 stereotypes actually drastically changed the trajectory of my life and I'm not saying that as an exaggeration. So I'll tell you a little bit about my story specifically with stereotypes and really I feel like I had to experience them as you know like a as a student. I went to an Islamic school in Nevelle and so I I was always around a lot of Muslim my peers were always Muslim but when I became a teacher and decided to teach in the public school and that was some of my first experiences. So I've been teaching about four years at the time and as a special education teacher and so most of my time spent on a public middle school campus working with students with learning disabilities and so at the time again working there for about four or five years I I honestly was doing great it was you know things got tough sometimes you know you've all been middle schooler so you understand it's sometimes it can be a little bit difficult to work with but I would say my life really changed on 9-11 2017 when I came to my classroom early to get set up and started and as I turn the corner I see that my classroom had been vandalized with words of hate words associating me with terrorism I had ISIS written on my door and I just could not believe what I was seeing because the majority of the students that I work with were also students of color students who are English language learners students who are undocumented and so they also had lots of you know they also experience stereotypes but for me and you might remember what happened in November of 2016 does anyone remember what happened November 2016 which was right before this or January of 2017 yes Trump got elected and so that kind of started a snowball effect for me to that instance on 9-11 2017 where I saw that my classroom had been vandalized so I was really devastated I'm not expecting that to happen and unfortunately that was the 13th incident that had taken place on my school campus and not just to me but to other other hijabies other staff members who work there and so I was I was alarmed and I was alarmed not just for how that impacts me as a staff member but the environment that it was cultivating for other students so what did I do I decided to call care I had been in their Muslim youth leadership program and so I knew a lot about the types of resources that they offered and so I called care and I said you know like what do we do and we talked about a plan to figure out how I could gain the power in that situation and so the plan that we came up was I decided I was going to go public with my story and so with cares help basically decided to demand action of the school district right they are responsible for creating the systems that protect students that protect staff that protect our community and so my my story was printed on the front page of the mercury news which is an organization in San Jose that November and I decided to speak at a school board meeting in front of my local elected officials and specifically what I was asking them is what are the policies you have in place to protect us from these experiences how are we going to respond to these experiences because these stereotypes are not acceptable and in this case resulted in a hate crime with my classroom being vandalized so after that story went public and after I spoke at the school board meeting that's well first of all it was terrifying I'm not really much of a public speaker I enjoy being in my small classroom and speaking to and working with kids right but speaking publicly kind of created this chain reaction where I was flooded with people contacting me literally I had all of these cards and emails and phone calls of both people who are who are horrified of what was happening in our community but also people who are like you're making this up what did you do to these kids to make them do this to you and I really didn't know what to do with it but it was a lot right it was a lot to process and so I needed to figure out how to use my knowledge and my experiences about stereotypes to really impact lasting change right in the system and so when a local position opened up on my on a school board in the district which I where I live I decided why not I'm going to run for that seat and I won and I became the first hijabi elected official in the state of California and the reason that I did that was so that I could help write the policies that then lead to change and work with care on things like Muslim Day at the Capitol to advocate for bills like AB 2291 which was to help teachers get trained on responding to schooling and so that article so again why do I share all of this with all of you because I know unfortunately each and every one of you has probably experienced a stereotype at some point in your personal experience or witness someone else experiencing that again it's not just a Muslim stereotypes impact many groups of individuals and so it's really important for us to reflect on those experiences today and think about what can we as individuals do for to help ourselves but also helps our community and our broader society to challenge these stereotypes this was just a image of the NPR article where I didn't know I was gonna be sworn in but I was sworn in to take that position on the school board for this episode of leader profiles we traveled to San Jose to visit Clyde Fisher Middle School my name is Mamona of Alberta and I am a special education teacher in East San Jose and also a school board member in San Jose so I decided to become a teacher because I grew up in this community and I really wanted to have the opportunity to give back it was actually while I was volunteering at the San Jose Public Library when I realized just how fast the inequities were when working with children I realized I didn't just want to join another teaching program I wanted to be a part of a movement with other educators who are like my did in really you know avenging the social injustices that happen inside the classroom and inside of the education world I knew I wanted to not only continue being able to make an impact directly you know for the lives of the students that I work with in my classroom but to be able to expand that impact and so to be able to do that now on the school board you know I'm changing the lives of over 7,500 students and that you know is drastically gonna hopefully create better opportunities for them and open pathways for their future so one of the things that I've you know been able to take from my classroom experiences to the school board is working on specific policies related to special education and so one of the resolutions I've actually been working on is being able to allow for there to be protected allocated collaboration time for all types of teachers so that they're receiving training and have time to work together to really think about the needs of all students I would definitely say continue to think about the ways that you can impact not just your school site but your community you know as a teacher we ask our students to take risks and to push ourselves and so we need to really internalize that value to and to make sure that we are constantly thinking about ways that we can grow and continue to make an impact in our communities.