Episode #131: Making Schools Places of Wellness with Kecia McDonald

          <br />Kecia McDonald from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, is the EL Resource Teacher for the West Hawai'i Complex Area. She is one of 49 public school educators chosen to be a 2022 Global Learning Fellow by the NEA Foundation. The fellowship includes a two-day professional development workshop in the fall and a ten-day international field study to South Africa, where Kecia lived for 14 years.  She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho and also lived in Zimbabwe and South Africa.<br />Your WHY <br />To help create the conditions that allow others to succeed at what they are being asked to do, and support them to go beyond and pursue what they want to do.<br />Joe Sanfelippo talks about focusing on the “get-to”s instead of getting completely mired in the “must-do”s and this is part of my WHY, too. We all have things we must do, and I love to help people succeed at those, but then also to help them utilize their gifts and talents to go beyond the “must-dos” and enjoy the “get-tos.”<br />Your background, where you grew up<br />I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, more specifically the East Bay. My dad was born and raised in Oakland, California, and was a career firefighter there. I lived in Castro Valley and went to HS in Hayward, California. Castro Valley was very unique, as it was part of this larger, more cosmopolitan area yet had a small-town feel. We still had a rodeo and a festival every year, there was a saddlery shop in town, etc. So it was the best of both worlds, growing up with a small-town sense of community then also running around Berkeley and San Francisco, getting exposed to more urban, multicultural trends.<br /><br />What it was like for you as a student<br />I was a traditional, successful student. Straight As, involved in sports and clubs, student leadership, and the whole package. Success at school came easily to me and I totally conformed to the system. Now I can see that the ease of navigating school does not come naturally to many, but at the time I just thought it was straightforward and