Helena and her two fathers co-created a poem in 3 voices that honors and remembers their trauma-filled days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on the “Praxis of Grief, Joy, and Healing” in this special themed issue of this peer-reviewed journal. Where do we find ourselves in our changed reality? How are joy, grief, and healing intertwined with the transformation that has taken place over the past COVID years?
Helena was an invited speaker alongside Equity & Excellence in Education editor Lingyu Li – a multilingual doctoral candidate in the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Dr. Nirmala Erevelles – a Professor at The University of Alabama, Dr. Lisette E. Torres – a senior research associate and project coordinator at TERC, and Dr. Federico Waitoller – a Professor at the University of Chicago. The five of them held a dialogue on disability justice that became a featured article in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Equity and Excellence in Education.
Using her positionality as a middle school student, 12-year-old Helena looks back on her elementary school assignments with a critical lens to decolonize her education. Meticulously reflecting on what she was taught – and not taught – from kindergarten through fifth-grade, she looks at key assignments to show how a colonized education happened to her and how she grew into political consciousness and began to confront the lies she was being taught. She offers advice to teachers for presenting students with a more equitable and decolonized curriculum in the lower grades. The entire issue is downloadable for free right here.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). The King of the missions: 4th-grade California history project on the missions in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 40-41.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). Sir Francis Drake: Explorer and hero or pirate and slave trader (4th-Grade) in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 42-43.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). The raven, the salmon, and the fox: A Native American fable in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 44-46.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). The interesting narrative of the life of Lydia Equiano (5th-Grade) in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 47-53.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). The story of Savannah by Savannah herself in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 54-57.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). Encounter with Ponce de León (5th-Grade) in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 59-63.
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022). The journal of Juan Ponce de León (5th-Grade) in “Brave and didn’t know it: A 12-year-old decolonizes her elementary education.” The Iowa Journal for the Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, pgs. 64-90.
BOOK CHAPTERS
As a child and teen who experienced years of social exclusion bullying during her elementary and middle school years, Helena writes about how her favorite show – Stranger Things - taught her about the power of the archetype of the outsider. This awareness that she was an outsider gave her a place to put the pain of years of exclusion and, she believes, saved her from more years of pain. In this chapter, Helena celebrates the power of the outsider - on screen and in life – as the ones who save the world.
This chapter is about a restorative justice attempt and failure. It is about a family negotiating the disappointment of a school that failed their child. Helena, 13, experiences a horrendous bullying on her school campus at the hands of older boys. Helena’s parents – professionals with rich, deep backgrounds in restorative justice – attempt to partner with the school and other families only to be met with disregard and silence. The school’s administration believes it is fully implementing restorative justice, but it is performative in nature and only ends up raining down more violence on Helena. How do parents negotiate the reality that their child is in an unsupportive environment? How do families and schools get to a place of renewal, reimagining what safety is while maintaining a strong partnership? Compelling elements of this chapter are the captured dialogue between parties, Helena’s extraordinary generosity in drafting letters to her peers who violated her, and the family’s summarized tips to guide others in navigating the everyday crisis of bullying – especially when a school fails to maintain safety for all students.
This book addresses Black people and their experiences in the African Diaspora with the intersection of Critical Race Theory and Critical Media Literacy. Helena’s chapter is an interview with her first Black male teacher – an interview she asked for to honor the experience – and delves into their shared Haitian ancestry and important issues in the experiences of Black educators and Black children surviving schooling.
Helena first presented this book chapter as a conference paper in 2021 at The Black Girlhoods in Education Research Collective Conference. Claiming multiple geographies - like Blackness, girlhood, disability, adoption, a two-dad family, and others - the author addresses how schooling sees her as multiple deficits instead of the multiple assets she claims to be herself. Her claim, then, is that it is schooling that is deficit, not students. The author fiercely confronts critics that continue to say she is not enough and shows how, brick-by-brick, she has built herself into a young Black scholar despite school’s deficit view of her. In doing so, she reveals a model of how other children can use their voices to transform the multiple deficit ways that education looks at them.
Young global changemakers for a feminist future is a book that delves deeply into feminist history, current feminist issues, and changemaker tactics and strategies. Then the book invites fifteen young women from around the world to speak in their own voices about Black feminism, body image, safety, reproduction rights, ethnic feminism, education feminists, post-colonial feminists, and media and corporate changemakers. Helena is featured as one of these amazing global changemakers and is, once again, the youngest voice.
For this book, Helena surveyed the Black women in her life and asked them what it was that helped them through their K-12 schooling experiences. She collected their wisdoms and pulled out the key phrases that spoke to her the most. She also wanted to honor the powerful Black women that she has heard speak in the last few years and reflected back on the advice they’d given her in their speeches as well. She has heard Lecia Brooks from The Southern Poverty Law Center speak several times. She heard Dr. Angela Davis speak and wanted her words in this paper too. She also reached back to history and included phrases from Ruby Bridges and Linda Brown because they are such important historical figures to her. “I have been inspired to greatness by the children who came before me,” Helena says. Some of the phrases, then, are from women in her life, some from important activists today, and some from girls her age in history. If a phrase is from a friend, she let it stand alone, but if it was from one of the well-known people then she put their phrase in italics and their name in parentheses because she had learned about citations and plagiarism in 4th-grade. “I turned all of these wisdoms into a Phrase Poem that offers advice to Black girls like me as they negotiate the often-hostile hallways of school.” Learn more about the book here.
When Helena was 7-years-old her parents asked her some questions about what it was like to live in a two-dad family. They wrote down her answers verbatim and sent an essay into some editors who were writing a book on queer families. It got accepted and it was her first-ever official publication in a book. She even got paid $15.00 for it. When you get paid for your work it is called “public scholarship” and when you don’t get paid for your work it is called “academic scholarship.” She was 8-years-old when it was published.
CURRICULUM
The Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles is an important Holocaust museum and each year 130,000 middle and high school students visit it. The Museum currently has a major Anne Frank exhibit and has developed a curriculum for it. Liebe Geft, the Director of the Museum, and Linda Blanshay, the Director of Education, know of Helena’s work and invited her to do the model for the Anne Frank Journal to show teachers and students a “best practice” piece. Helena did a model for the whole journal and it is a 73-page interactive curriculum. Helena’s “best practices” model will be the guide for tens-of-thousands of middle and high school students for years to come.
Anne Frank, in her famous essay titled “Give!” speaks to the great acts of kindness that each person can do daily. In this lesson at The Museum of Tolerance, students are asked to read Anne’s essay and use it as a springboard to write their own essay on the power of giving. Helena was invited to write an essay on giving that is imbedded into the Guide as an example educators can show their own students on how to accomplish this task.
Helena was asked to lead a teen session on poetry in her role as a participant in the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Program at the Billie Jean King Main Library. She developed and wrote a 24-page curriculum guide – the first of its kind for the library – on a favorite poetry form of hers called a phrase poem. Helena shows the poetry form with several of her forms of activism – The Humans Who Feed Us PSA, Disability Justice, Feminism, and Black Girlhood.
MAGAZINES, POETRY, BLOGS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Helena’s original painting was selected as the cover of the magazine for the 2023 LGBT Heritage Month Calendar and Cultural Guide. The original piece of art was painted as an anniversary gift for her two fathers. It was unveiled at LA City Hall and then the poster was gifted to Helena afterwards by the City of Los Angeles.
Mission Magazine is a global fashion magazine with a purpose-driven mission to raise awareness around global social causes such as human rights, peace and security, climate justice, stem, gender, and youth issues. Mission Magazine is not only about giving back, it also aims to engage socially conscious people and companies through the lens of fashion to help those in need. Helena was featured in this global fashion magazine by invitation and is a part of their series on young global changemakers. She is the youngest changemaker featured in the issue. Click here to see Helena’s feature.
Helena writes, “Hopefully everyone has a teacher who loved them deeply and was the turning-point educator in their lives. I did. I struggled through nearly all of elementary school as my family and I tried to navigate the world of learning disabilities. But one teacher made a transformational difference in my life and this is an ode to her, my beloved 4th-grade teacher Ms. Takii.” The National Education Association published this poem for the 2,000 conference participants at the Leadership Summit in San Francisco in March of 2023 where Helena was the invited plenary keynote speaker and participated in three different conference sessions on ableism and disability justice.
After being invited to attend the premier of The Humans Who Feed Us Campaign by founder Mónica Ramírez, Helena created this PSA to promote the work of this important campaign and support the work of Justice for Migrant Women. Founder Mónica Ramírez said, “Helena is absolutely amazing…Great job on this wonderful video.” See the PSA here.
Helena and her two dads reflect about a horrific bullying experience that Helena had at the end of seventh grade. The two dads help Helena negotiate hard conversations about repair and apology. The blog was written by invitation of the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal Project. It can be read here.
Helena continues her work with the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Girls Learn International. After a year of serving as one of the Blog Team Members, Helena has been elevated to a leadership position as Senior Blog Team Writer. She will be responsible for leading the Blog Team this year, training them on writing, editing their blog posts, and overall management of this global team. So far in 2023, Helena has published the following blogs for The Feminist Focus:
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2023, May 23). Tita Likes to Say. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2023, February 24). The Voices of My School Peers. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com/post/710163729559502848/the-voices-of-my-school-peers
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2023, January 16). The Humans Who Feed Us. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com/post/709895968336855040/the-humans-who-feed-us
Dr. Jen Stacy and Dr. Yesenia Fernández, founders and editors of In Dialogue/En Diálogo contacted Helena and commissioned her to create original art for this new academic journal. They had seen Helena’s art in some family social media posts and loved it and wanted their new journal to have youth presence. Artist-Activist Helena pulled all of the stops out for the commission, creating a robust 53-page portfolio, multiple cover ideas, individual art transparencies, and three custom Helenatica fonts.
After a competitive global application process, Helena was chosen as one of six girls from around the world to be on The Feminist Focus Blog Team. Girls Learn International empowers and educates middle and high school students to advocate for human rights, equality, and universal education in the United States and around the world. Student-to-student, GLI is building a movement of informed advocates for
universal girls’ education and a new generation of leaders and activists for social change.
Helena has published the following blogs in 2022 for The Feminist Focus:
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022, December 1). Have a very feminist holiday. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com/post/704354375889567744/have-a-very-feminist-holiday
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022, November 1). Girls receive national STEM awards. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com/post/701298580284227584/girls-receive-national-stem-awards
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022, October 1). Remembering – and honoring – the history of hatpin feminism. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com/post/698127449076154368/remembering-and-honoring-the-history-of-hatpin
- Donato-Sapp, H. (2022, September 1). Feminist Flakes. {Blog post}. Retrieved from https://feministfocus.tumblr.com/post/694665422792998912/feminist-flakes
Conversations for Justice is the name of the Girls Learn International chapter that Helena founded at her middle school. Conversations for Justice was about young people like tackling tough topics head-on. Helena was proud that she founded this feminist club in her own school. The culminating project for the first year was to create a PSA on an important topic to share with the school community. Helena chose Disability Justice and you can view her PSA here.
Helena’s second article in New Moon Girls Magazine is about the history of vaccinations and it is a very timely piece. She had to research and write about the history of epidemics and pandemics, when vaccinations first appeared, and their impact on the world and global health. She interviewed nine girls from Australia, the Philippines, and the United States about their Coronavirus pandemic experiences. It was important to Helena that she present a global view of the pandemic. Read this piece here on page 32.
New Moon Girls Magazine is the original girl-created media. Girl writers and artists from around the world contribute their creativity and content. Helena applied to be a New Moon Girls Magazine reporter and was accepted! Her first assignment was to interview Tamekia Swint, the founder of Styles4Kidz – a non-profit that provides textured hair education, services, and resources that serve kids and families in the biracial, transracial adoptive, and foster care communities. This piece taught her about positionality because she wrote that she, too, is an adopted Black child with non-Black parents and hair is a really big deal in her family. Positionality is when a researcher names their intersectional identities as it relates to what they are researching.
The Editors at New Moon Girls Magazine asked Helena if she had a piece of original art that she might want to submit with her article on Styles4Kidz. Helena is especially fond of self-portraiture and wanted to include her 5th-grade self-portrait. She was excited to have a piece of art published in the magazine. Read – and see – more about Helena’s love of self-portraiture here.
Helena is an anti-bullying activist because of her own bullying experiences during her K-8 experience. She comes of age in this school project and lovingly names bullying as a critical issue to her own classmates in this 6th-grade video project. View it here. The Trevor Project wrote Helena and said, “On behalf of Team Trevor, we want to thank you for your hard work and activism – we appreciate you and we love this PSA! Tremendous work!” And Sameer Hinduja, the Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, wrote to Helena saying, “I honestly thought your PSA was great. I’m really proud of you, and I’d say your video seemed like it was made by someone much older (that’s a compliment!). Extremely well done and you talked about a lot of important issues, and I liked the ‘call to action’ to viewers so they could learn more and do more. Way to go!”
Science has always been Helena’s favorite subject and she has always wanted to write a series of pieces about women in science. She interviewed veterinarian Margo Wixson and it was fun because Dr. Wixson really told Helena as much gross stuff as possible about the ins-and-outs of being a veterinarian. One thing that is very important about this piece is that it covers at length the process Helena went through before she interviewed someone. She wanted to write out that process so that other girls can become scholars too.
Helena was invited to be the Conference Poet for The National Institutes for Historically-Underserved Students Think Tank in November 2019 and was asked to write an original poem reflecting the theme of “Rise Up.” She wrote and delivered an original poem titled “Future Me Thanks You” and opened the conference with it on November 7th. The purpose of the Institutes is to research and identify common barriers to educational equity and success for all historically-underserved students. The Institutes published the poem and everyone went home with a beautiful copy of her work.
When Helena was in 3rd-grade she found out there was an art competition at the Brown v. Board of Education Historical Site Museum in Topeka, Kansas. It was for Kansas kids only, but she wrote them and asked if they’d take her art from California and they said yes. Being bold is one of the Donato-Sapp family values and it worked! Helena’s parents decided it was a good time for her to learn more about segregation and integration. They bought a bunch of books that covered Brown v. Board of Education, Ruby Bridges, Sylvia Mendez, and the Mendez v. Westminster case in 1947. The family read a book each night and talked about the stories and the histories. After Helena learned all about it, an artist friend named Eric Leffler helped Helena imagine and produce two linocut pieces of art – one that represented segregation and one that represented integration. Helena sent them in to the Living the Dream 2018 Student Art Contest. She didn’t win, but one of her pieces was chosen by Kansas Muralist Michael Toombs to be a part of the Brown v. Board Mural Project and now her art is a part of the permanent exhibit at this important museum. This was her second piece of art in a national museum collection. She was 8-years-old.
When Helena was in kindergarten, she painted a picture of a mango. It was the art class assignment so everyone did the same art piece. Helena’s parents post her art on their social media accounts and a colleague of her dad’s suggested that some of Helena’s art be entered into a children’s exhibit. Helena’s Mango (Mango 2015, watercolor on paper) was selected to be in the 2016 Seen + Heard Treats Exhibition in Chicago. The family flew to Chicago and Helena was at the opening and was interviewed. After the exhibit the artists were contacted to see if they would consider donating their art piece to the Seen + Heard permanent collection. Helena donated hers and it is currently on exhibit at DePaul University. She was 7-years-old and her first piece of art had been curated into a national collection. This was her very first piece of scholarship.
Born between the mid 1990s to late 2000s, Gen Z is the most ethnically diverse generation and the first to have grown up fully in a digital era – but what really sets it apart from other generations beyond the technological advances of the times is its dedication to inclusion and societal change. 70% of Gen Zers are involved in a social or political cause, utilizing digital spaces and technologies intuitively to advocate like never before. This Eventbrite dialogue, moderated by Diversability’s Marie Dagenais-Lewis, features young disabled activist who are blazing trails! Watch the event here.
The editors and authors were excited that their proposal to AERA was accepted for their Strong Black Girls book. Helena presented alongside her co-authors in the book – Autumn Adia Griffin, Taylor Monique Tucker, Valerie N. Adams-Bass, Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards, and Asia S. Thomas. The session was Chaired by Lynnette K. Mawhinney, one of the editors of the book and the Discussants were Danielle Lorraine Apugo and Afiya Mbilishaka, the other two editors of the book. Helena received a standing ovation for her presentation. AERA is the largest and most esteemed conference in the field of Education.
NATIONAL
NEA Secretary-Treasurer Noel Candelaria and Helena have an open dialogue in front of a crowd of 600 Delegates about disability language etiquette. This conversation launches the partnership between the NEA and Helena for their “Become a Champion for Disability Rights and Inclusion campaign.
Continuing to build upon her work with the NEA, Helena was invited to address the 9,000 delegates of the NEA Representative Assembly and speak to them about disability rights and inclusion. Listen to her keynote here.
This session for aspiring educators is to help them gain background knowledge on the origins and forms of ableism, understand intersectionality and its impact, recognize the impact of bias, analyze the role of critical dialogue in ending ableism, and helping participants to develop their “why” in becoming a leader in disability justice. Helena was recently awarded Youth Poet Ambassador of the City of Long Beach, California and, as a recognized poet, was asked to read original activist-poetry to the participants. Helena is also an established artist and presented an original art piece on reimagining the disability symbol as an avenue into discussing ableist language.
- Donato-Sapp, H. Tita Likes to Say – Understanding Intersectionality. Original Poem delivered at The National Education Association’s Aspiring Educators Conference, Orlando, Florida. June 28-July 1, 2023.
- Donato-Sapp, H. Disability Justice Poem. Original poem delivered at The National Education Association’s Aspiring Educators Conference, Orlando, Florida. June 28-July 1, 2023.
- Donato-Sapp, H. Reimagining the Disability Symbol. Original art presented at The National Education Association’s Aspiring Educators Conference, Orlando, Florida. June 28-July 1, 2023.
Because of Helena’s relationship and partnership with the National Education Association, she often gets invited by NEA state affiliates to bring her expertise as an intersectional activist to their states.
Helena was invited to be the plenary keynote speaker to over 2,000 educators at this important conference for the largest labor union in America. NEA invited her because they believe in the power of youth voices to make change and wanted the 3 million educators who are a part of the NEA to hear Helena’s voice. Listen to the inspirational speech here. And read what the NEA wrote about Helena’s impact here.
Persons with disabilities encounter various forms of ableism daily. To end ableism, we must understand what it is, who it impacts, the negative effects, and how to work together to end it. In this session, participants will have the opportunity to learn about the lived experiences of Disability Justice Activist Helena Lourdes Donato-Sapp. Participants will deepen their understanding of ableism by learning about disability models, the origins and forms of ableism, the impact of bias, and the role of critical dialogue in ending ableism.
One of five students has a learning or attention issue, one in 15 students has an IEP, and a little over two in 10 students has a disability that requires a 504 plan. Accessibility is a key component of the guarantee of a free, appropriate public education to student identified with disabilities. Despite our best efforts, we cannot be sure that we have identified all students with disabilities, especially those with non-apparent, or hidden, disabilities. As we strive to ensure accessibility for our students with disabilities, we must lead our profession in inclusivity and extend these practices to ensure equal access for all students by making all resources and materials accessible, easy to understand, and easy to use. Accessibility is at the heart of Universal Design for Learning – or UDL. The UDL framework offers flexibility in the ways students access material, engage with it and show what they know by tapping into their strengths, needs, backgrounds, and interests. This session helps participant understand why it is imperative for educators to adopt an inclusivity stance in all aspects of the education space.
Persons with disabilities are the largest minority in the world; disability intersects all other marginalized groups. Disability Justice provides a framework that centers on intersectionality and offers principles to guide disability advocacy efforts forward. During this presentation, presenters will guide participants to make connections between Disability Justice Principles and NEAs Goals and Strategic Objectives to help participants develop a “why” for leading in this space.
Helena was once again asked to join some of the co-authors of the groundbreaking Equity & Excellence in Education issue on Disability Justice for a national conversation around the articles in their issue of the journal. View their session here.
Helena was an invited speaker alongside scholars Dr. Nirmala Erevelles – a Professor at The University of Alabama, Dr. Lisette E. Torres – a senior research associate and project coordinator at TERC, and Dr. Federico Waitoller – a Professor at the University of Chicago. The group held a dialogue on disability justice that became a featured article in Equity and Excellence in Education. View the dialogue here.
Helena was excited to speak at this international conference. Here is the feedback she got from the conference committee on her proposal: “Our conference team was excited about your abstract and found your autobiographical and narrative approach to the topic of the geographies of Black girlhoods to be compelling. We were struck by your comment, ‘I hope you let a young Black scholar speak,’ which said much to us about how you see yourself and your relation to scholarship and voice and where and when your knowledge is given space.”
Helena joined seven other scholars from their book Strong Black Girls in a book tour. They spoke at SANKOFA Video, Books & Café in Washington, DC. SANKOFA is a sanctuary for Pan-African culture.
Helena was invited to be the Conference Poet for The National Institutes for Historically-Underserved Students Think Tank in November 2019 and was asked to write an original poem reflecting the theme of “Rise Up.” She wrote and delivered her original poem titled “Future Me Thanks You” and opened the conference with it on November 7th. The purpose of the Institutes is to research and identify common barriers to educational equity and success for all historically-underserved students. She spoke alongside Aaron Abeyta, an American Book Award Winner.
Helena was thrilled when local feminist icon Zoe Nicholson invited her to give an address at the 2023 Women’s Fair & ERA Centennial. Helena has long been a feminist activist and it was an honor to be included among so many esteemed and veteran feminists in her own beloved city.
As a newly awarded Youth Poet Ambassador of Long Beach, Helena was invited to address the leaders of Long Beach at a Council Meeting on July 11, 2023. Helena addressed the Mayor and other city leaders and then read her poem titled Future Me Thanks You. This was the city’s official recognition of the Youth Poet Laureate Program.
Helena is one of ten finalists for the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate position for the city of Long Beach, CA. Finalists were asked to do their first reading together as a cohort and Helena wrote an original poem about being Filipina-through-adoption. The poem has a tough message about body shaming in families.
Helena was invited to share her current work and speak on the theme of Black Resistance at the Black History Month assembly at her school. In a kind of love letter to educators and the school that she has called home for almost a decade, Helena spoke vulnerable yet fiercely about “living Resistance” everyday as a girl, a Black girl, and a person with learning disabilities, and how she empowers herself through poetry, activism, and scholarship. Listen to the speech yourself right here.
Helena was invited to teach her first poetry session for other teenagers in the city of Long Beach. She wrote the curriculum for this presentation and presented and taught her first teen class at the library. Using her PSA on The Humans Who Feed Us, she developed a lesson that not only introduced the poetry form of a phrase poem, but highlighted the important work that women farmworkers do to put food on our tables.
Helena was honored to be invited to read an original poem alongside important Southern California poets Jessica Wilson-Cardenas, Gustavo Hernandez, Briana Muñoz, and David A. Romero. These four critically acclaimed poets were speaking about writing and embodying resistance in their poetry and community.
Helena was the first invited youth speaker in this important series about intersectional Disability Justice. She talked about four important points to make schools more equitable and claimed that “Love is my forcefield.” She also defined what a “Champion” teacher is, stating that they are a teacher who makes her succeed and sees her assets. See it here.
Helena was invited to open up the College’s Spring Faculty Retreat by presenting her original 2019 poem titled “Future Me Thanks You” that she penned for the National Institutes for Historically Underserved Students when she first became their designated Conference Poet.
Helena was invited to speak to a class of future elementary school teachers on how her own elementary curriculum had been colonized and how she confronted it in her assignments and decolonized what she had been taught.
Helena submitted a conference proposal to talk about her Black girl cultural assets at this local Los Angeles conference. She was very excited when it was accepted and she was able to do an hour presentation to veteran educators. The teachers were really nice and receptive. Here is what one of them had to say about Helena’s conference presentation: “Amazingly refreshing to witness Miss Helena’s scholarship and confidence! Her ideas and voice are so strong and I would love to hear more from her.”
Helena was asked to speak to a class of future educators who are in a children’s literature class and talk about how she is a successful writer. The professor wanted her to show graduate students that she writes from her own experiences as a model for them because they were going to do a major class project where they had to write an original children’s story based on something in their own lives. Helena spoke to two different sections of this course.
Helena and her family are very involved in her Dad’s hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. They know lots of people there because Helena is the Poet Laurette at the National Institutes for Historically Underserved Students Conference. The President of West Virginia University Parkersburg, Dr. Chris Gilmer, invited her family to speak to the Rotary Club. They spoke about crossing borders as a same-sex, being a multiracial family created through the wonderful process of adoption and how, when they come home to visit Helena’s grandparents in Parkersburg, it is like they are in another world but at the same time it is like they are coming home.
In June 2020, the principal of Alliance Judy Ivie Burton Technology Academy High School invited Helena to be the high school graduation speaker. He said he had “been impressed and inspired by Helena’s dedication towards social justice and being a voice others can look up to.” Helena was shocked and excited that the administration of a high school in Los Angeles followed her writing, art, and activism and wanted her to be their graduation speaker. She spoke about how too often adults underestimate what young people can do, about the loss they all felt in the 2019-2020 school year because of COVID-19, about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement, and how it would be their turn to vote and make the world a better place than how it had been handed to them. See Helena’s graduation speech here.
Helena was invited back for the third year in a row to speak with new teachers about how kids in fifth-grade can tackle tough topics. She spoke to two different classes. Here are what some of the students had to say about her lecture. “I am inspired that she is young and highly educated about what adults decide to turn their eyes away from. She’s so young and that will only make her an empowering activist.” “Helena’s presentation impacted me in that it made me reflect about how important it is to be able to talk to children about tough topics because they are already living them.”
Helena presented to 45 graduate education students on how she tackles tough topics like race, class, gender, sexual orientation, bullying, and a plethora of other topics that some think are too sensitive or controversial for young children. She read her published works, spoke, and fielded questions from the graduate students.
Helena was invited back to speak to more future educators about how young children tackle tough topics. She is a semester regular guest speaker now for Liberal Studies 301 – Schooling in a Multicultural Society. The professor for the class, Dr. Jen Stacy, posted this on her social media after Helena presented: “Dr. Helena Donato-Sapp schooled us all on principles of justice, equity, humanism, and kindness again this semester. Thank you, Helena, for teaching future teachers that kids can understand tough issues and are paving the way to a better future.”
Helena was invited to the Innovative Woman 2.0 Fast Pitch Competition & Networking to pitch her original business idea to a large university audience and a panel of seven distinguished judges. She was invited to represent the future of entrepreneurship and was the youngest participant. The organizers of the event were so impressed with her pitch that they invited her to be a part of CSUDH’s Incubator Hatchery Launchpad Program to help her launch her new business enterprise.
Helena was invited to speak about teaching controversial topics in the elementary classroom to two different sections of Liberal Studies students who are learning how to become elementary teachers. The class – Schooling in a Multicultural Society – had students who thought teaching tough topics was either inappropriate or too difficult for young children. Dr. Jen Stacy, Professor of Liberal Studies, invited Helena to come and share her writing, art, and activism so that her college students could see that young children are mature enough to tackle tough topics.
Helena and her two fathers were invited to speak about The FAIR Act at The California History Project Summer Institute. Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act, also known as the FAIR Education Act (Senate Bill 48) and informally described as the LGBTQ History Bill, is a California law which compels the inclusion of the political, economic, and social contributions of persons with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people into educational textbooks and the social studies curricula in California schools. Helena spoke to over 40 veteran educators about what it is like to have same-sex parents.
After Helena’s school-wide 3rd-grade science fair project on decomposition, titled Rotten Raspberries, Helena found out there was a regional science conference for local students to attend. STEM in Action Kids Conference was put on by a local university, California State University Dominguez Hills where her Dad works. Her Dad told the team putting on the conference about Helena’s love of science and about Rotten Raspberries and they invited Helena to present at their conference. She was the only child presenter at this conference and presented for two hours to different kids about the process of decomposition. She was 8-years-old.
Helena was invited to be highlighted as a young African American changemaker on The Disney Channel’s “In The Nook.” Helena was interviewed by Disney stars Danielle Jalade and Jermaine Harris on set at The Disney Studies in Burbank, California. They highlighted her work for Disability Justice. They referred to Helena as “young, gifted, and Black.” Helena was one of four young changemakers featured and the other three were Jaylen Smith – the 18-year-old mayor of Earle, Arkansas and the youngest mayor ever elected in the United States, Momo Pixel – the creator of the viral web game Hair Nah…the object of which is to swat away the grabby hands of people seeking to touch a Black woman’s hair, and Alena Analeigh Wicker – who is the youngest Black person to be accepted into medical school in the United States. February 25, 2023.
Becker writes, “When it comes to representation, STEM fields are seriously lacking. Hewlett Packard states that less than 1% of computing jobs in the US are held by Black women, and that’s just one of the many statistics demonstrating the STEM gap.” This article goes on to name Helena as one of the 8 STEM trailblazers paving the way to equitable STEM access for all. Becker goes on to say, “Helena shows us that we are all so much more than the challenges we face.” She refers to Helena as a “multi-talented queen” whose story is inspiring for neurodivergent folks and anyone who is facing challenges or barriers to their STEM dreams. Read the piece here.
The city of Long Beach launched its first official Youth Poet Laureate program and this news story featured Helena and her hopes to expand her passion around disability justice if she is selected as the winner. See it here.
Fensterwald notes that the 16 Under 16 panel of judges who awarded Helena as one of the 16 Under 16 in STEM used the following three criteria for the awardees: creativity – “the ability to design something new and disruptive”; change-making – “the capacity to inspire change in others within their community”; and resilience – “the ability to persevere by using challenges as opportunities for growth and move forward despite difficulties along the way.” Read the piece here.
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