August 9, 2025 • 58 mins
In this encore episode of the Making Hope Happen Radio Show from 2022, host Erin Brinker sits down with Gloria Macias Harrison, renowned educator, community leader, and former president of Crafton Hills College. Gloria shares her remarkable story of growing up in San Bernardino, her pioneering work in education and community journalism, and her insights on language, culture, and leadership. The conversation explores the value of bilingual education, the importance of resilience, and the power of community engagement. This episode is a celebration of perseverance, community, and the transformative impact of hope.
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Erin Brinker (00:00):
Erin, welcome everyone. I'm Erin Brinker, and
(00:11):
this is the making hope happenradio show. So glad to have you
with me on this beautiful itblistering summer day. Super
excited to bring to you anencore presentation of an
interview that I did with GloriaMacias Harrison back in 2022 she
has a storied career. Has had astoried career in education in
(00:32):
the Inland Empire, and I don'twant to take anything away from
the interview. You're going tohear it from her. Let's go. I am
honored to be sitting down withGloria Macias Harrison, she is
the chairperson for the SanBernardino community college
district, and she was elected tothe Board of Trustees in 2012
Macias Harrison has balanced twocareers plus family and
(00:53):
community activism since theearly 60s. She is one of the
founders of El Chicano, which isa weekly newspaper that grew to
be, I think there are ninedifferent community weeklies,
including the Inland Empirecommunity news and, of course,
el Chicano, that are publishedweekly trustee. Macias Harrison
served as president of CraftonHills college for 12 years and
(01:15):
as Vice President of Instructionfor six she taught for 20 years
at San Bernardino ValleyCollege, and was Dean of
Humanities for three she retiredin 2011 was elected to the San
Bernardino Community CollegeBoard of Trustees. In 2012 she
was a governor's appointee onthe California Commission on the
Status of Women, and served onthe council, sorry, California
(01:38):
Council for the Humanities, andnumerous state committees on
education, in addition toserving for the past two and a
half years on the city's chartercommittee, she's a member of
Kiwanis and is on the board ofthe valley concert Association,
the brown legacy, Crafton HillsFoundation, San Bernardino
College Foundation, and iscurrently a member of the League
of Women Voters, the AmericanAssociation of University Women
(02:00):
and the Rialto business andprofessional women. She serves
on several, several advisorycommittees, including the San
Bernardino City Schools makinghope happen Foundation, and is
treasurer of the San BernardinoCounty School Board Association
as past president for the InlandEmpire Community Foundation. She
is active on the foundationsyouth grant makers program, and
(02:20):
she is the recipient of numerousawards, a graduate of San
Bernardino High School and SanBernardino Valley College, and
finally, the University ofCalifornia Riverside, where she
earned a bachelor's and amaster's degree. It is such an
honor. GLORIA Macias Harrison,welcome to the show.
Gloria Macias Harrison (02:36):
Thank you so much, Erin, and I
appreciate by the way, there aresome corrections to all of that
bio. Oh,
Erin Brinker (02:45):
so, all right, so
Gloria Macias Harrison (02:48):
that bio is an old one. I have to send
you a new one, but I'm no longerthe chair. Stephanie Houston.
Dr, Stephanie Houston, my termended at the end of 22 and
Stephanie still, Houston is nowthe Chair of the Board of
Trustees, and there's some othercorrections, but that's okay. I
have done all those things, sothat's okay.
Erin Brinker (03:11):
So, so tell us about your, you know, your San
Bernardino experience, your lifeexperience, you know, tell us
who are you?
Gloria Macias Harrison (03:19):
I'm just a West Side girl. I grew up on
the west side of San Bernardinoand went to all the local
schools. I think I started atHarding Elementary, which is no
longer exists. It's, it waswhere the fell Heim are, close
to where the falheim library isnow, and and so I vaguely
(03:43):
remember, because we lived atthat time, there was no freeway,
and we lived a few blocks awayfrom the railroad crossing, and
so I had to walk to mygrandfather would walk me to
kindergarten. And I remembervery vividly that my father was
called in and was told that Ihad to speak English, otherwise
(04:07):
they could not keep me in mykindergarten class. Now it
wasn't because we didn't knowit, because we did, but my
grand, my sister and my sister,Martha Macias Brown and I were
not reared by our birth parents.
And so my grandmother and myuncle was, they were our
guardians. And so we lived on KStreet, not too far from between
(04:29):
seventh and sixth and the westside of San Bernardino. And so
my dad was in radio at the time.
He was, I call him my dad. Okay,that's my guardian. He was one
of the early pioneers of Spanishlanguage radio in San
Bernardino, and he had a radioshow called La ora de lobar. And
(04:50):
so he spoke English to us allthe time. And of course, we were
one of the first families tohave a TV in our household. So I
learned English. Quite frankly,from cup of Fran and Ollie and
Cecil and beanie and all ofthose. Oh, you're taking us
back. Holy duty, howdy duty, allof that. But we didn't speak it
(05:12):
at home because my grandmothercould not speak English. So my
dad said, decreed, okay, I'llspeak to you in English, and
Grandma will speak to you inSpanish. So that's the way we
grew up. And I was able to stayin my kindergarten class. After
that, I attended RamonaAlessandro Franklin, which is
now Martin Luther King, and thenSan Bernardino High School. And
(05:33):
I have to say that I had, youknow, people always have this
image of the West Side schools,that they were inferior that we
had some darn good teachers. AndI have to say that it was, yes,
it was it was challenging attimes, not because of the
language, but because ourschools. We it was a sort of a
(06:00):
cultural shock when I went toSan Bernardino High School,
because the rest of you knowRamona and Alessandra and
Franklin, we knew everybody. Iknew everybody. And so we knew
the families. We saw them atchurch. So we knew everybody.
Franklin, we got a little bitmore mixture, because at that
time, we had students comingfrom north of baseline and
(06:26):
Highland and so there was, therewas a good mix, there of
students, diverse students, andso. And of course, so we walked
to school. You know, we knew theneighborhood. We all stopped at
Ernie little grocery store gonna
Erin Brinker (06:43):
buy some candy on the way home from school? Yeah,
Gloria Macias Harrison (06:45):
you know, buy candy or buy something
or no sodas, but candy, wedidn't have enough money for the
soda, but in any way. So that'swhere we grew up, and we had
some really marvelous teachers,mostly because and I think my
sister and I were fortunate inthe sense that my dad really was
(07:07):
a reader. And so I mentionedthis to somebody just recently
that on Sundays, it was a greatday because we could read them.
My dad read the newspaper everyday, so we had a newspaper in
the house. And on Sundays, whenthe he would divide the paper
and we would get the comics,because the comics, the comics
(07:29):
were, at that time, you almostfour pages, yep, of a standard,
you know, paper. And so, youknow, we read Nancy and we read
we had Terry and the Pirates. Wehad Dick Tracy and all of those
things. You know that we Dagwoodand all of those that and we,
(07:51):
we, we, we read them. And thenmy dad, even though we didn't
have much money and we were not,believe me, we're not a wealthy
family, he bought us individualbooks, and I remember treasuring
my book. One was a pop upbecause my dad really liked pop
up books, and then the other onewas a serious book, and that one
(08:13):
was a history, sort of historybook, and it was tales,
basically of explorers of thisof the Southwest. And I kept
that book forever because itwas, it had a it wasn't, it was
a gift. And I read the storiesover and over. And I I met, I
read about Madame Curie. I metCabeza de Vaca, which was an
(08:38):
explorer in the southwest,started in Florida, wound up
living with the Indians. Such aCA, we are, I mean, so had a
variety of explorers basicallythe southwest of the United
States. And that was one of mytreasured, treasured books. But
I have to say we got to becausewe had to work. And I mentioned
(09:01):
this to somebody that in ourhigh school years we had to we
would my sister and I and mycousin Sam Gutierrez, we would
go with my grandmother, and wewould work in the fruit sheds of
Hemet and San Jacinto. Oh,that's a long ways, yes. And so
(09:22):
we would go, my dad would dropus off. We'd have a tent, and we
have a washed Athena, I don'tknow how to describe it, a metal
wash bucket that we would turnupside down. And we would have
drill, you know, cut a hole out,and that would become where we
would have a fire for cooking.
And so my grandmother was not.
(09:47):
She was our chaperone, and shewas our the person who kept the
tent in order and all of that.
And meanwhile, Martha and Iworked in the fruit sheds, and
my cousin were picking apricots,and we worked. There during the
season while we were in highschool, because that's what we
used to pay for our schoolclothes and so. And so we were
always and we were a family thatclipped coupons, and my dad was,
(10:11):
you know, since we got the paperevery way, there were always
coupons, yes. And so I laugh. Ilaugh because my dad would make
a map, and he'd say, Okay, thisis, I don't remember what day of
the week. We would go most, mostlikely it was a Saturday, I'm
not sure. But anyway, we wouldput the coupons, and then we
would if it was two, if, if youbought two rolls of toilet
(10:36):
paper, you got the third onefree, or something like that. So
we would have a he would walk infirst and do the first coupon,
and then I would walk in and dothe second coupon, and then my
sister, and that's how, youknow, we made, how you stop and
manage, how we manage money.
(10:57):
And, of course, whatever weworked. And I have to say that
both my sister and I were veryfortunate to find part time
jobs, whether we were whether wewere working as babysitters,
whether we were working as weworked in a variety of things. I
can, I can tell you that at mypart time jobs going to the
(11:20):
school, and then college, I ranfrom, you know, cleaning houses
to working for Fedco to workingfor white front to working for
the telephone company. That wasa really neat job. I got paid
for eight hours, and I onlyworked six because I took the
very late shift, and so my shiftwas over sometimes at midnight
(11:46):
or at one o'clock in themorning, that it was a good job.
I almost didn't get it. You knowwhy I passed off my exams, but
they were, at that time, theywere concerned that I would
wasn't tall enough to reach thehigh trunk, because at that time
they were still using trunks,yes, and so, so I stretched
myself as fast as I could and Iwould reached it. And so I my
(12:10):
territory at that time was 29palms, and the Palm Springs
area. So it was, it was aninteresting thing, because
sometimes in the it was slow. Itwas usually slow. Those hours
were slow. But I get theselonely Marines out there and
(12:32):
telephone, long distancetelephone number, just to have
somebody to talk to. And ofcourse, I worked as a as an
inventory taker for a atechnical company. And then, of
course, I did some tutoring andsome part time teaching that I
was, you know, I was, we werevery fortunate to have people
(12:53):
who were willing to give us parttime jobs and and who were
willing to hire us. And ofcourse, I have to say, we were
very reliable. We had a goodwork ethic. We got there. We got
there on time and ahead of time,sometimes and and we were very
grateful for the they were notsome of them were good paying
(13:14):
jobs. I think my best job wasworking on campus, though, when
I was at UCR working, oh yeah,because I got to know people on
the campus. Got to navigatethat. Got all the, you know,
find out where the the this andthe that, and could get my
library reservations done ontime and all of that. So I that
(13:36):
was probably my best job,because we weren't always busy,
and so I when we weren't busy, Icould study. So I have to say
that I had some marvelousteachers who introduced us to
music and dance and anappreciation of culture, a lot
(13:56):
of history. I worked in thelibrary in when I was at
Franklin junior high, which gaveme access to more books, right?
And so I remember we had socialDo you remember, did you ever
have social studies classes? Thesection of social studies? Yes,
yes, oh yes, absolutely, yes. Idon't think it exists anymore,
(14:18):
Erin, I don't know. So
Erin Brinker (14:20):
it's it they do in the middle schools and they do
in the high schools. But becausethey are the state testing does
not include social studies. It'sit is not as prioritized as
English and math.
Gloria Macias Harrison (14:34):
Well, I remember Mr. Cook. He was our
teach social studies teacher andI and of course, whatever the
reading was at the time in thebook, I got through it quickly,
so I would bring my librarybooks. And so I was reading
Hemingway and Steinbeck and,wow.
Erin Brinker (14:52):
Now, what did you think of Hemingway? Hemingway is
a man's man in the, you know,like the, like the archetype of
a man's man. Did you enjoy?
Hemingway's books.
Gloria Macias Harrison (15:01):
Yes, I actually did. I actually did,
and I can't even tell you why,but he was so clear. And one of
the things that I learned fromHemingway, I think, and one of
my college professors told methe same thing, do not try to
get flowery Gloria. That's notyour style. Look at Hemingway.
Short sentences, declarative getto it's true.
Erin Brinker (15:22):
That's true.
Thought about it
Gloria Macias Harrison (15:27):
that way. We would read Dickens or
something else, you know, wherethey went on and on about a vase
or it's a wrinkle in thewallpaper. Come on.
Erin Brinker (15:37):
Yes, there are a lot of authors like that. You
get lost in the weeds, so tospeak. It's like I know the
plots in there somewhere, yes.
Gloria Macias Harrison (15:44):
So I think I like the plots more than
anything else. I like the plotsand and so, but Steinbeck,
Steinbeck, Steinbeck, got to me.
I really like Steinberg. One
Erin Brinker (15:58):
of the challenges that I you know people because,
I think it's because of theproliferation of devices,
electronic devices. Young peoplearen't reading like they used
to. I was very hopeful whenHarry Potter came out, and there
was a whole wave of young peoplewho started picking up books
again. Young people, I'm talkingchildren and young up to young
adulthood, they're picking upbooks again. And I don't know if
that trend, I seem to believethat that trend is waned a bit.
(16:21):
And there's there, you know, ifyou, if you're not literate, you
can't, you don't develop thevocabulary, vocabulary that you
need to be able to navigate lifein its most effective way. You
can't express yourself right.
You can't or correctly. Youcan't understand what others are
going through. You can't, youknow, help you define where, how
you fit in the world. Unlessyou're reading, you really miss
(16:44):
it a lot.
Gloria Macias Harris (16:47):
Otherwise, you get, you get mired in the
slang, into the colloquialisms.
And so there isn't any way. Weused to, when I was teaching
Spanish, we used to do an intro.
It was an audio intro tolanguages, and we said, even if
you speak one language, you aremultilingual. And what we meant
(17:08):
by that is that if you know whatlanguage to use in different
situations, my grandmother usedto say that a well educated
person was not just booklearning, it was learning how to
behave in different situationsand how to use vocabulary. So
are you going to, are you, youknow, when you're partying with
your friends or family? Are yougoing to use the same language
(17:31):
as if you're going to go and askfor a loan at the bank? I don't
think so. No, probably not,probably not, right, unless that
banker is your uncle, that'sright. So in that sense, we are
multilingual. We have, if youhave a sense of what language to
use in a different situation.
And so then there was oneexample about the different
(17:52):
words that that Eskimos use forsnow. Snow is extremely
important in their culture,right? Sure. So they must have,
I don't know, maybe more than 50or 100 words for snow, all
different conditions of snow.
Now, what would you think theAmerican equivalent to that
(18:16):
would be?
Erin Brinker (18:17):
Oh, my goodness. I
Gloria Macias Harrison (18:23):
hmm, we have a lot of words. You know
what it could be. I
Erin Brinker (18:26):
was thinking rain, art, oh. I was thinking hearts,
Gloria Macias Harrison (18:31):
oh, ours. So, for instance, we have
the auto. We have the wordautomobile, right? And we have
the word auto. But then if youstand at a corner and you say,
Wow, that is a great Camaro,right? Yes. Or that is what is a
Camaro, right? Or that is a goodMustang. Can you imagine
(18:53):
somebody coming to our countryand trying to figure out what
we're talking about? Oh, yeah,that's true. And, you know, and
so we
Erin Brinker (19:01):
have muscle cars and sedans and sports cars and
SUVs and, yeah, no, I hadn'tthought about it that way, but
you're absolutely right.
Gloria Macias Harrison (19:11):
I mean, it's so obviously cars are
important to our culture, aren'tthey? They are. They are very
important to our culture, forour transportation. And so we
have all of these names for carsand so, and they come and go,
depending on the year and thestyle and the this and the that
and so. So I think if we look atlanguage differently, I mean, we
(19:36):
it's not just to communicate,it's it's part of our culture.
It's who we are. And I always Imiss the classroom, because, if
nothing else, I got a chance tofind out what the current slang
was,
Erin Brinker (19:49):
yes, yeah.
Otherwise, how would we know?
Yeah?
Gloria Macias Harrison (19:53):
How would we know? Because it's not
in our it's not the languagethat I would use at home. And I
remember when my son. Came homeand said something, Oh, that's
sweet. And I said it, I'mthinking, What are you talking
about? And the spa and the slangin Spanish, of course, is based
(20:14):
on on the neighborhood and so,and the period of time, also the
period of time. And so Iremember we, we were trying to
devise a Spanish class forpolice officers, because they
need it, right? Indeed, theyneed it, but they don't need,
they don't need to conjugateverbs. No, they don't. They
(20:36):
don't. They need to know whatthe current slang is on the
street at the time, right? And,of course, if you stop me,
you're going to have to learnhow to talk to me, and not in
slang, but and in Spanish andthen. But if you talk, if you if
you have a younger person,you're probably going to have to
use a different
Erin Brinker (20:56):
language, indeed.
Well, I mean, even in differentregions, so you know, how we
speak here, and just usingEnglish is different than how
they speak in Biloxi,Mississippi, which is different
than they speak in Worcester,Massachusetts, and Chicago,
Illinois. And you know, we'reall in the same country, and
that's and that's so true. And Iwhen I So, I was an exchange
student 100 years ago. Okay, notreally 100 but it feels like it
was a very long time ago. I wentto Austria, and I had taken
(21:19):
German in high school, and theyteach you, you know, hello, jak,
are you in the garden? I neverused that. And so I got there,
realized very quickly that Ididn't know anything. And you
learn that's right, you know,just by being around it and the
reading, I had to read and and,you know, I
Gloria Macias Harrison (21:41):
and read the local newspapers, and I
would always tell people, youknow, listen to Spanish language
radio. Listen to watch thosesoap operas in telenovelas.
Yeah, telenovelas, you know,because you get a chance to see
what is being used in thelanguage, and then the same
(22:01):
thing in Spanish. I mean, thoseof us who speak Spanish, I think
of myself as bilingual andbiliterate, okay, but I was in
Lyon Guanajuato, which is in thecentral part of Mexico, to pick
up my dad, who had fallen ill,and he was in a hospital. He's a
US citizen, but I need to bringhim back. And so I thought my
(22:27):
Spanish was pretty good. And sowe were, we were, we were, and
then cultural differences,because we're very Americanized
Erin Brinker (22:39):
indeed. Well, you're American indeed. All
right, we're
Gloria Macias Harrison (22:43):
very Americanized. And not only that,
but as a, as a, as a Spanishauthor, would say we are women
of carne I Hueso. We're strongwomen. Okay, so we had two
reactions, the ER doctor, we askquestions. Of course, we ask
(23:03):
questions. We want answers thatare right. And he's not used to
that. He's used to being a god.
And so he said, he said, he saidto us, obviously you two ladies
have been smart. Those with meare used to giving orders, and
so I said. And so I thought tomyself, I just answered him and
(23:25):
said, Yes, we are,
Erin Brinker (23:29):
and so and we are.
Gloria Macias Harrison (23:32):
We're used to giving orders. We're
used to, you know that? I mean,we know how to behave and all of
that kind of stuff, and we'renot abusive or in any way shape
or form. But yes, we are used tofending for ourselves in many
ways. Okay, so then the thesurgeons had, had been in the
United States, and most of theirtraining, and received most of
(23:55):
their training in the UnitedStates, they loved us. We had
fun. We taught, you know, theywere used to women like us,
right? And then we didn't thinkwe had an accent. And the lady
said, Where are you from? Hesays, you don't have an accent
like we do. And I really didn'tthink I had an accent. And I saw
(24:15):
I immediately said, because youget a different treatment if
you're from the United States oryou're from Mexico. I said, Oh,
somos a la frontera. We're fromthe front border, which, which
means we were, we werebilingual, so that, oh, no
wonder and so. And we got tworeactions from people, people
who loved us and wanted to knowabout the United States and this
(24:38):
and that cultural stuff. Andthen we had people who said to
us, you think you're better thanwe are? Yeah,
Erin Brinker (24:45):
I'm sure there was a lot of that. You're like, No,
I'm I'm here, like anybody elseis here. You know? Yes, you
know, so I don't
Gloria Macias Harrison (24:53):
so that was a shock to that was a sort
of a shock to me, because if youlive in the whole time in
California, right? Right? Andyou have a grandmother who tells
you, know, so you're living offof her experiences from the 20s
and 30s, right, and 40s and andyour, your, your, we're between
(25:13):
generations almost, you know,we're baby boomers, and so the
the generations that come afterus, and certainly the recently
arrived have a differentperspective completely. And so
how we communicate with eachother and how we accommodate
each other is interesting andand the best thing you can do is
(25:37):
to travel. And I always saidthat the students who had the
best knowledge of Spanish inoverall, were my Mormon students
who came back after a mission.
Oh, yeah. Well, that makesperfect sense. Yes. I mean, they
had to survive and live, youknow, and do all interact and
find out the culture, thelanguage of where they were, and
(25:59):
they were there immersed a wholeyear. So when they came to
valley to take Spanish, becausethat was required, and they
needed it to transfer, they weremy best students. I loved, I
loved talking with them,
Erin Brinker (26:14):
and the fact that they're little older and and
have, yes, had, have they had tohave a work ethic to survive
where they were. And so Ihonestly think that a gap year
and we can move into your youreducation experience as a
teacher and as a collegepresident, and you know, on the
Community College Board, I'mactually a fan of a gap year,
(26:37):
but not a gap year, just whereyou can sit on the couch and
play video games the gap here,where you go somewhere else,
away from your family, and youlearn you're working on a
project, you're doing somethingoverseas or another part of the
United States. Because, like Isaid before, Worcester,
Massachusetts, has nothing toThat's right, it's completely
different. My story when hegraduated from college, his
first job was in West Virginia.
We joked that that was hisexchange here, because it was so
(26:58):
different, you'd be walking verydifferent. The culture was
totally different. And, andthat's good, because you grow as
a person and and you learn, yougain perspective. It may not,
may not change your worldviewmuch, or it might, but you gain
some perspective about, like I'mthinking, your political world
(27:18):
worldview, if you are aprogressive person, and you go
to another place, it may notmake you so you're not
progressive anymore, but it'llit'll open your eyes to the way
other people live, of what theyexperience and you know, and
especially if you're well to doto go to an area where there
might be some poverty, and yousee people living and thriving
and being happy and alsostruggling and all of that all
(27:40):
at the same time, open your eyesto what life is really like.
Gloria Macias Harrison (27:47):
That's right, that's right. It's and
even as an adult, traveling isis always a wonderful
experience. An interesting thingthat happens to me when I
travel, is that when I travel toEurope, and even when I go to
Hawaii, they think I'm Filipino.
Erin Brinker (28:08):
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's
interesting.
Gloria Macias Harrison (28:11):
And, and so even sometimes Filipinos
think I'm Filipino. So they come
Erin Brinker (28:17):
speaking to you in Tagalog, and you're like, wait a
minute. No, no,
Gloria Macias Harrison (28:21):
then I have to say that standard line.
Well, no, I'm not, but I have alot of friends who are yes,
Erin Brinker (28:27):
yeah, yeah. So, well, another place that the
Spanish settled and,
Gloria Macias Harrison (28:32):
and I know Martha when she went to DC,
and she had really long hair atthat time, and so they thought
she was Native American. Oh,yeah. Interesting. Interesting,
that the perspective on colorchanges once you leave
California. It really does,yeah. And so I was in Atlanta,
(28:56):
Georgia for a conference, andand I it was, it was such a
different society there. I mean,there is a society. There is the
the well to do. And it doesn'tmatter what color they are, they
are well to do, you know. And wesaw a very elegant function
(29:17):
going on the hotel we werestaying. And this was a very
high end, elegant black,basically black social structure
and so but, and once you leaveAtlanta, it's different,
Erin Brinker (29:33):
right? But Atlanta, for for a very long
time, it probably still is now aplace where up and coming young
professionals or or young peoplewanting to work into a
professional career, blackprofessionals to go and become
wildly successful was always,you know, for at least a few
decades, has been a place that'sbeen a magnet for for black
(29:54):
professionals. And you can seeit. You know, people have been
wildly successful, and includingathletes and entertainers.
Years, but also business peopleand finance and everything else.
Gloria Macias Harrison (30:04):
And then it was different when we went to
Boston, and it was differentwhen we went, when I spent a
week in Chicago. And so I got anopportunity to see different
neighborhoods, successfulneighborhoods, different
neighborhoods, people from thepeople from Poland, different.
(30:25):
There was a Latino area. Alsothere was, it was just different
neighborhoods and different itwas so I had the opportunity,
because somebody who was fromChicago to go visit different
neighborhoods, and it wasinteresting in the hotels,
because the the jobs that youwould see in California,
(30:46):
basically for Hispanics, wasover there, mostly sudden, you
know, people from the Ukraine,Eastern Europeans, the European
and so It was a little bitdifferent. It was say, whoa. And
so I I really, I really likeChicago. I don't like it when
(31:08):
it's windy, but I liked it verymuch.
Erin Brinker (31:10):
Yeah, it's a beautiful city. It it's a little
rough in the winter, but it is athe skyline as far as downtown
is concerned. And I'm not a bigfan of cities, per se. I like, I
generally like smaller cities,but Chicago is beautiful.
Gloria Macias Harrison (31:22):
Chicago is beautiful. I was only in New
York for a week, and it wasmostly conference, but I got the
feeling of being, of being thislittle, tiny person in a vast
sea of people. Yes,
Erin Brinker (31:35):
yeah, New York's too big for me. I'm with you
like and I don't have any desireto see London or Paris, but you
know, smaller towns, smallercities. I'm all for it. Yeah,
yeah. So, so tell me, how didyou decide to become a teacher?
When? When did How old were youwhen you decided that you want
to be a teacher? I
Gloria Macias Harrison (31:53):
didn't decide to teach teacher. I
wanted I would. Fell in lovewith genetics and the whole
thing of in my biology class atcollege and and I just, I
thought, that's really, actuallyI wanted to be a nurse somewhere
along the line. And but, butthat, I think was because Martha
(32:15):
and I took care of mygrandmother and her elderly
years, and then so my dad, whoat that time had left radio and
worked at Patton State Hospital,is in Psych tech. He volunteered
us all the time because therewas a geriatric ward. And at
Patna time, patent was verydifferent. At that time, it was
(32:40):
a compassionate with the idea ofworking with mental health in a
very different way, not justdata and numbers. And they had
gardens across the from the fromthe hospital, that the patients
grew their own food seriously,that was part of and that was
(33:00):
part of their therapy and so,and they had a very small
criminal, criminal mental healtharea, very small. So we, we
would go and and he wouldvolunteer us to either cook
something or for a birthday oror do their hair or do little
(33:25):
manicures, I mean the elderly.
So I enjoyed that, I enjoyedthat, I think part of the best
training that I ever receivedfor dealing with students was
all the volunteer work that wedid as teenagers at Patton. The
patience is necessary, theroutine that's necessary, all of
(33:47):
that kind of stuff. So I thoughtI would be a nurse. I and then,
I don't know when I changed mymind, as you know, if you as
you, as you go on. But I had anopportunity when I was at and
anyway, I love genetics. I lovethe whole thing of DNA. I love
(34:07):
the research that. But I got theopportunity from a mutual friend
of ours, Ernie Garcia. Erin.
Garcia, at that time, it wasthe, I don't know, curriculum
coordinator or something for theRialto schools. And so one of
their programs was to teachSpanish to fourth graders after
(34:32):
school. It was purely volunteerprogram. So yeah, and so he
picked about six of us from thecommunity college, and I was one
of them, and so I taughtSpanish, and he was our trainer.
So we learned to sing songs, youknow, rhymes that were, you
know, that were popular inEnglish. We'd set them in
(34:56):
Spanish. We we did, we did.
Puppets. We did all kinds ofthings that we played games we,
you know, to get language sothey would use it. We're not
interested in conjugating verbsor anything like that, that we
wanted to have fun with thelanguage. It was probably with
one of the best things that everhappened to me. And then he also
somebody else, then recommendedme to teach high school Spanish
(35:22):
one summer, and that made medecide I never wanted to teach
high school.
Erin Brinker (35:34):
Yeah, teenagers, you have to have a heart for
teenagers. That's, yeah, my
Gloria Macias Harriso (35:38):
husband's a middle Summer Teacher. You
know, they don't want to bethere. They don't, oh my god.
And of course, they were alltaller than I was, you know, I'm
just Yeah, but we survived it,and they survived it. And I
said, Never again. And so, butthen I didn't want to teach
(35:58):
elementary school either. And sowhen I was in grad school,
position opened up, not aposition, but my professors at
Valley, dr, I mean, Roger Antoneand Jim erinski said, you know,
do you want to they? Can youteach a night class for us? And
(36:20):
I had, didn't have my mastersyet. I had my BA, a hot little
Ba, ba in my hands. And so Idid. And everyone in that class
was older than I was. They werea lot of, you know, women
returning to school, taking itafter they had their regular
jobs. Other people, you know,and so they I create. It was one
(36:44):
of the best experiences of mywhole life. I made friends. I
made friends with these ladieswho some of them, I mean, they
already had a lot of courage toreturn to school, right, right?
They had families. Some of themwere single parents. So lot of
(37:04):
brave souls, a lot ofcompassionate souls, and a
couple of them to this day. Imean, they have now, one of them
has passed away. One of them wasgetting her necessary
credentials because she wantedto do early childhood and
develop childhood credential,and she wound up teaching for
(37:27):
the Claire cherry school. Oh,that's great, yeah. So it's a
wonderful experience about, youknow, teaching and, and one of
them came, you know, because Iwas always trying to figure out
how to get them involved and dothis and do that. And you know,
as a new teacher, you're alwaysnervous. You want to make you
want to make sure that they andI, one of them, took me aside
(37:48):
and said, It's okay, sweetheart,we'll get through this together.
Erin Brinker (37:53):
That's awesome.
Gloria Macias Harrison (37:56):
So they took me under wing. I taught
them Spanish, structuralSpanish, and we had a great
time. We had a great time. Andso after that, once I had my MA,
I was offered a position and andthe other thing that came up is
that all this time I'm workingright, I'm going to school, I'm
working. And I thought tomyself, in order to get to be
(38:19):
where I would like to be as ageneticist and all that. It's
going to take a lot ofschooling, right? I don't have
the money for it. I don't havethe money for it, and I enjoy
this. Maybe that's because I'm aGemini and I, I, I enjoy a lot
of stuff, right? That's a goodthing. Yeah, it's a good thing.
(38:40):
So that's how I started, andit's been an interesting it was
an interesting time. And andthen my boss at the time was
Roger anthem, but then later on,my boss was Judith bias, oh,
because she was teaching. And,yeah, very nice teaching. And
so. And then she went on to be aVice President of Instruction at
(39:05):
Valley and and I went on to andso she sort of recommended me
for a leadership trainingprogram through the for through
the, I think it was the FordFoundation and so. And my
president at the time was Donsinger, and so he said they had
(39:27):
to agree to let me go for weeks,different, different one week
periods throughout the year. Andso I went to Miami, Dade in
Florida, which is one of thepremier community colleges, and
learned what they were doing,what they were experimenting
with. I went to San Diego, andthat was mostly finance, with
(39:51):
the the whole idea of the of theprogram was to interest Latinos
in going into administration.
Yeah. Yeah, because I wasperfectly happy in my classroom.
Don't get me wrong, perfectlyhappy in my classroom, lot of
independence, and so, but at thesame time, so Judith was the one
that recommended me, and so shesaid, you know, she's sort of
(40:13):
pushing me out of the nest. Andso after that experience, and
then we were in Colorado for aweek, and we met with other
Latino presidents from all overthe United States, and I found
out at community colleges, andmost of them, I mean, it's very
different. The community collegesystem in Texas is very
(40:34):
different from the Californiasystem. Some of them are
associated and especially in theEast Coast, they're associated
with universities. Oh, I didn'tknow that. And, yeah, some and
the way they're funded is verydifferent. So that's why I was
in Chicago, by the way, to seethe community colleges there.
But anyway, it was, it was atremendous experience, and I
(40:54):
went ahead and applied for anevening Dean position. I didn't
get it. I was, however, the thescreening committee encouraged
me, even though I didn't getthat position for me to keep
trying, because they liked me,and so it's the best thing that
happened to me, because I didn'tget it, because my husband felt
(41:14):
so sorry for me, he bought me asports car.
Erin Brinker (41:21):
Wow, that's awesome.
Gloria Macias Harrison (41:24):
One of my passions are sports cards. I
have to give them up, but that'sokay. That's okay. I did have
several for a while, but anyway,the the position was eliminated
about a year later. So it workedout well, that I worked out.
Well, yeah. And so I tellpeople, you know, if you don't
succeed at first, you just, youknow, figure out, what did I
(41:47):
learn from this? What did Ilearn from this? And I remember
my daughter once had a had asemi bad experience. She thought
it was a bad experience, and shesaid, Okay, Mom, what was I
supposed to learn from this?
Erin Brinker (42:03):
I may not know right now, but it'll be apparent
eventually.
Gloria Macias Harrison (42:07):
So, I mean, so you always have to
figure out, what did you learnfrom this? What did you What did
you experience from this, andhow? What did you learn about
yourself? Were you well preparedfor it, you know? And then I
tried for a dean position, andthen I tried for a vice
(42:27):
president position. Didn't getit at Valley, and that's okay.
It worked out fine, but and thenI was a, I was a humanity Dean
of Humanities, and it was alwaysI was also department chair for
a while too. So I learned toscheduling, you know, listening
to adjunct listening to regularfaculty, trying to get a
(42:51):
schedule that was appropriatefor the students we had, and all
of that kind of stuff, and thendealing with the bureaucracy of
of administration. And sobecause it's a different animal,
it's a different animal, andyou're no longer and it's
interesting, because I think thehardest thing to get over is
(43:13):
that you're no longer in theclassroom, and so all of your
experience in the classroom isdifferent when you become an
administrator and and thenpeople that fellow faculty, your
colleagues, look at youdifferently, and especially when
you have to make a toughdecision, and the faculty says,
(43:35):
I thought she was one of us,
Erin Brinker (43:37):
exactly yes, yes.
And the reality is, is that, no,I just have access to different
information that impacted myopinion. That's right. In
addition to what you've yourposition is there are other
people, and I had to take it allinto consideration. People don't
think of that
Gloria Macias Harrison (43:51):
yes, other than that classroom,
right? Yes. So, so anyway, Iwas, I was recruited by faculty
and and the middle managers fromCrafton. Crafton was going
through a tough time at thetime, and so and so they
recruited me in the sense of,think about it. They had a VP of
(44:13):
Instruction opener, and I said,I don't know. I don't know if I
want to, you know, I'm verycomfortable here all of that. So
I did apply. There were 19people in my screening
committee. Oh, wow. And so theexperience that I'd had through
the Ford Foundation and othermentors, you have to think
(44:34):
about, okay, and it applies toanything you're applying for
something. Did you do yourresearch? Did you find out what
the job really is? Did you talkto people who who have also had
that job in the past? What arethe typical questions that you
think are going to be asked ofyou if you're not prepared for
(44:55):
that? You know, prepareyourself. Prepare yourself. Do
your research. Church, right?
Read about, you know, read aboutthe campus, read about, you
know, the people who have beenthere before, whatever. Anyway,
I did get the position, had agreat time. And one of the
things that I noticed because Ihad been a student at Valley,
and some of my colleagues weremy former teachers, Oh, wow. So
they tend to, even though you'renow a teacher, also, they tend
(45:19):
to look at you still as astudent, right, right? And so
when I went to craft and all ofthat disappeared, I was, you're
only
Erin Brinker (45:31):
the professional, yeah, you weren't a student,
yeah, yeah.
Gloria Macias Harrison (45:35):
And so it was, it was a great 12 years.
I enjoyed my years, and we did alot of it was also the start of
participatory governance. Thatmeans more faculty voice in the
governance, not decision making,but the voice of input, right?
(45:56):
So we did a lot of thingstogether. It was the beginning
of that, developing that, and Ihad a lot of support. I made
sure that I because in any, anycampus, there are, there are,
how do you put it? Differentgroupings of people, click,
(46:16):
right, okay,
Erin Brinker (46:19):
say that, okay.
But, but there are, if they'rehumans, a human happens people
and
Gloria Macias Harrison (46:24):
so sort themselves very hard at making
sure that I was seen with all ofthem in some way or another.
That's good, because you don'twant to be associated with one
particular one. No, otherwisethey don't have the freedom or
the trust you have to developtrust, right, that you're going
to listen and that you're goingto get input and and that you're
(46:48):
going to make a decision, evenif they disagree with it, that
was based on input, right?
Because ultimately, they're not,they're not the Vice President
of Instruction, they're not thepresident of the campus. They
have a different function, andwe all, if we can all work
together as a team, then then wework, we can have a successful
campus and a successfulexperience for those students,
(47:10):
those students, when they stepon their campus, they have to be
office, services and education,and they don't need to be
admired in the politics of thecampus. That's not,
Erin Brinker (47:23):
that's not what we're there. Yeah. So we don't
have a whole lot of time left. Iwant to ask you one quick
question, and I'd love to haveyou back on to continue to come
back on again and talk abouteducational issues in the in the
region. I'm curious what youthink about I'm of the opinion
that every student at fromkindergarten on, should be
learning English and Spanish,that everything should be dual
(47:46):
immersion all the way through.
And I use the example of Canada,where they everything's in
English and French. If they cando it, why can't we do English
and Spanish? Spanish is thenumber two language spoken in
the United States, and certainlyin the southern states, you
know, from Texas all the waythrough to Florida, you hear
Spanish everywhere, and I'm ofthe opinion that that everybody
should be learning it from thevery youngest ages when the
(48:07):
brain is best able to learnlanguages. What is your opinion?
Gloria Macias Harrison (48:20):
You're asking a bilingual person who
learned from home and thencleaned up her Spanish through
education. I believe everyperson needs to learn another
language, and they did away withthe requirement that the
universities had, that everyonewould had to have two semesters
(48:42):
of a foreign language andSpanish. Yeah, Spanish would
have been, you know, great, butI took French because I didn't
need the Spanish, right, right?
I took French. And even thoughmy French is, is God awful when
I travel, I'm more biliteratethan I am bilingual, and I
(49:03):
certainly love Frenchliterature, so it gave me a
different appreciation of thepeople and where I fit in as a
visitor, as somebody who mightlive there or whatever. But in
the southwest, I think it'sabsolutely essential. And the
only thing that I concernedabout is that there what is
(49:28):
considered dual immersion in onedistrict may not be the same in
another district. Oh, fairenough. That's true. Okay, and
so I, I see some programs thatare the children are
enthusiastic that, you know,they want to learn this, and
they learn stuff, and and is,and so it, it has to be more
(49:53):
than that, and but, and I'm not.
But I don't know enough aboutthe dual immersion program,
right?
Erin Brinker (50:04):
And I don't know there doesn't really
generalities,
Gloria Macias Harrison (50:07):
yeah. So I know that in the elementary
school it works beautifully, butI don't know if we have the
trained staff to do it by thetime you get to middle school or
the time you get to high school,I don't know.
Erin Brinker (50:24):
So that is a fair answer. And in all fairness, I
completely sprung this on you.
Did not prep for that questionat all.
Gloria Macias Harrison (50:29):
I just No, no, no, no. I It's because
sometimes I see a program that'sabsolutely marvelous. And then
even with the after schoolSpanish that we did with the
fourth graders, you know, theyremember phrases and stuff like
my own device. Hurry, hurry. Youknow, the and and the phrases
(50:52):
that we even to this day, when Isay to my husband, let's get
going. I said, I don't know. Idon't know. And that was from
high school, Spanish for Mr.
Balloon way back. Let's getgoing. You know, that's awesome,
but it's not enough. It's notenough. It's not enough. There
(51:13):
has to be the literature. Therehas to be there has to be some
cultural parts of it too. Andit's just like when I when I
listen to my Chicano friends,and they want Chicano culture,
and I'm thinking, Mijito, thereis so much of the world that
speaks Spanish. When I was inSpain, in Barcelona, right?
(51:36):
Barcelona, it's a good thingthat Mrs. Mercado and Mrs.
Rivera in high school took us tosee flamenco, took us to see
classical guitar, took us to,you know, to all of these
things, and exposed us toSpanish live, not just Latin
American literature, because thelanguage is is the literature
that is available to us isfantastic. It's fantastic. So I
(51:59):
again, it depends on the qualityof the program, and it depends
on whether there's a follow up,because you get all these kids
excited and everything in anelementary school, and I think
there is a program in SanBernardino district that goes
all the way to high school? Yes,I would be interested to see the
(52:23):
data on that. How many went onto college? How many are
successful in college? How manywent on to do something else?
What? It's too new. I think noone's done the research. Yet. No
one's done the research. Whatdid do you think you were well
prepared? That does? Did thisallow you to do such and such?
(52:47):
And then one of the things thatI did did a little bit of
translating for a while, notmuch. I'm not good at it. And
the reason I'm not good at it isthat I was formally trained,
right? And then my Spanish, andcolloquial Spanish is from my
grandmother several generationsago, right? Yes, and and
(53:10):
whatever, because I'm not on thestreets, right? And not on the
streets, I don't know. So I wastrying to translate for this man
who said he wanted to say it washis common law wife, and he said
la mujer cameos. He said, Whatthe heck does that mean? I
literally translate that. Itbasically says the woman who
(53:32):
acknowledges me. Oh, yeah,that's a little translation. Oh,
and what he meant was his andthat, but that's what he said,
right? So I, I thought tomyself, I'm not going to do
this, because I'm it's not fairto the person I'm translating
for, right? And so
Erin Brinker (53:57):
things get lost in translation. That's an example
of why
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:00):
that's an example. Why? That's an
example, why? So this has
Erin Brinker (54:05):
been delightful, and I could talk to you all
afternoon, all day,
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:10):
I stopped to do Erin
Erin Brinker (54:12):
well, and we're time my show, my show is only an
hour. So this has been really,really wonderful. I'm so
grateful for this time with you,and I hope that you would come
back. And,
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:24):
oh, I love to come back. Wonderful.
Well, Gloria Macias Harris itmakes me feel very comfortable.
Erin Brinker (54:28):
Oh, good. I'm so glad. I'm so and your stories
are just, I mean, I just wantmore. I want to hear more about
your life and more about whatyou're doing. And we will, we
will, I will definitely have youback on the show. Gloria Macias
Harrison, thank you for yourcommitment to community. Thank
you for your commitment. Foryour commitment to education and
for all
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:45):
that you have done for us and to you.
Erin, thank you. You and Tobin,thank you. Thank you. But
Erin Brinker (54:50):
that is about all we have time for today. I'm Erin
Brinker, you've been listeningto the making hope happen radio
show. For more information aboutthe making hope happen
Foundation, go to WWE. WW, dot,making hope. Dot, O, R, G,
that's w, w, w, dot, makinghope.org. Have a great week,
everybody, and I'll talk to younext week.
Noraly Sainz (55:09):
Hi. My name is Noraly Sainz, and I am Program
Coordinator at uplift SanBernardino, a collective impact
initiative at the making hopehappen Foundation. And this is
my story in November of 2017 myhusband, our four young sons and
I moved away from our familiesto San Bernardino with the hope
of reaching our goal of homeownership in 2018 as our oldest
(55:32):
son started kindergarten, Iconnected with the school
district and learned aboutmaking hope happens. Kids
program with my oldest inkindergarten and my twins at
preschool, I had the opportunityto tote my youngest to the kids
parenting classes. In January of2020, my husband and our
family's breadwinnerunexpectedly passed away. I
found myself in a pandemic withmy sons in an uncertain future.
(55:55):
It was then that that oasis thatI found at kids turned into my
support system as the staff andfriends rallied around me while
my sons and I struggled to findour new normal. In October of
2020, after seven years as ahomemaker, I joined the making
hope happen foundation as aprogram coordinator for uplift
San Bernardino. This careeropportunity reignited my
(56:17):
family's dream of home ownershipin November of 2022 through the
mutual support of the uplift SanBernardino Housing Network, my
family was able to buy our firsthome in my role as program
coordinator, and as I connectwith other families in our
community, I can wholeheartedlyattest to the opportunities that
the foundation is bringing toour community and truly making
(56:39):
hope happen.
Erin Brinker (56:40):
For more information about the making
hope happen foundation and tomake a donation, please visit
www.makinghope.org that's WWWdot makinghope. Dot O, R, G,
your donations make our workpossible.
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produced at us, taxpayer expense. The.
Erin, welcome everyone. I'm Erin Brinker, and
(00:11):
this is the making hope happenradio show. So glad to have you
with me on this beautiful itblistering summer day. Super
excited to bring to you anencore presentation of an
interview that I did with GloriaMacias Harrison back in 2022 she
has a storied career. Has had astoried career in education in
(00:32):
the Inland Empire, and I don'twant to take anything away from
the interview. You're going tohear it from her. Let's go. I am
honored to be sitting down withGloria Macias Harrison, she is
the chairperson for the SanBernardino community college
district, and she was elected tothe Board of Trustees in 2012
Macias Harrison has balanced twocareers plus family and
(00:53):
community activism since theearly 60s. She is one of the
founders of El Chicano, which isa weekly newspaper that grew to
be, I think there are ninedifferent community weeklies,
including the Inland Empirecommunity news and, of course,
el Chicano, that are publishedweekly trustee. Macias Harrison
served as president of CraftonHills college for 12 years and
(01:15):
as Vice President of Instructionfor six she taught for 20 years
at San Bernardino ValleyCollege, and was Dean of
Humanities for three she retiredin 2011 was elected to the San
Bernardino Community CollegeBoard of Trustees. In 2012 she
was a governor's appointee onthe California Commission on the
Status of Women, and served onthe council, sorry, California
(01:38):
Council for the Humanities, andnumerous state committees on
education, in addition toserving for the past two and a
half years on the city's chartercommittee, she's a member of
Kiwanis and is on the board ofthe valley concert Association,
the brown legacy, Crafton HillsFoundation, San Bernardino
College Foundation, and iscurrently a member of the League
of Women Voters, the AmericanAssociation of University Women
(02:00):
and the Rialto business andprofessional women. She serves
on several, several advisorycommittees, including the San
Bernardino City Schools makinghope happen Foundation, and is
treasurer of the San BernardinoCounty School Board Association
as past president for the InlandEmpire Community Foundation. She
is active on the foundationsyouth grant makers program, and
(02:20):
she is the recipient of numerousawards, a graduate of San
Bernardino High School and SanBernardino Valley College, and
finally, the University ofCalifornia Riverside, where she
earned a bachelor's and amaster's degree. It is such an
honor. GLORIA Macias Harrison,welcome to the show.
Gloria Macias Harrison (02:36):
Thank you so much, Erin, and I
appreciate by the way, there aresome corrections to all of that
bio. Oh,
Erin Brinker (02:45):
so, all right, so
Gloria Macias Harrison (02:48):
that bio is an old one. I have to send
you a new one, but I'm no longerthe chair. Stephanie Houston.
Dr, Stephanie Houston, my termended at the end of 22 and
Stephanie still, Houston is nowthe Chair of the Board of
Trustees, and there's some othercorrections, but that's okay. I
have done all those things, sothat's okay.
Erin Brinker (03:11):
So, so tell us about your, you know, your San
Bernardino experience, your lifeexperience, you know, tell us
who are you?
Gloria Macias Harrison (03:19):
I'm just a West Side girl. I grew up on
the west side of San Bernardinoand went to all the local
schools. I think I started atHarding Elementary, which is no
longer exists. It's, it waswhere the fell Heim are, close
to where the falheim library isnow, and and so I vaguely
(03:43):
remember, because we lived atthat time, there was no freeway,
and we lived a few blocks awayfrom the railroad crossing, and
so I had to walk to mygrandfather would walk me to
kindergarten. And I remembervery vividly that my father was
called in and was told that Ihad to speak English, otherwise
(04:07):
they could not keep me in mykindergarten class. Now it
wasn't because we didn't knowit, because we did, but my
grand, my sister and my sister,Martha Macias Brown and I were
not reared by our birth parents.
And so my grandmother and myuncle was, they were our
guardians. And so we lived on KStreet, not too far from between
(04:29):
seventh and sixth and the westside of San Bernardino. And so
my dad was in radio at the time.
He was, I call him my dad. Okay,that's my guardian. He was one
of the early pioneers of Spanishlanguage radio in San
Bernardino, and he had a radioshow called La ora de lobar. And
(04:50):
so he spoke English to us allthe time. And of course, we were
one of the first families tohave a TV in our household. So I
learned English. Quite frankly,from cup of Fran and Ollie and
Cecil and beanie and all ofthose. Oh, you're taking us
back. Holy duty, howdy duty, allof that. But we didn't speak it
(05:12):
at home because my grandmothercould not speak English. So my
dad said, decreed, okay, I'llspeak to you in English, and
Grandma will speak to you inSpanish. So that's the way we
grew up. And I was able to stayin my kindergarten class. After
that, I attended RamonaAlessandro Franklin, which is
now Martin Luther King, and thenSan Bernardino High School. And
(05:33):
I have to say that I had, youknow, people always have this
image of the West Side schools,that they were inferior that we
had some darn good teachers. AndI have to say that it was, yes,
it was it was challenging attimes, not because of the
language, but because ourschools. We it was a sort of a
(06:00):
cultural shock when I went toSan Bernardino High School,
because the rest of you knowRamona and Alessandra and
Franklin, we knew everybody. Iknew everybody. And so we knew
the families. We saw them atchurch. So we knew everybody.
Franklin, we got a little bitmore mixture, because at that
time, we had students comingfrom north of baseline and
(06:26):
Highland and so there was, therewas a good mix, there of
students, diverse students, andso. And of course, so we walked
to school. You know, we knew theneighborhood. We all stopped at
Ernie little grocery store gonna
Erin Brinker (06:43):
buy some candy on the way home from school? Yeah,
Gloria Macias Harrison (06:45):
you know, buy candy or buy something
or no sodas, but candy, wedidn't have enough money for the
soda, but in any way. So that'swhere we grew up, and we had
some really marvelous teachers,mostly because and I think my
sister and I were fortunate inthe sense that my dad really was
(07:07):
a reader. And so I mentionedthis to somebody just recently
that on Sundays, it was a greatday because we could read them.
My dad read the newspaper everyday, so we had a newspaper in
the house. And on Sundays, whenthe he would divide the paper
and we would get the comics,because the comics, the comics
(07:29):
were, at that time, you almostfour pages, yep, of a standard,
you know, paper. And so, youknow, we read Nancy and we read
we had Terry and the Pirates. Wehad Dick Tracy and all of those
things. You know that we Dagwoodand all of those that and we,
(07:51):
we, we, we read them. And thenmy dad, even though we didn't
have much money and we were not,believe me, we're not a wealthy
family, he bought us individualbooks, and I remember treasuring
my book. One was a pop upbecause my dad really liked pop
up books, and then the other onewas a serious book, and that one
(08:13):
was a history, sort of historybook, and it was tales,
basically of explorers of thisof the Southwest. And I kept
that book forever because itwas, it had a it wasn't, it was
a gift. And I read the storiesover and over. And I I met, I
read about Madame Curie. I metCabeza de Vaca, which was an
(08:38):
explorer in the southwest,started in Florida, wound up
living with the Indians. Such aCA, we are, I mean, so had a
variety of explorers basicallythe southwest of the United
States. And that was one of mytreasured, treasured books. But
I have to say we got to becausewe had to work. And I mentioned
(09:01):
this to somebody that in ourhigh school years we had to we
would my sister and I and mycousin Sam Gutierrez, we would
go with my grandmother, and wewould work in the fruit sheds of
Hemet and San Jacinto. Oh,that's a long ways, yes. And so
(09:22):
we would go, my dad would dropus off. We'd have a tent, and we
have a washed Athena, I don'tknow how to describe it, a metal
wash bucket that we would turnupside down. And we would have
drill, you know, cut a hole out,and that would become where we
would have a fire for cooking.
And so my grandmother was not.
(09:47):
She was our chaperone, and shewas our the person who kept the
tent in order and all of that.
And meanwhile, Martha and Iworked in the fruit sheds, and
my cousin were picking apricots,and we worked. There during the
season while we were in highschool, because that's what we
used to pay for our schoolclothes and so. And so we were
always and we were a family thatclipped coupons, and my dad was,
(10:11):
you know, since we got the paperevery way, there were always
coupons, yes. And so I laugh. Ilaugh because my dad would make
a map, and he'd say, Okay, thisis, I don't remember what day of
the week. We would go most, mostlikely it was a Saturday, I'm
not sure. But anyway, we wouldput the coupons, and then we
would if it was two, if, if youbought two rolls of toilet
(10:36):
paper, you got the third onefree, or something like that. So
we would have a he would walk infirst and do the first coupon,
and then I would walk in and dothe second coupon, and then my
sister, and that's how, youknow, we made, how you stop and
manage, how we manage money.
(10:57):
And, of course, whatever weworked. And I have to say that
both my sister and I were veryfortunate to find part time
jobs, whether we were whether wewere working as babysitters,
whether we were working as weworked in a variety of things. I
can, I can tell you that at mypart time jobs going to the
(11:20):
school, and then college, I ranfrom, you know, cleaning houses
to working for Fedco to workingfor white front to working for
the telephone company. That wasa really neat job. I got paid
for eight hours, and I onlyworked six because I took the
very late shift, and so my shiftwas over sometimes at midnight
(11:46):
or at one o'clock in themorning, that it was a good job.
I almost didn't get it. You knowwhy I passed off my exams, but
they were, at that time, theywere concerned that I would
wasn't tall enough to reach thehigh trunk, because at that time
they were still using trunks,yes, and so, so I stretched
myself as fast as I could and Iwould reached it. And so I my
(12:10):
territory at that time was 29palms, and the Palm Springs
area. So it was, it was aninteresting thing, because
sometimes in the it was slow. Itwas usually slow. Those hours
were slow. But I get theselonely Marines out there and
(12:32):
telephone, long distancetelephone number, just to have
somebody to talk to. And ofcourse, I worked as a as an
inventory taker for a atechnical company. And then, of
course, I did some tutoring andsome part time teaching that I
was, you know, I was, we werevery fortunate to have people
(12:53):
who were willing to give us parttime jobs and and who were
willing to hire us. And ofcourse, I have to say, we were
very reliable. We had a goodwork ethic. We got there. We got
there on time and ahead of time,sometimes and and we were very
grateful for the they were notsome of them were good paying
(13:14):
jobs. I think my best job wasworking on campus, though, when
I was at UCR working, oh yeah,because I got to know people on
the campus. Got to navigatethat. Got all the, you know,
find out where the the this andthe that, and could get my
library reservations done ontime and all of that. So I that
(13:36):
was probably my best job,because we weren't always busy,
and so I when we weren't busy, Icould study. So I have to say
that I had some marvelousteachers who introduced us to
music and dance and anappreciation of culture, a lot
(13:56):
of history. I worked in thelibrary in when I was at
Franklin junior high, which gaveme access to more books, right?
And so I remember we had socialDo you remember, did you ever
have social studies classes? Thesection of social studies? Yes,
yes, oh yes, absolutely, yes. Idon't think it exists anymore,
(14:18):
Erin, I don't know. So
Erin Brinker (14:20):
it's it they do in the middle schools and they do
in the high schools. But becausethey are the state testing does
not include social studies. It'sit is not as prioritized as
English and math.
Gloria Macias Harrison (14:34):
Well, I remember Mr. Cook. He was our
teach social studies teacher andI and of course, whatever the
reading was at the time in thebook, I got through it quickly,
so I would bring my librarybooks. And so I was reading
Hemingway and Steinbeck and,wow.
Erin Brinker (14:52):
Now, what did you think of Hemingway? Hemingway is
a man's man in the, you know,like the, like the archetype of
a man's man. Did you enjoy?
Hemingway's books.
Gloria Macias Harrison (15:01):
Yes, I actually did. I actually did,
and I can't even tell you why,but he was so clear. And one of
the things that I learned fromHemingway, I think, and one of
my college professors told methe same thing, do not try to
get flowery Gloria. That's notyour style. Look at Hemingway.
Short sentences, declarative getto it's true.
Erin Brinker (15:22):
That's true.
Thought about it
Gloria Macias Harrison (15:27):
that way. We would read Dickens or
something else, you know, wherethey went on and on about a vase
or it's a wrinkle in thewallpaper. Come on.
Erin Brinker (15:37):
Yes, there are a lot of authors like that. You
get lost in the weeds, so tospeak. It's like I know the
plots in there somewhere, yes.
Gloria Macias Harrison (15:44):
So I think I like the plots more than
anything else. I like the plotsand and so, but Steinbeck,
Steinbeck, Steinbeck, got to me.
I really like Steinberg. One
Erin Brinker (15:58):
of the challenges that I you know people because,
I think it's because of theproliferation of devices,
electronic devices. Young peoplearen't reading like they used
to. I was very hopeful whenHarry Potter came out, and there
was a whole wave of young peoplewho started picking up books
again. Young people, I'm talkingchildren and young up to young
adulthood, they're picking upbooks again. And I don't know if
that trend, I seem to believethat that trend is waned a bit.
(16:21):
And there's there, you know, ifyou, if you're not literate, you
can't, you don't develop thevocabulary, vocabulary that you
need to be able to navigate lifein its most effective way. You
can't express yourself right.
You can't or correctly. Youcan't understand what others are
going through. You can't, youknow, help you define where, how
you fit in the world. Unlessyou're reading, you really miss
(16:44):
it a lot.
Gloria Macias Harris (16:47):
Otherwise, you get, you get mired in the
slang, into the colloquialisms.
And so there isn't any way. Weused to, when I was teaching
Spanish, we used to do an intro.
It was an audio intro tolanguages, and we said, even if
you speak one language, you aremultilingual. And what we meant
(17:08):
by that is that if you know whatlanguage to use in different
situations, my grandmother usedto say that a well educated
person was not just booklearning, it was learning how to
behave in different situationsand how to use vocabulary. So
are you going to, are you, youknow, when you're partying with
your friends or family? Are yougoing to use the same language
(17:31):
as if you're going to go and askfor a loan at the bank? I don't
think so. No, probably not,probably not, right, unless that
banker is your uncle, that'sright. So in that sense, we are
multilingual. We have, if youhave a sense of what language to
use in a different situation.
And so then there was oneexample about the different
(17:52):
words that that Eskimos use forsnow. Snow is extremely
important in their culture,right? Sure. So they must have,
I don't know, maybe more than 50or 100 words for snow, all
different conditions of snow.
Now, what would you think theAmerican equivalent to that
(18:16):
would be?
Erin Brinker (18:17):
Oh, my goodness. I
Gloria Macias Harrison (18:23):
hmm, we have a lot of words. You know
what it could be. I
Erin Brinker (18:26):
was thinking rain, art, oh. I was thinking hearts,
Gloria Macias Harrison (18:31):
oh, ours. So, for instance, we have
the auto. We have the wordautomobile, right? And we have
the word auto. But then if youstand at a corner and you say,
Wow, that is a great Camaro,right? Yes. Or that is what is a
Camaro, right? Or that is a goodMustang. Can you imagine
(18:53):
somebody coming to our countryand trying to figure out what
we're talking about? Oh, yeah,that's true. And, you know, and
so we
Erin Brinker (19:01):
have muscle cars and sedans and sports cars and
SUVs and, yeah, no, I hadn'tthought about it that way, but
you're absolutely right.
Gloria Macias Harrison (19:11):
I mean, it's so obviously cars are
important to our culture, aren'tthey? They are. They are very
important to our culture, forour transportation. And so we
have all of these names for carsand so, and they come and go,
depending on the year and thestyle and the this and the that
and so. So I think if we look atlanguage differently, I mean, we
(19:36):
it's not just to communicate,it's it's part of our culture.
It's who we are. And I always Imiss the classroom, because, if
nothing else, I got a chance tofind out what the current slang
was,
Erin Brinker (19:49):
yes, yeah.
Otherwise, how would we know?
Yeah?
Gloria Macias Harrison (19:53):
How would we know? Because it's not
in our it's not the languagethat I would use at home. And I
remember when my son. Came homeand said something, Oh, that's
sweet. And I said it, I'mthinking, What are you talking
about? And the spa and the slangin Spanish, of course, is based
(20:14):
on on the neighborhood and so,and the period of time, also the
period of time. And so Iremember we, we were trying to
devise a Spanish class forpolice officers, because they
need it, right? Indeed, theyneed it, but they don't need,
they don't need to conjugateverbs. No, they don't. They
(20:36):
don't. They need to know whatthe current slang is on the
street at the time, right? And,of course, if you stop me,
you're going to have to learnhow to talk to me, and not in
slang, but and in Spanish andthen. But if you talk, if you if
you have a younger person,you're probably going to have to
use a different
Erin Brinker (20:56):
language, indeed.
Well, I mean, even in differentregions, so you know, how we
speak here, and just usingEnglish is different than how
they speak in Biloxi,Mississippi, which is different
than they speak in Worcester,Massachusetts, and Chicago,
Illinois. And you know, we'reall in the same country, and
that's and that's so true. And Iwhen I So, I was an exchange
student 100 years ago. Okay, notreally 100 but it feels like it
was a very long time ago. I wentto Austria, and I had taken
(21:19):
German in high school, and theyteach you, you know, hello, jak,
are you in the garden? I neverused that. And so I got there,
realized very quickly that Ididn't know anything. And you
learn that's right, you know,just by being around it and the
reading, I had to read and and,you know, I
Gloria Macias Harrison (21:41):
and read the local newspapers, and I
would always tell people, youknow, listen to Spanish language
radio. Listen to watch thosesoap operas in telenovelas.
Yeah, telenovelas, you know,because you get a chance to see
what is being used in thelanguage, and then the same
(22:01):
thing in Spanish. I mean, thoseof us who speak Spanish, I think
of myself as bilingual andbiliterate, okay, but I was in
Lyon Guanajuato, which is in thecentral part of Mexico, to pick
up my dad, who had fallen ill,and he was in a hospital. He's a
US citizen, but I need to bringhim back. And so I thought my
(22:27):
Spanish was pretty good. And sowe were, we were, we were, and
then cultural differences,because we're very Americanized
Erin Brinker (22:39):
indeed. Well, you're American indeed. All
right, we're
Gloria Macias Harrison (22:43):
very Americanized. And not only that,
but as a, as a, as a Spanishauthor, would say we are women
of carne I Hueso. We're strongwomen. Okay, so we had two
reactions, the ER doctor, we askquestions. Of course, we ask
(23:03):
questions. We want answers thatare right. And he's not used to
that. He's used to being a god.
And so he said, he said, he saidto us, obviously you two ladies
have been smart. Those with meare used to giving orders, and
so I said. And so I thought tomyself, I just answered him and
(23:25):
said, Yes, we are,
Erin Brinker (23:29):
and so and we are.
Gloria Macias Harrison (23:32):
We're used to giving orders. We're
used to, you know that? I mean,we know how to behave and all of
that kind of stuff, and we'renot abusive or in any way shape
or form. But yes, we are used tofending for ourselves in many
ways. Okay, so then the thesurgeons had, had been in the
United States, and most of theirtraining, and received most of
(23:55):
their training in the UnitedStates, they loved us. We had
fun. We taught, you know, theywere used to women like us,
right? And then we didn't thinkwe had an accent. And the lady
said, Where are you from? Hesays, you don't have an accent
like we do. And I really didn'tthink I had an accent. And I saw
(24:15):
I immediately said, because youget a different treatment if
you're from the United States oryou're from Mexico. I said, Oh,
somos a la frontera. We're fromthe front border, which, which
means we were, we werebilingual, so that, oh, no
wonder and so. And we got tworeactions from people, people
who loved us and wanted to knowabout the United States and this
(24:38):
and that cultural stuff. Andthen we had people who said to
us, you think you're better thanwe are? Yeah,
Erin Brinker (24:45):
I'm sure there was a lot of that. You're like, No,
I'm I'm here, like anybody elseis here. You know? Yes, you
know, so I don't
Gloria Macias Harrison (24:53):
so that was a shock to that was a sort
of a shock to me, because if youlive in the whole time in
California, right? Right? Andyou have a grandmother who tells
you, know, so you're living offof her experiences from the 20s
and 30s, right, and 40s and andyour, your, your, we're between
(25:13):
generations almost, you know,we're baby boomers, and so the
the generations that come afterus, and certainly the recently
arrived have a differentperspective completely. And so
how we communicate with eachother and how we accommodate
each other is interesting andand the best thing you can do is
(25:37):
to travel. And I always saidthat the students who had the
best knowledge of Spanish inoverall, were my Mormon students
who came back after a mission.
Oh, yeah. Well, that makesperfect sense. Yes. I mean, they
had to survive and live, youknow, and do all interact and
find out the culture, thelanguage of where they were, and
(25:59):
they were there immersed a wholeyear. So when they came to
valley to take Spanish, becausethat was required, and they
needed it to transfer, they weremy best students. I loved, I
loved talking with them,
Erin Brinker (26:14):
and the fact that they're little older and and
have, yes, had, have they had tohave a work ethic to survive
where they were. And so Ihonestly think that a gap year
and we can move into your youreducation experience as a
teacher and as a collegepresident, and you know, on the
Community College Board, I'mactually a fan of a gap year,
(26:37):
but not a gap year, just whereyou can sit on the couch and
play video games the gap here,where you go somewhere else,
away from your family, and youlearn you're working on a
project, you're doing somethingoverseas or another part of the
United States. Because, like Isaid before, Worcester,
Massachusetts, has nothing toThat's right, it's completely
different. My story when hegraduated from college, his
first job was in West Virginia.
We joked that that was hisexchange here, because it was so
(26:58):
different, you'd be walking verydifferent. The culture was
totally different. And, andthat's good, because you grow as
a person and and you learn, yougain perspective. It may not,
may not change your worldviewmuch, or it might, but you gain
some perspective about, like I'mthinking, your political world
(27:18):
worldview, if you are aprogressive person, and you go
to another place, it may notmake you so you're not
progressive anymore, but it'llit'll open your eyes to the way
other people live, of what theyexperience and you know, and
especially if you're well to doto go to an area where there
might be some poverty, and yousee people living and thriving
and being happy and alsostruggling and all of that all
(27:40):
at the same time, open your eyesto what life is really like.
Gloria Macias Harrison (27:47):
That's right, that's right. It's and
even as an adult, traveling isis always a wonderful
experience. An interesting thingthat happens to me when I
travel, is that when I travel toEurope, and even when I go to
Hawaii, they think I'm Filipino.
Erin Brinker (28:08):
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's
interesting.
Gloria Macias Harrison (28:11):
And, and so even sometimes Filipinos
think I'm Filipino. So they come
Erin Brinker (28:17):
speaking to you in Tagalog, and you're like, wait a
minute. No, no,
Gloria Macias Harrison (28:21):
then I have to say that standard line.
Well, no, I'm not, but I have alot of friends who are yes,
Erin Brinker (28:27):
yeah, yeah. So, well, another place that the
Spanish settled and,
Gloria Macias Harrison (28:32):
and I know Martha when she went to DC,
and she had really long hair atthat time, and so they thought
she was Native American. Oh,yeah. Interesting. Interesting,
that the perspective on colorchanges once you leave
California. It really does,yeah. And so I was in Atlanta,
(28:56):
Georgia for a conference, andand I it was, it was such a
different society there. I mean,there is a society. There is the
the well to do. And it doesn'tmatter what color they are, they
are well to do, you know. And wesaw a very elegant function
(29:17):
going on the hotel we werestaying. And this was a very
high end, elegant black,basically black social structure
and so but, and once you leaveAtlanta, it's different,
Erin Brinker (29:33):
right? But Atlanta, for for a very long
time, it probably still is now aplace where up and coming young
professionals or or young peoplewanting to work into a
professional career, blackprofessionals to go and become
wildly successful was always,you know, for at least a few
decades, has been a place that'sbeen a magnet for for black
(29:54):
professionals. And you can seeit. You know, people have been
wildly successful, and includingathletes and entertainers.
Years, but also business peopleand finance and everything else.
Gloria Macias Harrison (30:04):
And then it was different when we went to
Boston, and it was differentwhen we went, when I spent a
week in Chicago. And so I got anopportunity to see different
neighborhoods, successfulneighborhoods, different
neighborhoods, people from thepeople from Poland, different.
(30:25):
There was a Latino area. Alsothere was, it was just different
neighborhoods and different itwas so I had the opportunity,
because somebody who was fromChicago to go visit different
neighborhoods, and it wasinteresting in the hotels,
because the the jobs that youwould see in California,
(30:46):
basically for Hispanics, wasover there, mostly sudden, you
know, people from the Ukraine,Eastern Europeans, the European
and so It was a little bitdifferent. It was say, whoa. And
so I I really, I really likeChicago. I don't like it when
(31:08):
it's windy, but I liked it verymuch.
Erin Brinker (31:10):
Yeah, it's a beautiful city. It it's a little
rough in the winter, but it is athe skyline as far as downtown
is concerned. And I'm not a bigfan of cities, per se. I like, I
generally like smaller cities,but Chicago is beautiful.
Gloria Macias Harrison (31:22):
Chicago is beautiful. I was only in New
York for a week, and it wasmostly conference, but I got the
feeling of being, of being thislittle, tiny person in a vast
sea of people. Yes,
Erin Brinker (31:35):
yeah, New York's too big for me. I'm with you
like and I don't have any desireto see London or Paris, but you
know, smaller towns, smallercities. I'm all for it. Yeah,
yeah. So, so tell me, how didyou decide to become a teacher?
When? When did How old were youwhen you decided that you want
to be a teacher? I
Gloria Macias Harrison (31:53):
didn't decide to teach teacher. I
wanted I would. Fell in lovewith genetics and the whole
thing of in my biology class atcollege and and I just, I
thought, that's really, actuallyI wanted to be a nurse somewhere
along the line. And but, butthat, I think was because Martha
(32:15):
and I took care of mygrandmother and her elderly
years, and then so my dad, whoat that time had left radio and
worked at Patton State Hospital,is in Psych tech. He volunteered
us all the time because therewas a geriatric ward. And at
Patna time, patent was verydifferent. At that time, it was
(32:40):
a compassionate with the idea ofworking with mental health in a
very different way, not justdata and numbers. And they had
gardens across the from the fromthe hospital, that the patients
grew their own food seriously,that was part of and that was
(33:00):
part of their therapy and so,and they had a very small
criminal, criminal mental healtharea, very small. So we, we
would go and and he wouldvolunteer us to either cook
something or for a birthday oror do their hair or do little
(33:25):
manicures, I mean the elderly.
So I enjoyed that, I enjoyedthat, I think part of the best
training that I ever receivedfor dealing with students was
all the volunteer work that wedid as teenagers at Patton. The
patience is necessary, theroutine that's necessary, all of
(33:47):
that kind of stuff. So I thoughtI would be a nurse. I and then,
I don't know when I changed mymind, as you know, if you as
you, as you go on. But I had anopportunity when I was at and
anyway, I love genetics. I lovethe whole thing of DNA. I love
(34:07):
the research that. But I got theopportunity from a mutual friend
of ours, Ernie Garcia. Erin.
Garcia, at that time, it wasthe, I don't know, curriculum
coordinator or something for theRialto schools. And so one of
their programs was to teachSpanish to fourth graders after
(34:32):
school. It was purely volunteerprogram. So yeah, and so he
picked about six of us from thecommunity college, and I was one
of them, and so I taughtSpanish, and he was our trainer.
So we learned to sing songs, youknow, rhymes that were, you
know, that were popular inEnglish. We'd set them in
(34:56):
Spanish. We we did, we did.
Puppets. We did all kinds ofthings that we played games we,
you know, to get language sothey would use it. We're not
interested in conjugating verbsor anything like that, that we
wanted to have fun with thelanguage. It was probably with
one of the best things that everhappened to me. And then he also
somebody else, then recommendedme to teach high school Spanish
(35:22):
one summer, and that made medecide I never wanted to teach
high school.
Erin Brinker (35:34):
Yeah, teenagers, you have to have a heart for
teenagers. That's, yeah, my
Gloria Macias Harriso (35:38):
husband's a middle Summer Teacher. You
know, they don't want to bethere. They don't, oh my god.
And of course, they were alltaller than I was, you know, I'm
just Yeah, but we survived it,and they survived it. And I
said, Never again. And so, butthen I didn't want to teach
(35:58):
elementary school either. And sowhen I was in grad school,
position opened up, not aposition, but my professors at
Valley, dr, I mean, Roger Antoneand Jim erinski said, you know,
do you want to they? Can youteach a night class for us? And
(36:20):
I had, didn't have my mastersyet. I had my BA, a hot little
Ba, ba in my hands. And so Idid. And everyone in that class
was older than I was. They werea lot of, you know, women
returning to school, taking itafter they had their regular
jobs. Other people, you know,and so they I create. It was one
(36:44):
of the best experiences of mywhole life. I made friends. I
made friends with these ladieswho some of them, I mean, they
already had a lot of courage toreturn to school, right, right?
They had families. Some of themwere single parents. So lot of
(37:04):
brave souls, a lot ofcompassionate souls, and a
couple of them to this day. Imean, they have now, one of them
has passed away. One of them wasgetting her necessary
credentials because she wantedto do early childhood and
develop childhood credential,and she wound up teaching for
(37:27):
the Claire cherry school. Oh,that's great, yeah. So it's a
wonderful experience about, youknow, teaching and, and one of
them came, you know, because Iwas always trying to figure out
how to get them involved and dothis and do that. And you know,
as a new teacher, you're alwaysnervous. You want to make you
want to make sure that they andI, one of them, took me aside
(37:48):
and said, It's okay, sweetheart,we'll get through this together.
Erin Brinker (37:53):
That's awesome.
Gloria Macias Harrison (37:56):
So they took me under wing. I taught
them Spanish, structuralSpanish, and we had a great
time. We had a great time. Andso after that, once I had my MA,
I was offered a position and andthe other thing that came up is
that all this time I'm workingright, I'm going to school, I'm
working. And I thought tomyself, in order to get to be
(38:19):
where I would like to be as ageneticist and all that. It's
going to take a lot ofschooling, right? I don't have
the money for it. I don't havethe money for it, and I enjoy
this. Maybe that's because I'm aGemini and I, I, I enjoy a lot
of stuff, right? That's a goodthing. Yeah, it's a good thing.
(38:40):
So that's how I started, andit's been an interesting it was
an interesting time. And andthen my boss at the time was
Roger anthem, but then later on,my boss was Judith bias, oh,
because she was teaching. And,yeah, very nice teaching. And
so. And then she went on to be aVice President of Instruction at
(39:05):
Valley and and I went on to andso she sort of recommended me
for a leadership trainingprogram through the for through
the, I think it was the FordFoundation and so. And my
president at the time was Donsinger, and so he said they had
(39:27):
to agree to let me go for weeks,different, different one week
periods throughout the year. Andso I went to Miami, Dade in
Florida, which is one of thepremier community colleges, and
learned what they were doing,what they were experimenting
with. I went to San Diego, andthat was mostly finance, with
(39:51):
the the whole idea of the of theprogram was to interest Latinos
in going into administration.
Yeah. Yeah, because I wasperfectly happy in my classroom.
Don't get me wrong, perfectlyhappy in my classroom, lot of
independence, and so, but at thesame time, so Judith was the one
that recommended me, and so shesaid, you know, she's sort of
(40:13):
pushing me out of the nest. Andso after that experience, and
then we were in Colorado for aweek, and we met with other
Latino presidents from all overthe United States, and I found
out at community colleges, andmost of them, I mean, it's very
different. The community collegesystem in Texas is very
(40:34):
different from the Californiasystem. Some of them are
associated and especially in theEast Coast, they're associated
with universities. Oh, I didn'tknow that. And, yeah, some and
the way they're funded is verydifferent. So that's why I was
in Chicago, by the way, to seethe community colleges there.
But anyway, it was, it was atremendous experience, and I
(40:54):
went ahead and applied for anevening Dean position. I didn't
get it. I was, however, the thescreening committee encouraged
me, even though I didn't getthat position for me to keep
trying, because they liked me,and so it's the best thing that
happened to me, because I didn'tget it, because my husband felt
(41:14):
so sorry for me, he bought me asports car.
Erin Brinker (41:21):
Wow, that's awesome.
Gloria Macias Harrison (41:24):
One of my passions are sports cards. I
have to give them up, but that'sokay. That's okay. I did have
several for a while, but anyway,the the position was eliminated
about a year later. So it workedout well, that I worked out.
Well, yeah. And so I tellpeople, you know, if you don't
succeed at first, you just, youknow, figure out, what did I
(41:47):
learn from this? What did Ilearn from this? And I remember
my daughter once had a had asemi bad experience. She thought
it was a bad experience, and shesaid, Okay, Mom, what was I
supposed to learn from this?
Erin Brinker (42:03):
I may not know right now, but it'll be apparent
eventually.
Gloria Macias Harrison (42:07):
So, I mean, so you always have to
figure out, what did you learnfrom this? What did you What did
you experience from this, andhow? What did you learn about
yourself? Were you well preparedfor it, you know? And then I
tried for a dean position, andthen I tried for a vice
(42:27):
president position. Didn't getit at Valley, and that's okay.
It worked out fine, but and thenI was a, I was a humanity Dean
of Humanities, and it was alwaysI was also department chair for
a while too. So I learned toscheduling, you know, listening
to adjunct listening to regularfaculty, trying to get a
(42:51):
schedule that was appropriatefor the students we had, and all
of that kind of stuff, and thendealing with the bureaucracy of
of administration. And sobecause it's a different animal,
it's a different animal, andyou're no longer and it's
interesting, because I think thehardest thing to get over is
(43:13):
that you're no longer in theclassroom, and so all of your
experience in the classroom isdifferent when you become an
administrator and and thenpeople that fellow faculty, your
colleagues, look at youdifferently, and especially when
you have to make a toughdecision, and the faculty says,
(43:35):
I thought she was one of us,
Erin Brinker (43:37):
exactly yes, yes.
And the reality is, is that, no,I just have access to different
information that impacted myopinion. That's right. In
addition to what you've yourposition is there are other
people, and I had to take it allinto consideration. People don't
think of that
Gloria Macias Harrison (43:51):
yes, other than that classroom,
right? Yes. So, so anyway, Iwas, I was recruited by faculty
and and the middle managers fromCrafton. Crafton was going
through a tough time at thetime, and so and so they
recruited me in the sense of,think about it. They had a VP of
(44:13):
Instruction opener, and I said,I don't know. I don't know if I
want to, you know, I'm verycomfortable here all of that. So
I did apply. There were 19people in my screening
committee. Oh, wow. And so theexperience that I'd had through
the Ford Foundation and othermentors, you have to think
(44:34):
about, okay, and it applies toanything you're applying for
something. Did you do yourresearch? Did you find out what
the job really is? Did you talkto people who who have also had
that job in the past? What arethe typical questions that you
think are going to be asked ofyou if you're not prepared for
(44:55):
that? You know, prepareyourself. Prepare yourself. Do
your research. Church, right?
Read about, you know, read aboutthe campus, read about, you
know, the people who have beenthere before, whatever. Anyway,
I did get the position, had agreat time. And one of the
things that I noticed because Ihad been a student at Valley,
and some of my colleagues weremy former teachers, Oh, wow. So
they tend to, even though you'renow a teacher, also, they tend
(45:19):
to look at you still as astudent, right, right? And so
when I went to craft and all ofthat disappeared, I was, you're
only
Erin Brinker (45:31):
the professional, yeah, you weren't a student,
yeah, yeah.
Gloria Macias Harrison (45:35):
And so it was, it was a great 12 years.
I enjoyed my years, and we did alot of it was also the start of
participatory governance. Thatmeans more faculty voice in the
governance, not decision making,but the voice of input, right?
(45:56):
So we did a lot of thingstogether. It was the beginning
of that, developing that, and Ihad a lot of support. I made
sure that I because in any, anycampus, there are, there are,
how do you put it? Differentgroupings of people, click,
(46:16):
right, okay,
Erin Brinker (46:19):
say that, okay.
But, but there are, if they'rehumans, a human happens people
and
Gloria Macias Harrison (46:24):
so sort themselves very hard at making
sure that I was seen with all ofthem in some way or another.
That's good, because you don'twant to be associated with one
particular one. No, otherwisethey don't have the freedom or
the trust you have to developtrust, right, that you're going
to listen and that you're goingto get input and and that you're
(46:48):
going to make a decision, evenif they disagree with it, that
was based on input, right?
Because ultimately, they're not,they're not the Vice President
of Instruction, they're not thepresident of the campus. They
have a different function, andwe all, if we can all work
together as a team, then then wework, we can have a successful
campus and a successfulexperience for those students,
(47:10):
those students, when they stepon their campus, they have to be
office, services and education,and they don't need to be
admired in the politics of thecampus. That's not,
Erin Brinker (47:23):
that's not what we're there. Yeah. So we don't
have a whole lot of time left. Iwant to ask you one quick
question, and I'd love to haveyou back on to continue to come
back on again and talk abouteducational issues in the in the
region. I'm curious what youthink about I'm of the opinion
that every student at fromkindergarten on, should be
learning English and Spanish,that everything should be dual
(47:46):
immersion all the way through.
And I use the example of Canada,where they everything's in
English and French. If they cando it, why can't we do English
and Spanish? Spanish is thenumber two language spoken in
the United States, and certainlyin the southern states, you
know, from Texas all the waythrough to Florida, you hear
Spanish everywhere, and I'm ofthe opinion that that everybody
should be learning it from thevery youngest ages when the
(48:07):
brain is best able to learnlanguages. What is your opinion?
Gloria Macias Harrison (48:20):
You're asking a bilingual person who
learned from home and thencleaned up her Spanish through
education. I believe everyperson needs to learn another
language, and they did away withthe requirement that the
universities had, that everyonewould had to have two semesters
(48:42):
of a foreign language andSpanish. Yeah, Spanish would
have been, you know, great, butI took French because I didn't
need the Spanish, right, right?
I took French. And even thoughmy French is, is God awful when
I travel, I'm more biliteratethan I am bilingual, and I
(49:03):
certainly love Frenchliterature, so it gave me a
different appreciation of thepeople and where I fit in as a
visitor, as somebody who mightlive there or whatever. But in
the southwest, I think it'sabsolutely essential. And the
only thing that I concernedabout is that there what is
(49:28):
considered dual immersion in onedistrict may not be the same in
another district. Oh, fairenough. That's true. Okay, and
so I, I see some programs thatare the children are
enthusiastic that, you know,they want to learn this, and
they learn stuff, and and is,and so it, it has to be more
(49:53):
than that, and but, and I'm not.
But I don't know enough aboutthe dual immersion program,
right?
Erin Brinker (50:04):
And I don't know there doesn't really
generalities,
Gloria Macias Harrison (50:07):
yeah. So I know that in the elementary
school it works beautifully, butI don't know if we have the
trained staff to do it by thetime you get to middle school or
the time you get to high school,I don't know.
Erin Brinker (50:24):
So that is a fair answer. And in all fairness, I
completely sprung this on you.
Did not prep for that questionat all.
Gloria Macias Harrison (50:29):
I just No, no, no, no. I It's because
sometimes I see a program that'sabsolutely marvelous. And then
even with the after schoolSpanish that we did with the
fourth graders, you know, theyremember phrases and stuff like
my own device. Hurry, hurry. Youknow, the and and the phrases
(50:52):
that we even to this day, when Isay to my husband, let's get
going. I said, I don't know. Idon't know. And that was from
high school, Spanish for Mr.
Balloon way back. Let's getgoing. You know, that's awesome,
but it's not enough. It's notenough. It's not enough. There
(51:13):
has to be the literature. Therehas to be there has to be some
cultural parts of it too. Andit's just like when I when I
listen to my Chicano friends,and they want Chicano culture,
and I'm thinking, Mijito, thereis so much of the world that
speaks Spanish. When I was inSpain, in Barcelona, right?
(51:36):
Barcelona, it's a good thingthat Mrs. Mercado and Mrs.
Rivera in high school took us tosee flamenco, took us to see
classical guitar, took us to,you know, to all of these
things, and exposed us toSpanish live, not just Latin
American literature, because thelanguage is is the literature
that is available to us isfantastic. It's fantastic. So I
(51:59):
again, it depends on the qualityof the program, and it depends
on whether there's a follow up,because you get all these kids
excited and everything in anelementary school, and I think
there is a program in SanBernardino district that goes
all the way to high school? Yes,I would be interested to see the
(52:23):
data on that. How many went onto college? How many are
successful in college? How manywent on to do something else?
What? It's too new. I think noone's done the research. Yet. No
one's done the research. Whatdid do you think you were well
prepared? That does? Did thisallow you to do such and such?
(52:47):
And then one of the things thatI did did a little bit of
translating for a while, notmuch. I'm not good at it. And
the reason I'm not good at it isthat I was formally trained,
right? And then my Spanish, andcolloquial Spanish is from my
grandmother several generationsago, right? Yes, and and
(53:10):
whatever, because I'm not on thestreets, right? And not on the
streets, I don't know. So I wastrying to translate for this man
who said he wanted to say it washis common law wife, and he said
la mujer cameos. He said, Whatthe heck does that mean? I
literally translate that. Itbasically says the woman who
(53:32):
acknowledges me. Oh, yeah,that's a little translation. Oh,
and what he meant was his andthat, but that's what he said,
right? So I, I thought tomyself, I'm not going to do
this, because I'm it's not fairto the person I'm translating
for, right? And so
Erin Brinker (53:57):
things get lost in translation. That's an example
of why
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:00):
that's an example. Why? That's an
example, why? So this has
Erin Brinker (54:05):
been delightful, and I could talk to you all
afternoon, all day,
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:10):
I stopped to do Erin
Erin Brinker (54:12):
well, and we're time my show, my show is only an
hour. So this has been really,really wonderful. I'm so
grateful for this time with you,and I hope that you would come
back. And,
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:24):
oh, I love to come back. Wonderful.
Well, Gloria Macias Harris itmakes me feel very comfortable.
Erin Brinker (54:28):
Oh, good. I'm so glad. I'm so and your stories
are just, I mean, I just wantmore. I want to hear more about
your life and more about whatyou're doing. And we will, we
will, I will definitely have youback on the show. Gloria Macias
Harrison, thank you for yourcommitment to community. Thank
you for your commitment. Foryour commitment to education and
for all
Gloria Macias Harrison (54:45):
that you have done for us and to you.
Erin, thank you. You and Tobin,thank you. Thank you. But
Erin Brinker (54:50):
that is about all we have time for today. I'm Erin
Brinker, you've been listeningto the making hope happen radio
show. For more information aboutthe making hope happen
Foundation, go to WWE. WW, dot,making hope. Dot, O, R, G,
that's w, w, w, dot, makinghope.org. Have a great week,
everybody, and I'll talk to younext week.
Noraly Sainz (55:09):
Hi. My name is Noraly Sainz, and I am Program
Coordinator at uplift SanBernardino, a collective impact
initiative at the making hopehappen Foundation. And this is
my story in November of 2017 myhusband, our four young sons and
I moved away from our familiesto San Bernardino with the hope
of reaching our goal of homeownership in 2018 as our oldest
(55:32):
son started kindergarten, Iconnected with the school
district and learned aboutmaking hope happens. Kids
program with my oldest inkindergarten and my twins at
preschool, I had the opportunityto tote my youngest to the kids
parenting classes. In January of2020, my husband and our
family's breadwinnerunexpectedly passed away. I
found myself in a pandemic withmy sons in an uncertain future.
(55:55):
It was then that that oasis thatI found at kids turned into my
support system as the staff andfriends rallied around me while
my sons and I struggled to findour new normal. In October of
2020, after seven years as ahomemaker, I joined the making
hope happen foundation as aprogram coordinator for uplift
San Bernardino. This careeropportunity reignited my
(56:17):
family's dream of home ownershipin November of 2022 through the
mutual support of the uplift SanBernardino Housing Network, my
family was able to buy our firsthome in my role as program
coordinator, and as I connectwith other families in our
community, I can wholeheartedlyattest to the opportunities that
the foundation is bringing toour community and truly making
(56:39):
hope happen.
Erin Brinker (56:40):
For more information about the making
hope happen foundation and tomake a donation, please visit
www.makinghope.org that's WWWdot makinghope. Dot O, R, G,
your donations make our workpossible.
PSA (56:56):
Millions of kids in America rely on the meals they get each
day at school, but when school'sout for the summer, many of
those meals disappear andchildhood hunger rises. There is
a solution. Together, we canhelp families and communities
feed kids this summer throughlocal meal services, assistance
programs and more. When youdonate to No Kid Hungry, your
gift goes to providing grants tolocal communities and funding
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our advocacy on behalf ofchildren, visit no kid
hungry.org. To help us endchildhood hunger. This summer,
at Social Security, we arealways thinking of ways to save
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That's why we created my SocialSecurity opening a my Social
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