Interview with Councilwoman Trinity Donovan - Part 1 of 5.
Last Thursday, November 16, 2006, I was privileged to sit with Chandler, Arizona's newly elected City Councilwoman Trinity Donovan for an interview. Our session covered a broad range of topics, including Councilwoman Donovan's background, her interest in public service, her perspectives on the issues facing the city and her insights into the recent campaign.
Councilwoman Donovan was extraordinarily generous with her time, allowing me to interview longer than we had planned. The result is a fairly long interview, lasting over an hour, which will take perhaps six hours and 30 pages for me to transcribe. So I will need to present the transcription to you in parts as I can complete it.
So here is Part 1 of what I expect will be a five-part series.
Many thanks, again, Councilwoman Donovan, for giving this interview and for your gracious generosity with your time!
---Part 1 of the Interview follows---
We began our session by speaking informally, during which time Councilwoman Donovan shared with me about some community service trips she had taken in the past. Comparing experiences working in community service in other countries, I shared how my work had been in language development, literacy and translation in minority communities in Africa. Ms. Donovan also revealed that she had studied Swahili for three years while in college and hoped one day to take a service trip to East Africa.
Geo: You were talking about how you studied Swahili for three years?
TD: Why did I do that? I think that learning a language is one of the best ways to learn about a culture because the words that are important in a language are the words that are used in those other languages. They say that Eskimos have eighteen different words for snow and for us being in Arizona, we wouldn’t understand those differences. Perhaps others who have lived in places with more snow would understand the differences better – the wet snow, the dry snow. So you can learn a lot about a culture.
In high school, I felt that Africa really was a forgotten continent. We didn’t learn much about it and many people didn’t speak about Africa. They speak about it as if it’s a country instead of a continent. So I was interested in learning more about that and had a teacher who was from Kenya. He would say that he learned Kikuyu, his tribal language, English in school and Swahili on the streets to be able to play basketball with boys from other tribes. So it was nice to have him and learn the language and more about that culture.
Geo: Do you speak Swahili, would you say?
TD: (Laughs.) No. I say I’ve “learned” Swahili. And there was a time there were some tapes at the library of learning Swahili and I’d pick up one every year or so just to refresh my mind. I’m sure if I went back there I could pick up some things. After my first year, my teacher did a great job. I thought I knew everything about Swahili and was very confident about it and then taught seventh graders in Pittsburgh - over a summer program I taught them Swahili, taught them songs and then the language.
They were kids who came from poor schools and neighbourhoods. They were put in a school with amazing resources for the summer in a rigorous summer program for seventh and eight graders. Some people were saying “here are kids, you could get them ahead in languages such as Spanish or French, but you’re teaching them a language that, once they leave, they’ll have no ability to keep up.” But I think in learning a language – besides learning about the culture, which I think is really important – learning the skills of how to learn a language is also important for those kids. So they were learning something they hadn’t learned before.
Now, my second year in Swahili talked about abstract concepts and we read literature and I realized how little I really knew about the language! So I’m glad I taught it after my first year when I felt like I had a good handle on the language.
Geo: Do you see yourself going there, to East Africa?
TD: I would love to go to East Africa.
Geo: What do you see your – would that be just a vacation or something else?
TD: You know, when I’m able to do service trips, I’ve found that, while I enjoy travelling throughout the world, when I’m able to do service, when I’m in that community it really helps me understand that community so much quicker. Being a tourist is nice, but, being able to work with others from the culture, you get to taste foods that you may not as a regular tourist and you get to learn from people who live there every day on a much more intimate basis.
Geo: You’ve had a significant amount of service experience here in Chandler, with ICAN, with the United Way. There are a variety of other things you’ve been involved in, you’ve been involved in the church, as we were talking about earlier. What would you say are some cultural insights that you’ve learned about Chandler, through your service to Chandler, that you might not have otherwise have picked up if you hadn’t been doing that?
TD: I think the diversity in Chandler is one thing that I’ve really been able to see through my work at ICAN and United Way. There are many people, we have high incomes in Chandler, our median income is high, there’s high educational attainment and those are great statistics. In addition to that, in that median, there are very low and very high income and educational attainment. Seeing that diversity (gestures to the wall map of Chandler) - and the map is behind you so as I look at you I see Chandler as well – looking at that diversity really…it…
I’m so happy to have grown up in Chandler and glad to be able to work here and now serve here in a new capacity on Council. I grew up in Central Chandler, maybe “North Central” Chandler now, lived for a time in South Chandler and now my home’s in East Chandler. Worked in downtown Chandler with ICAN for five years as the CEO and a couple of summers before that. And then I did a lot of my walking in West Chandler because that was the place that I really hadn’t lived in. And what I saw while walking the neighbourhoods for a Saturday, seeing the difference in one neighborhood to the other, the ones that have been there 50 years to the ones that have been here 20 years to the ones that have been here two years. It’s one thing to think you have to drive to a different area, but just in the walking time you see the difference.
Going back to the service part, serving in downtown Chandler, I think something that was the most astonishing was, for me, the educational attainment percentages. These are 2000 Census statistics so they keep growing and changing but in Arizona 19% of the people haven’t graduated high school or gotten their G.E.D.s by age 25. So 19%, that’s kind of baseline for Arizona. In Chandler it’s 12% of people, so we’re much better in that more people have graduated high school or gotten their G.E.D.s. And we have a lot of higher degrees here. But in the four square mile area of downtown Chandler, people over age 25 who haven’t graduated high school or gotten their G.E.D.s is 39 and a half percent.
So when I think of that, it really extends down to kids, if 40% percent (about) of your role models, the people who you see in your neighborhoods on a daily basis haven’t been able to achieve graduating from high school, for you to think that YOU can achieve it is like “Who do you think you are to think you can surpass these people who are around you?” So I think, for me, that’s something that’s a statistic that’s astonishing in comparison with the rest of Chandler. But it also speaks to the difference that can be made of helping kids see what opportunities exist outside of the neighborhoods that we all come from. You can’t know what you can do if you don’t know what’s even out there or what’s possible.
Geo: Talking about education for a little bit, that’s one of the hot topics in just about every election (as it was in this last election at the state and national level). At the city level, you’ve only been in the role for two or three months but from your perspective, what is the city grappling with in terms of education? What are the issues that are on the table, things you see on the horizon?
--to be continued soon in Part 2!
Councilwoman Donovan was extraordinarily generous with her time, allowing me to interview longer than we had planned. The result is a fairly long interview, lasting over an hour, which will take perhaps six hours and 30 pages for me to transcribe. So I will need to present the transcription to you in parts as I can complete it.
So here is Part 1 of what I expect will be a five-part series.
Many thanks, again, Councilwoman Donovan, for giving this interview and for your gracious generosity with your time!
---Part 1 of the Interview follows---
We began our session by speaking informally, during which time Councilwoman Donovan shared with me about some community service trips she had taken in the past. Comparing experiences working in community service in other countries, I shared how my work had been in language development, literacy and translation in minority communities in Africa. Ms. Donovan also revealed that she had studied Swahili for three years while in college and hoped one day to take a service trip to East Africa.
Geo: You were talking about how you studied Swahili for three years?
TD: Why did I do that? I think that learning a language is one of the best ways to learn about a culture because the words that are important in a language are the words that are used in those other languages. They say that Eskimos have eighteen different words for snow and for us being in Arizona, we wouldn’t understand those differences. Perhaps others who have lived in places with more snow would understand the differences better – the wet snow, the dry snow. So you can learn a lot about a culture.
In high school, I felt that Africa really was a forgotten continent. We didn’t learn much about it and many people didn’t speak about Africa. They speak about it as if it’s a country instead of a continent. So I was interested in learning more about that and had a teacher who was from Kenya. He would say that he learned Kikuyu, his tribal language, English in school and Swahili on the streets to be able to play basketball with boys from other tribes. So it was nice to have him and learn the language and more about that culture.
Geo: Do you speak Swahili, would you say?
TD: (Laughs.) No. I say I’ve “learned” Swahili. And there was a time there were some tapes at the library of learning Swahili and I’d pick up one every year or so just to refresh my mind. I’m sure if I went back there I could pick up some things. After my first year, my teacher did a great job. I thought I knew everything about Swahili and was very confident about it and then taught seventh graders in Pittsburgh - over a summer program I taught them Swahili, taught them songs and then the language.
They were kids who came from poor schools and neighbourhoods. They were put in a school with amazing resources for the summer in a rigorous summer program for seventh and eight graders. Some people were saying “here are kids, you could get them ahead in languages such as Spanish or French, but you’re teaching them a language that, once they leave, they’ll have no ability to keep up.” But I think in learning a language – besides learning about the culture, which I think is really important – learning the skills of how to learn a language is also important for those kids. So they were learning something they hadn’t learned before.
Now, my second year in Swahili talked about abstract concepts and we read literature and I realized how little I really knew about the language! So I’m glad I taught it after my first year when I felt like I had a good handle on the language.
Geo: Do you see yourself going there, to East Africa?
TD: I would love to go to East Africa.
Geo: What do you see your – would that be just a vacation or something else?
TD: You know, when I’m able to do service trips, I’ve found that, while I enjoy travelling throughout the world, when I’m able to do service, when I’m in that community it really helps me understand that community so much quicker. Being a tourist is nice, but, being able to work with others from the culture, you get to taste foods that you may not as a regular tourist and you get to learn from people who live there every day on a much more intimate basis.
Geo: You’ve had a significant amount of service experience here in Chandler, with ICAN, with the United Way. There are a variety of other things you’ve been involved in, you’ve been involved in the church, as we were talking about earlier. What would you say are some cultural insights that you’ve learned about Chandler, through your service to Chandler, that you might not have otherwise have picked up if you hadn’t been doing that?
TD: I think the diversity in Chandler is one thing that I’ve really been able to see through my work at ICAN and United Way. There are many people, we have high incomes in Chandler, our median income is high, there’s high educational attainment and those are great statistics. In addition to that, in that median, there are very low and very high income and educational attainment. Seeing that diversity (gestures to the wall map of Chandler) - and the map is behind you so as I look at you I see Chandler as well – looking at that diversity really…it…
I’m so happy to have grown up in Chandler and glad to be able to work here and now serve here in a new capacity on Council. I grew up in Central Chandler, maybe “North Central” Chandler now, lived for a time in South Chandler and now my home’s in East Chandler. Worked in downtown Chandler with ICAN for five years as the CEO and a couple of summers before that. And then I did a lot of my walking in West Chandler because that was the place that I really hadn’t lived in. And what I saw while walking the neighbourhoods for a Saturday, seeing the difference in one neighborhood to the other, the ones that have been there 50 years to the ones that have been here 20 years to the ones that have been here two years. It’s one thing to think you have to drive to a different area, but just in the walking time you see the difference.
Going back to the service part, serving in downtown Chandler, I think something that was the most astonishing was, for me, the educational attainment percentages. These are 2000 Census statistics so they keep growing and changing but in Arizona 19% of the people haven’t graduated high school or gotten their G.E.D.s by age 25. So 19%, that’s kind of baseline for Arizona. In Chandler it’s 12% of people, so we’re much better in that more people have graduated high school or gotten their G.E.D.s. And we have a lot of higher degrees here. But in the four square mile area of downtown Chandler, people over age 25 who haven’t graduated high school or gotten their G.E.D.s is 39 and a half percent.
So when I think of that, it really extends down to kids, if 40% percent (about) of your role models, the people who you see in your neighborhoods on a daily basis haven’t been able to achieve graduating from high school, for you to think that YOU can achieve it is like “Who do you think you are to think you can surpass these people who are around you?” So I think, for me, that’s something that’s a statistic that’s astonishing in comparison with the rest of Chandler. But it also speaks to the difference that can be made of helping kids see what opportunities exist outside of the neighborhoods that we all come from. You can’t know what you can do if you don’t know what’s even out there or what’s possible.
Geo: Talking about education for a little bit, that’s one of the hot topics in just about every election (as it was in this last election at the state and national level). At the city level, you’ve only been in the role for two or three months but from your perspective, what is the city grappling with in terms of education? What are the issues that are on the table, things you see on the horizon?
--to be continued soon in Part 2!
posted by Geo at 4:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home