Rachael Maves: Hi everyone. You are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. This podcast is part of the leadup to the upcoming measure what we value Summit scheduled for February 5th through 6 2025 in Fresno, California. The summit emphasizes honoring and amplifying student voices, fostering inclusive classrooms and equipping Educators with tools for impactful change. You can find more information at parsecsummit.com. Today we are talking to Anika.

Anika is a first-year UC Berkeley student, studying political economy on a pre-law track. She is passionate about using law and policy to support marginalized communities. As the 2023 2024 student board member for Dublin Unified School District, she advocated for fair policies on grading, menstrual equity and student compensation. Anika values Collective action and worked to make student voices Central to District decisions, highlighting the connection between belonging and achievement. Anika, thank you for joining me today. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.

Anika Yu: Yes, thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you as well.

Rachael Maves: So one of the ways that we start out the podcast is always with the opportunity just to tell your story and share a little bit about yourself. So I'd love to just hear about your path, how you ended up at Berkeley and in the major that you're doing, and, in the midst of that, what really fills your bucket and brings you Joy.

Anika Yu: Okay, so I think my biggest like defining moment of like, when I knew I wanted to pursue a political, a politics related major, was in freshman Year. Everyone was on lockdown and honestly, during that time I was on social media a lot and just seeing all the like racial violence, kind of like the political turmoil in the country at the time, with the black lives matter movement in the stock Asian hate movement going on, just it was like my political Awakening in a way, where I realized that politics actually does matter and people's everyday lives and it's not just what you see on television, on the news. So, kind of coming out of quarantine, I knew that I wanted to be involved in politics in some way and make some change in my community. But while quarantine gave me that realization, it also because I was Home Alone kind of, I guess decreased my confidence and like interacting with others. So I had this like conviction that I had to do something, but I didn't know how to do anything. So the student board member before me she was really instrumental in making the position more well known in our district.

So when I was senior and she graduated from the position kind of that was when I there was like an open in the position and I knew that I had to run for the student board member position. So before my senior year I guess I had just been like quietly observing kind of the issues in my district and some of the problems that I wanted to fix. But once it came time it was senior year, I was like, okay, I've been quietly observing for the past three years. I think I have what it takes to do this position. I just ran for the position and, yeah, the last year was really fun because finally this thing that I had wanted to do for so many years, for 3 years, all the things I want to do ended up like coming to fruition and I could make the changes that I wanted to see. And what brings me joy.

Besides policy related things and advocacy is recently like I've been really into making food for myself. So I really like cooking and baking and then sharing it with other people because I like it when they tell me: oh, this tastes really like love that.

Rachael Maves: So what are your favorite things?

Anika Yu: The cook and bake I really. Noodles, yeah, I like experimenting with like different noodle shapes, like there's pasta, there's like Chinese style noodles, there's like Japanese style, and like different sauces.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, oh my gosh, that sounds my mouth's watering, just SS delicious. And what about desserts? Is that? When you say baking, is it desserts? Is it breads? Is it?

What is it that you're baking?

Anika Yu: Oh my, I so, in quarantine, I had a bread baking phase, like many people did, I think. But I think cookies are easier, like on a time crunch. So every Christmas I've been doing it for two years now, but I've been making like a Christmas cookie box to share with people and there's like four or five different kinds of cookies.

Rachael Maves: Yum, that's wonderful, I love. That's the thing that brings you Joy, I. That's pretty amazing, Anika, just how you got interested in politics and wanting to involved and making change, and that it was something that came out of the pandemic. It's almost like a silver lining of yes Factory, yeah, absolutely. And what a powerful like story to be able to hold to that, something that was challenging, that led to a really positive outcome. Absolutely, and I assume for that year that you were in school and online.

How was that for you? Just what was your experience? The Good, the Bad, the Ugly of it, MH?

Anika Yu: Honestly, I was really fortunate in that it was my first year of high school and most of the classes I took were pretty introductory classes, so I didn't really feel like I was missing out on too much. Just during the school year it did get like pretty boring at times where everyone would just turn off their camera. But the harder part was like when it came time for a sophomore year, I still felt like a freshman and as a sophomore I felt like I was falling behind, cuz, I don't know, people were getting involved in all these different things, but I, since I miss my freshman year and U, I just felt like I couldn't get connected to the community in a way. But I just realized that you know it's easier to get started than to overthink it too much.

Rachael Maves: So, yeah, well, and what a way to do it? By being part of the Stu as the student board representative. That's amazing good for thank you so much. Yeah, what motivated you to get involved with the national student board member Association and how has that shaped your perspective now on education? Because that's a that's a much larger National community that student board members can plug into. So what was the impetus there that drove that connection and how has it help shape or change your view?

Anika Yu: Yeah, so the like I mentioned before the student Bo, the student board member that did my job before me in my district. She knew some of the founding members of the national student board member Association, so she kind of referred me to like, oh, they're starting up as an organization. You should take a look if you're interested. And then I joined their first student trustee. I think there is their start conference. I'm so sorry like I'm blinking on the exact like acronym meaning right now, which I shouldn't.

I shouldn't know it, but I think a student action like student truste action and Readiness training conference, the start conference and going to the start conference gave me a lot. Honestly, it taught me like basically everything I needed for my student board member term. So it taught me how to write different resolutions. It taught me how to kind of look at the school district budget and interact with adult school board members. So after going to that training I was like I wanted to be involved in this organization so I could reach more student board members and get them to all know, like how, import, like how, like what are these important that they need to know for being an effective School Board member. So that really motivated me to go through the process of applying for their executive Council.

I think, look, being on the national student board member Association definitely opened up my view to more education policy across the country because we research policies in different states like Nevada. Virginia, Texas, and it's shaped my perspective on education because you know like in the United States education is very like up to the different states. So without being an NSBMA, I would never have known like, oh, in Texas they're not allowed to have student board members unless the district is majorly failing, or in Massachusetts, sometimes districts are required to have student board members. So these things are I'm just like really appreciative that I get to work with an organization that's like a National. Organization and learn about these things.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's great, and I would assume, too, being able to just connect with other board members about the things that they're excited about and the policies that they're working on and the shifts and patterns that you see Across the Nation. It like I would love to hear if there's anything that really stood out from you to you that you learned from others.

Anika Yu: Yeah, I think let me take a moment to think about that. But oh so, like one of my fellow members on the executive Council last year or actually now I'm think about it I learn something from like each one of them because we were so different. Like I'm from a pretty small district for California St, for California standards, cuz I had like 12,000 students in my district, but there were people on the executive Council that had like 120,000 students in their District or like 70,000. So I learned a lot about like how they communicated with students because they had a bigger district and they had definitely more people to reach. So some of like the executive council members they had like really big like ADV, student advisory councils, oh sure, and one of them was like focused on stem in her District, which is really cool because I'm not a very big like stem person or not as knowledgeable about stem. So.

And then one of our executive board members was the State student board member of his entire State, the entire state of Nevada. So just seeing how they applied different like strategies to their different like the student, the needs of their different student populations was really interesting.

Rachael Maves: I love that's a great example, too, of ways that you guys can collaborate and learn from one another some of the best practices. How do you think hearing from students like you at the summit will help shape future decisions and education?

Anika Yu: I'm definitely a really big believer in like Grassroots change and education because I feel like it just all starts from the classroom and I think what better way to change your classroom than to hear from students, because students are really the ones going through the policies enacted by school boards every single day. And I think that hearing from students is not always a guarantee, but it should be a necessity because you know they are the. What we always say at the national student board member Association is that students are like 100% of the most important constituency of a school board, but they're often 0% of the decision-making power. So, like we at NSBMA, we definitely try to change that. I think hearing from students might help some education leaders realize: oh, this is the thing I had been missing, like this is the component that I hadn't been understanding in my classrooms, or this is a completely new perspective that I would never have heard if a student hadn't come and told me this: yeah, well, it's.

Rachael Maves: I mean, it's so funny to me because we do that in so many other things, like when you think about research and design, you're always starting with the end user right and you're getting their feedback as you're developing and iterating. And it's the same in education. The end user really is the student and being able to include them. They're just going to have a whole different lens and thought on the way in which we're approaching issues, problems, policies, system structures, ways to improve that. It's great that you've been so like a vital part of that conversation. What do you think is one way you've grown or Chang through your work with the national student board?

Association.

Anika Yu: I think that I definitely learned how to organize events because throughout the year we were trying to, we did a bunch of event, we were ideating and we like had a bunch of ideas for events in our heads but then when we started there weren't that many signups. So then over the year we incorporated like different strategies, like advertising via Discord or having a raffle at the end of an event so that participants could enter the gift card raffle. So that's one thing, helping like learning how to help engagement for events. And I also think that national student board member Association really gave me like really gave me like an like National stage, I guess, for my work done in my local school district. So at the end of my executive Council term last school year I went to Washington DC. I had the opportunity to speak at a conference called Educators: Rising for future Educators and like the session that I presented I just basically summarized my entire term as a student board member in my district and it was really encouraging to be able to get nice feedback about the work that I did and hear students say that they were inspired to start a student board member position in their districts too, or campaign for or campaign for one or just run for it.

So. Having being able to reach more people with my story about being a student board member definitely is really a gratifying experience.

Rachael Maves: That's fantastic. So th? This is our last question, Anika, and then we'll we'll wrap up, but I'd love to hear what's the one thing you're most proud of as the student leader.

Anika Yu: Really, throughout my entire term, I felt that I was the most proud when I was able to lend some decision-making power hard to other students. So while I did have different, while I did Advocate and write for different policies by myself there at my ter, I also introduce other students to the resolution process in our district. So we I helped a student introduce an AI use resolution to our school board and another student introduced a zero waste to landfill resolution to our school board and they both passed and when it passed, I just could tell that were so happy and I was so happy that you know their ideas had gone from just their idea to a resolution that was passed by the school board and I just think that it's really it's good. The student board member is important because the student board member is like the bridge, the Bridging the Gap between the school board and the student population. I'm and explaining some of the jargon or some of the bureaucratic stuff that often doesn't get explained to students. Yes, and then I just think that sharing the power amongst all students is the most important, because it can be a really lonely, isolating position sometimes as a student board member where you're like the only one in the district that's kind of in between the adult decision-making side and then the student stakeholder side.

So sharing the power is something that I think every student board member should do.

Rachael Maves: That's a that's the mark of a very good leader, Anika, I just that it's not something and have that perspective in as a high schooler at that time that it's not just you holding that. How can you Empower other students to be involved and to get engaged, and that's that's really powerful. I'm excited to see where you go and how you bring this to a national stage one day and start setting our policies for Education.

Anika Yu: That is definitely the dream. I'm going to work hard towards it.

Rachael Maves: Yeah well, we'll have to keep an eye on you and watch. I'm I'm excited to see where you go. Well, thank you, Anika, for your time today. I'm so grateful that you're willing to have this conversation and I cannot wait to meet you at the summit, of course.

Anika Yu: Thank you so much. See you at the summit.

Rachael Maves: Parsec education is hosting the measure what we value Summit on February 5th through 6th in Fresno, California. Join us for impactful conversations on empathy, engagement, hard truths and more. Alongside leaders like Chaka Booker, Rich Stowell, Jamila Scott, pepper Miller and student speakers like Timi Ilori and Anika U. We have a promo for 25% off all Summit tickets until January 31st. Seats are filling up fast, so make sure you to secure your spot today. Get your tickets at parsecsummit.com.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.