Tanya

"I joined Teach for America taught Middle School sixth grade English and history for five years before I got laid off."

"So we have a lot of responsibility to our constituents to make sure their voice is heard in policy making at the local level."

"So every day is different which I really love"

"Empathizing with various perspectives is important. So being willing to listen and hear ideas that are different from my own but ultimately making decisions that I think will serve children best is a challenge"

"I love the opportunity to make a real impact...it makes a big difference when someone is from a community and wants to do better by their Community gets to be in these spaces to do so."

"a challenge continues to be to listen to a variety of opinions, but to still make the best choices for those whose voices are not often heard"

"If you want the world to be a better place, there's no better way than helping to cultivate the minds that will take on the challenges of the future."

"public education in particular is not self-serving. You're not gonna make a lot of money."

"to really make transformational change for kids and to be hopeful about that can be hard but really important to hang on to"

"I think a lot of people consider teaching and it's a great first step."

"making time to listen to others and to build relationships even with those with whom you don't agree."

"I think the hands-on experience through the tutoring job I had was really helpful just understanding if this was a career path I wanted to take."

"And then now as a board member getting to serve people with lots of intersectional identities, but also might feel this sort of pieces are at odds at some times which happens with decision making in a lot of ways and it happens with representing kind of the vast ends of the spectrum from really poor communities to really wealthy communities in my district"