Deborah Dent-Samake

Describe the women who have most influenced your life and the formation of your character. Who are your sheroes?

This is my opportunity to talk about my friend Sharon. As a teacher, there are concrete definitions you want to get across. Having taught elementary school, it's important to always explain words because you have to have a certain vocabulary in order to have a conversation. The Peacemakers class that I teach is a good example. You have to define words like violence and nonviolence. If you're poor, do you live in a violent society because you're poor? That's the kind of abstract terminology that comes out. You have to agree about the vocabulary definitions that you're going to use.

When I think of the word hero, I think of superheroes, what you see on TV. And then I think of the heroic act. Martin Luther King, he's a hero, and Ghandi. At one point, they put themselves in a position of doing heroic acts. I'm not taking any of that away from them because they sacrificed their lives. But I also think that people are heroic because they're courageous. Sometimes it's just about taking care of themselves, because that's an inspiration.

So this provides me with an opportunity to talk about my friend who is basically in the process of dying. She's a fourth grade teacher who discovered that she had cancer five years ago. She had colon cancer and was completely clean of colon cancer, but in August she discovered that it had metastasized in her liver. The chemotherapy doesn't work. Anyway, she's in a hospice, but it wasn't until last week that she stopped teaching.

Sharon taught all the way up to now. She took all of her energy and put it into her teaching. And I thought that was extremely heroic. It showed me that teaching is a noble job. Anybody who has any type of disease such as cancer, and courageously and heroically puts herself out there and continues to do whatever job it is, I think that's wonderful. It made me really think about teaching because sometimes you complain because you don't get paid a lot. But when you think about what a wonderful gift she is giving, giving these kids knowledge to open themselves up to learn. And not just to learn the material that you learn in the fourth grade, but to become passionate about learning. To know that learning is a lifelong process, and they could see it.

Here's somebody who is declining physically — jaundiced eyes and losing hair — and she's a beautiful person, physically, as well as emotionally, and her character. But they could see the change in her, in their teacher. What a wonderful gift to show how important it is to live today. What a difference you can make on a day-to-day basis for a teacher. This is a person who you won't read about in the history books, but it is a heroic act to be courageous through this.

So, she's definitely been a hero. And my mother is, at the moment, taking care of my father, who is ill. I would also place her in that position of being a hero. But that word does not only apply only to one specific act and it doesn't only apply to the great leaders and the great heroes that we learn about. It's the people who are doing it on a daily basis.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why or why not?

It's a good question. I'm going to bring it up in my Peacemakers class as a vocabulary word. There are some high school students who think that it is a bad word. It's a stereotype now, associated with an aggressive woman who wants to emasculate people. I asked myself, where are my students getting this idea from?

When I was in college, you wanted to be a feminist. If you were a male, you wanted to be a feminist. If you were a female, you wanted to be a feminist. If you were politically or socially active — someone who was a humanitarian — you wanted to be a feminist. There were contradictions, though. There were people who were politically active and yet, in their personal lives, were still struggling.

What matter are the personal relationships between women and men. When you're in those relationships, whether it's a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife or your colleagues, what happens? Can you communicate with each other and be heard? Can you get past my sex and can I be heard? It is things like domestic violence where I think we need to work. We have to get rid of domestic violence. How can a man physically hurt a female? How can there be ownership or such possessiveness? That's not just coming from that individual, but rather from society. Society is condoning that in some form, whether it's commercials, where there are images of subservient, objectified women — or something else. That's what we have to knock down.

What would you most like to tell your daughter, son, the next generation about your hopes for women of the future? How would you advise a young woman to go about finding her own voice?

I've lived basically as single parent, but I have big sisters and I have a mother and two brothers and a father, so I was very fortunate to have strong support all around. What was really nice about every place I taught, the other teachers I made friends with, they also watched out for my daughter, Amina. I had this constant support group that seemed to just happen. But as I get older, I actually look for that circle of support.

I've told my daughter that that's what she should look for. I said, "When you make friends, those relationships need to be nurtured. Be very purposeful with that, and they will reap the benefits and you will reap the benefits." I think that's an enormous skill — to be able to discern what the right way of developing a community is.

I remember her last year of high school, before she went away to college, and I started having an anxiety attack: "Well, have I taught her everything? Does she know how to study?" But I definitely told her to seek out people who have a positive outlook. Look for people who have a purpose because it's going to help you grow and develop, and you have a lot to offer. You've got to surround yourself with supportive people, so that if you start to have problems or issues, you have some base to fall back on. You’ll have friends who you know will help you. And later, in your professional life, you learn to look for allies. You have to look for people who will help you professionally. And look at it in a way that you have something to offer in a professional environment.

How do you define success for yourself? How would you define success for the next generation?

Teaching takes a lot of energy. You have to be an actor. You have to be a psychologist. Sometimes it's like being a dartboard. You've got to catch all of these different personalities and characters at the same time. After watching a documentary I showed in class, a student came to me and said, "I understand that there's a connection between that film and me. I understand that there are social movements and social activism, and that I can be involved at whatever level, that I have a responsibility to make change whether it is change within my person, my family, or in society. But I have a responsibility to do that on whatever level and that's all that I'm responsible for. I don't have to go out and try to save the world."

When I heard her say that to me, I thought, "Okay, this is success." Because she's taken this course and she's connected it to her life. What's really nice for me is that she now looks at things with more of a global perspective. I'll give myself some of the credit and say there's a connection. She felt comfortable in my class. But I think that the success is in knowing that I got the information out to them, so that they could pick it up and learn it.

What made you decide to pursue your occupation?

I went to UC Santa Barbara and became interested in Social Psychology. When I got to college in the 70s, I was politically active. The UC system had investments in South Africa, so there was a political movement by a lot of the students to get the UCs to divest. That's when I became interested in the Peace Corps and going to Africa. This is where Kennedy's influence came in. I went to Niger and taught English as a Second Language.

After I taught in Niger for two years, I ended up getting a job at St. Paula's Lutheran School. It used to be on Turk and Eddy, and it burned down a couple of years ago. The students were predominantly African-American, basically mirroring the community. I ended up teaching third grade. I was leaning toward a credential in secondary education in history and social science. I love third graders because they’re at a transitional stage.

Now, I teach ninth grade and tenth graders, which are transitional grades too. I like those grades because they keep me on my toes. When I started at The Urban School in 1996, I was attracted to the school, because I had heard many wonderful things about it. I was also a director of the summer program that exists. It serves public middle school students. The program is a collaboration between public schools and private schools. Now there are six summer school programs called Aim High.

I met several teachers here, and I like the idea of having discussions and having longer classroom periods so that we could concentrate on the information. The teachers here have a passion for what they're teaching. The students have to be very responsible and have a sense of internal discipline because the school is set up more like a college than a traditional high school setting.

The Urban School is an independent private school. I consider it a progressive school, in that we stress the breadth. We use a block system so that the students have four courses per trimester. They can really concentrate and focus on the subject matter. There are discussions and consultation periods built into the schedule so that the students meet with their teachers and have the opportunity to further discuss information or get help where they need help.

We don't give grades, per se. We do give grades in that we have to have a grade for the UC system and for most schools, but the students don't see them until their senior year. They receive, however, a GPA each year, so they have an idea of how they're doing. At first, I thought it would be difficult because I would have to write a narrative that would thoroughly explain to the student and the parent what the student’s progress was. It's difficult when you've given a grade and you want the student to have an idea of how well they're doing. What's interesting with this particular process, when we have a conversation between teacher and student, the grade doesn't get in the way. We talk about what the student has done well, and where the student could improve.

What challenges have you dealt with at work or at home due to your gender? What benefits?

I can't talk for all women, but I do think that there are women who have to assert themselves in order to acknowledge what you do well. You have gone through the training. And you're going to have to work a little harder because you are in a male dominated society

And it's good to have feelings. It's good to feel and care about what the person's going to think. That's a wonderful part of your professional life. But you can't go by your feelings alone.

I'd also like to talk about being an African-American female. Sometimes I get stuck in the internalizing of African-American stereotypes — of what some people think of as African-American stereotypes. For example, I have to be careful sometimes about raising my voice. I don't know why or where I learned that, but I know that if I raise my voice, in certain circles, I have a feeling that people will say, "Oh, there goes that loud black woman." Or, "She's emotional." Sometimes that feeling is right on target, and it's about racism. So racism exists and stereotypes exist. But I question that feeling, because I think, "Even if that thought comes to me, that kind of thinking, I need to switch that off." And I have to work at switching that off and say, "I'm raising my voice because I'm emphasizing something, or I'm making a statement. Who cares?"

If you can think that stereotypes have positive sides to them, that you can make them work for you. In opposition to this negative stereotype is the African-American woman who is strong and who is assertive and is going to get her point across and everyone's going to listen. But there is sometimes that struggle with this dual consciousness that all of us have, the ability to negotiate. Everybody has to do that. Some people have to do it more than other people, and that's what I want my daughter to learn. She has to learn to use the art of negotiating and use it in a positive way. You don't want to become a schizophrenic. You want to be able to negotiate in a variety of circles, to be able to communicate in different situations, and to be able to be flexible in different communities in society.

What woman (living or dead) would you most like to have dinner with and why?

The woman I would like to have dinner with is Iyanla Vanzant. She’s a writer, an African, Yoruba princess. There are some spiritual elements in her book. There are some religious undertones to her books, Christianity and other monotheistic religions, but the main thing is the book that she has written called The Value in the Valley. She wrote about different women and their experiences. The book focused on African-American women, but any woman can read it, and any man could read it. She writes about the fact that you have valleys, problems. "Here's the same problem I had a few years ago. Why can't I change my job, my profession? Why am I with the same man or the same woman again? She takes a look at all of these life experiences and she says, "Stop, listen and look. What is your responsibility? What part did you play in getting yourself in these situations? How much of it is fear? How much of it is the experience in your past? How much of it is what society says you should do because you're of a particular ethnic group or gender?" Or even if it's, for example, the death of my friend, what am I supposed to learn from this? I found it difficult enough to figure out what she's supposed to learn from it, but what am I supposed to take from this and use in my life?

Her writing is very clear and on top of it. She's witty. So if you learn from the valley that you’re in, when the next one comes along that is similar, you can avoid it or you go through it faster. But you have to learn from the experience that comes out of it.