'm watching someone else's life. I lived in D.R. for a year after my father deported me. I say this because he took my passport and told me I would never return. I was there till the age of 17 and returned to N.Y.C. I won't say how I returned, but I managed to get back to the states.

I started working in anything I could make money; bartending, clothing stores; I was even a bouncer at a strip club once, yes, I even tried to dance, but my community wouldn't let me. I worked at the Olive Garden during the day and Jimmy's Bronx Cafe at night. One day while working at The Olive Garden, I crossed paths with a former teacher, my 6th grade Art Teacher from P.S. 132, and she convinced me to return and finish my education. I enrolled in a G.E.D. program that fall semester. The Manhattan Learning Center on 35th St and 8th Ave in Manhattan. (Ironically, I taught the E.S.L. G.E.D. class in the very same center.) After receiving my G.E.D., I enrolled in La Guardia Community College, where I met my first fiance.

I dropped out of La Guardia because I was pregnant and had to work and support myself and my baby. A year later, I was pregnant again with my second child and felt like drowning in quicksand. Not because of the babies; I felt like I would never finish my education. All I wanted was to graduate. My fiance and I weren't supposed to be together. It just happened. We weren't what you called an ideal couple, but after ten years of mutual physical and verbal abuse, we decided to part ways. The best part of those ten years was the two children we raised.

I enrolled at Bronx Community College, and my first milestone as a leader happened. I was a full-time student still working two jobs and started my club. The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. I believed I was going got save the world!. I thought that I, this uneducated ghetto girl from the Bronx, would start an international movement against wars and racism against people of color. While a full-time science major. My professors taught me how to balance both my political and scientific aspirations. I was even able to run a successful (to my friends and me) Mayoral campaign in 2009 against Bloomberg.

It was more of a political statement than a Mayoral campaign because even though I made the ballot and was the first woman of color to make it.

I wasn't successful in getting enough votes to make an impact.

I managed to graduate that same year finally. I was ecstatic to break all those stereotypes about women like me. 2 children, a politically active community, and now a college graduate. I thought that was the turning point of my life. Then I met my husband, Charles. A black kid from Harlem, as he calls himself. Raised in foster homes, he has endured, if not the same, a worse hard life as a kid than myself. I believe he had it worse, even though he will never admit it. He showed me how to believe in myself; he showed me that I was a woman who was powerful, intelligent, and capable of doing anything I put my mind to. He pushed me to complete my dream of becoming a teacher. An educator for children just like me because I wanted to work in Transfer Schools. I tried to foster all those students everyone else gave up on; students just like me.

I wanted to show them that even though you may not have a Lili white life. You may encounter arduous bumps on the road, but you can still finish the path you envisioned for yourself. I continued my education and received a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology, Biology, and Chemistry with a minor in Middle and High School Education from Lehman College. Since I've always had a political bug in me, I always serve as part of The Student Government Associations on my campuses, along with being the President of my tenants' association.

I received a Master of Arts in Secondary Science Education from The City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in 2014. I also completed my second master's degree from C.C.N.Y. in Educational Leadership in 2016. I still can't believe I completed a second Master's degree; I never thought I would receive a first.

I am now contemplating receiving my Doctorate in Urban Education from The Graduate Center. I have this thing where I want to be the first person to graduate with all the degrees CUNY has to offer. I have an Associate's degree, a Bachelor's degree, and two Masters degrees from CUNY. It would be an outstanding achievement to receive my Doctorate from a CUNY school as well; I'm on my second Doctoral degree from Northeastern University. I guess this would be my sixth milestone if it happens.

I was teaching at Asa Phillip Randolph High School when I wrote this evaluation of myself as a leader in 2015. I had just left the High School I was teaching in for five years because the principal said I cared too much. She said this because I helped a student who was suicidal; I still support Abdul; she (his preferred name) is my child even though she is a grown woman now. My supervisor then said that checking on my suicidal student wasn't part of my job description. She also told me I could not speak "gibberish" to my students. In other words, Spanish. I do have a lot to thank her. This human being went as far as to send pictures of a monkey as a school-wide text saying it was my unborn child; unfortunately for her, I received the text as well; she is now an Admin at N.Y.C.D.O.E. - TWEED. She made my third milestone in life, my decision to transition from in the classroom to an administrator. She gave me an enormous will to finish my administration program and open my school for the "undesired" students in the prison complex geared school system we are part of. She is not what I would call a moral or ethical leader.

While she may be a leader at what she does, I don't consider her a moral leader because a moral leader would consider people's backgrounds, cultures, and emotions and allow them to tap into those assets to benefit the institution. A leader is someone who loves, cares, and services. A leader empathizes and recognizes the needs of others and guides them to self-solutions to build skills to pass on. A moral leader can empathize and harvest the talent and skills needed to help someone else become a leader. A moral leader is someone who is straightforward and can articulate to their followers how to become leaders. That is my definition of a leader.

While others may not consider me a leader because I do not have followers, I believe that I do not have followers because I foster leaders.

Leaders do not follow; they inspire others to lead on their own. To learn and apply the skills they learned, not to do what they are told, but to educate others on what they know.?

(I miss you Dr. McInerney, or better known as Andy <3 )