Helena Vita

Donato-Sapp, H., Donato, E. S., & Sapp, J. (2018). Teaching Tough Topics To Third-Graders.

California State University Dominguez Hills Liberal Studies Course 301 Schooling in a Multicultural

Society. Invited Presenter, Carson, CA, Wednesday, November 21, 2018.

Helena was invited to speak about teaching controversial topics in the elementary classroom to two different sections of Liberal Studies students who are learning how to become elementary teachers. The class - Schooling in a Multicultural Society - had students who thought teaching tough topics was either inappropriate or too difficult for young children. Dr. Jen Stacy, Professor of Liberal Studies, invited Helena to come and share her writing, art, and activism so that her college students could see that young children are mature enough to tackle tough issues.

Donato-Sapp, H. (2019). Dr. Angela Y. Davis: The Dymally Distinguished Speaker Series. Attendee,

California State University Dominguez Hills, Carson, CA, Monday, February 11, 2019.

In her continuing efforts to learn more about

American history, Helena took an afternoon off

from 4th-grade to see scholar, author, and

activist Dr. Angela Y. Davis speak at California

State University Dominguez Hills. Through her

activism and scholarship over the last decades,

Angela Davis has been deeply involved in our

nation’s quest for social justice. Her work has

always emphasized the importance of building

communities of struggle for economic, racial,

and gender justice. Helena is currently studying

about Dr. Davis so that she can do a major report

on her in 4th-grade.

(Below) When she learned that a girl in the kindergarten class was having trouble accepting her own hair, Helena decided to make a poster for the kindergarten classroom - one that introduced the Black is Beautiful Movement.

Donato-Sapp, H., Donato, E. S., & Sapp, J. (2019). Teaching Tough Topics To Fourth-Graders.

California State University Dominguez Hills Liberal Studies Course 301 Schooling in a Multicultural

Society. Invited Presenter, Carson, CA, Wednesday, April 18, 2019.

Helena was invited back to speak to more future educators about how young children tackle tough topics. She is a semester regular guest speaker now for Liberal Studies 301 - Schooling in a Multicultural Society. This was her third time to speak in this graduate-level course.

Donato-Sapp, H. (2019). Innovative Woman 2.0 Fast Pitch Competition & Networking.

California State University Dominguez Hills, CSUDH Innovation Incubator. Invited Presenter,

Carson, CA, Wednesday, March 29, 2019.

Helena was invited to the Innovative Woman 2.0 Fast Pitch Competition & Networking to pitch her original business idea to a large university audience and a panel of seven distinguished judges. She was invited to represent the future of entrepreneurship and was the youngest participant. The organizers of the event were so impressed with her pitch that they’ve invited her to be a part of CSUDH’s Incubator Hatchery Launchpad Program (HLP) to help her launch her new business enterprise.

Donato-Sapp, H. (In press). Black Girl Magic is a Glorious Gift. In Danielle Apugo, Lynnette

Mawhinney, and Afiya M. Mbilishaka’s Strong Black Girls: Patchwork Stories of Remembrance,

Resistance, and Resilience in K-12 Schooling (Eds.).

Recent findings interrogating the schooling experiences of Black girls within the United States still eerily echo Malcolm X’s decades-old notion that Black women and girls are in many ways the most unprotected, disrespected, and neglected population in America. Today, Black girls are facing a lack of protection from school discipline policies and procedures that feed the school-to-prison pipeline, and a lack of respect for their lived experiences, magic, identity, and social development within school environments across the nation. These shortfalls ultimately lead to the neglect of Black girls’ overall well-being, and as such, many questions still linger in response to these jeopardies. Therefore, this volume asks: What are the stories experiences of Black girls and women in school? This edited volume seeks to hear voices and stories experiences from Black women and girls reflecting on past or current experiences within K-12 schools. This volume hopes to reimagine notions of strength as they pertain to Black womanhood and Black girlhood.

For this book, Helena asked the Black women in her life what it was that helped them through their K-12 schooling experiences. She collected their wisdoms and pulled out the key phrases that spoke to her the most. She also wanted to honor the powerful Black women that she has heard speak in the last few years and reflected back on the advice they’d given her as well. She turned all of these wisdoms into a phrase poem that offers advice to Black girls like herself as they negotiate the often hostile hallways of school. Stay tuned for this new publication!

Donato-Sapp, H., Donato, E. S., & Sapp, J. (2019). Tackling Tough Topics. California State University

Dominguez Hills Teacher Education Division Course 506 Schooling in a Multicultural Education.

Invited Presenter, Carson, CA, Tuesday, July 23, 2019.

Over the last couple of years, this was Helena’s fourth presentation to 45 graduate education students on how she tackles tough topics like race, class, gender, sexual orientation, bullying, and a plethora of other topics that some think are too sensitive or controversial for young children. She read her published works, spoke, and fielded questions from the graduate students.

Donato-Sapp, H. (2019). Philanthropic Giving: Donation of 573 Children’s and Adolescent Novels to Westerly School of Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, Friday, August 30, 2019.

Helena ’s Daddy reviews all kinds of books for professional journals and magazines and gets to keep the books after the reviews. His office if so full of books that he wanted to clean it out. Helena asked if they could donate all of the children’s and young adult novels to her school because it is building a new library. Giving is a Donato-Sapp family value!

Donato-Sapp, H. (2019). Future me thanks you. Designated Conference Poet of the National

Institutes for Historically Underserved Students. West Virginia University Parkersburg. Invited

Presenter, Parkersburg, WV, November 7-9, 2019.

Helena was invited to be the Poet of the National Institute for Historically Underserved Students Think Tank that was held at West Virginia University Parkersburg. The purpose of the Institutes is to research and identify common barriers to educational equity and success for all historically-underserved students, to develop and disseminate research-based solutions to those barriers, and to recruit, retain, and graduate more of those students who are currently being overlooked or failed by American higher education. Helena was asked to write and perform an original poem based on the themes of rising up against barriers. She was ten years old.