Check Out Angelina Sáenz’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Angelina Sáenz.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am an Angeleno through and through. Born in Lincoln Heights and raised in Silver Lake, I am an award-winning Chicana educator, staff developer, and author whose work bridges education, trauma-informed practice, and creative expression. As the daughter of a single Mexican immigrant mother and a Tejano father, my lived experience in deeply traumatized communities shapes my commitment to poetry and education as sites of care and healing.

My literary work is a map of the city that raised me. My debut poetry collection, Edgecliff, is titled after the street I grew up on in Silver Lake, while my second collection, Maestra, reflects my twenty-three years of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I am also the author of Waiting for Luna. My professional excellence in eduation has been recognized with the Exceptional Woman Award from La Opinión Newspaper and as a finalist for the White House Commitment to Excellence Award.

I know Los Angeles like the back of my hand, whether riding the #4 Santa Monica bus from Echo Park to Santa Monica, visiting family in the San Fernando Valley, or tutoring children in the Pacific Palisades. I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Education, and my doctoral research focuses on teacher joy, using creative writing as a methodology for resilience and collective healing.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I am a high school dropout from LAUSD and grew up surrounded by violence, incarceration, addiction, police violence, abuse, and severe poverty. All of those experiences shaped, have given me profound compassion for the most vulnerable communities, and makes me deeply invested in social justice issues.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My work lives at the intersection of teaching, writing, and community. In the classroom I specialize in early childhood education, and over the years I have developed a practice that centers care, creativity, and the whole child. Outside the classroom I work as a staff developer, supporting other educators in building the same kind of intentional, responsive practice.

As a poet I am known for writing that is grounded in place, identity, and the everyday. My work is not abstract. It comes from the streets I walked, the families I have taught, the relationships that have shaped me as a woman and as a Chicana.

What I am most proud of is the longevity. Twenty-three years in LAUSD, in communities that the system has historically underserved, and I am still here, still curious, still believing it matters. I have never separated who I am from what I do.

What sets me apart is that I move between worlds that do not always talk to each other. The academy, the arts, the classroom, the neighborhood. I bring all of those into the same room and I do not apologize for any of them. My doctoral research, my poetry, my teaching practice, they are all asking the same question: how do we create conditions where people can heal and grow and become fully themselves.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
We are living an existential moment. Everything is in jeopardy. Everything. Since the election of 2024, I have had to work hard on how to contribute to respecting the dignity of human life and the planet we live on, and it has come down to living very intentionally in my sphere of influence.

How do I behave in my own home, with the people that I love? How do I drive on the street? How do I make my students, families, colleagues, and staff feel at my school? How does my writing uplift people and contribute to the conversation that moves our planet forward? I think about global citizenship not as a cliché, but as an actual practice, something every person on the planet can live out.

That same intention carries into my doctoral work, where I want to uplift teachers who are often dehumanized and support them in finding joy, meaning, and pride in what they do. I am present with every person in front of me. I just want to uplift, considering all of the harm that is happening right now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.angelinasaenz.com
• Instagram: saenzwriter
• Facebook: Angelina Sáenz
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelinasaenz