By admin 
The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our gala at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Grand Sheraton in downtown Sacramento. Buy tickets at sacramentochangemakers.com.
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Margarita Berta-Ávila was a first grader when a teacher at her Los Angeles school said she’d fail if her mother continued speaking Spanish to her. School, for her, became a place that was teaching her to hate her identity.
The Sacramento State professor and California Faculty Association president makes it a point now to wear a piece of clothing or jewelry every day that represents her Chicana heritage. The walls in her office are plastered with posters that proudly proclaim her pro-immigrant stance.
Berta-Ávila took a difficult childhood experience and turned it into her life’s mission.
“I chose to teach, not just because I cared for students, but because I saw teaching as a political act,” she said. “It was a way to disrupt the norm in schools.”
Berta-Ávila taught grades 3-12 before she joined Sacramento State in 2001 to expand her reach. Here, she trains the teachers of tomorrow to work with students of color.
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Her work didn’t end at the close of the school day. After hours, Berta-Ávila actively organized as a member of the 29,000-strong CFA that represents professors, counselors and coaches across California State University’s 23 campuses.
Her goal in and out of the classroom remained the same: access and equity.
After years of fighting on the ground for fair working conditions for faculty and quality education for students, last year, Berta-Ávila was the first Chicana woman to be elected CFA president.
Now, for fellow CSU faculty, she guides the vision for a more just public education system by advocating at the California state Capitol, Board of Trustees meetings and individual campuses.
Community organizing is her way of life, Berta-Ávila said, and it always will be.
“She doesn’t just advocate for change,” her former student Michael Lee-Chang noted. “She organizes people to win it.”
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