who is Annalee Pearson?
Early Life
Born and raised in San Diego, California in a small town just 7 miles north of the Tijuana border, Annalee Pearson lived in Chula Vista. First generation on her father and mother’s side, as both of her parents immigrated to the United States. Annalee has roots that stretch from across the globe and back. She is a proud Latina, Chinese-Filipina stemming from her father being Asian and mother having grown up in Durango, Mexico. Annalee explained how her mother’s hometown is about 10 hours South of El Paso, Texas in the state of Durango, more specifically a town called Santa Maria de Loro. Just like many people from the rural countryside in Mexico, her mother wanted to make a living to help out her family so she moved to the big city, Tijuana, where eventually her parents met. At that time, if you could pass certain tests and be proficient in English, you could be offered a position to be a sailor in the Navy, allowing for her father to come over and receive citizenship through the Navy. Annalee lightheartedly remarked that her parents met in Tijuana, at the border town of San Diego stating, “I guess the Navy officers wanted to go to Tijuana to meet some pretty Latinas, but the rest is history.” Throughout her childhood, Annalee explained how her father was not around a lot because of the nature of his work, yet she had the comforting company of an older brother, younger sister and wonderful mother whom she was exceptionally close with. “Even though I am only half-Mexican, I definitely identify more with Latin culture because my mother was with me for the entirety of my childhood, and has had the biggest impact on my life over anybody else.”
Back then the military was a very low paying job and Annalee’s mother did not speak any English or know how to drive. Spanish was her first language growing up. Annalee’s family lived off her father’s sailor income, which was very minimal. Looking back she recalled, “I don’t know if poor is the right word, I know that my parents did not have a lot of money.” Though they had some benefits from the military, there were no luxuries at all growing up. They lived in apartments through a military program and eventually were able to get a house, but unfortunately it was in a rough neighborhood. Annalee and her siblings went to public school in a very at-risk neighborhood in South San Diego. The South side was a predominantly Hispanic/Latino neighborhood where most people she knew were of Mexican descent and had very much a first generation experience. Despite everything, Annalee remembers having a good childhood stating, “ When you live in poverty and you don’t know anything else, I don’t think I knew what I was missing.”
Challenges of Being First Generation and Biracial
Yet, although surrounded by a strong Latina figure to look up to, being a product of first-generation immigrants still came with its own set of stigma and tribulations. Caught in between two worlds, Annalee remembers being ostracized by her classmates for being different. She recollects that once in third grade she said pús, when it’s actually pus, but she didn’t know and at the time she went to a gifted school, but with her accent/pronunciation the whole class laughed. In addition, there was also a detrimental impact of not belonging within either of your two cultures when biracial. Annalee reflected, “I think I have always never really felt Mexican enough, but also never really felt American enough and was constantly striving for that, during my adolescence especially… I would get embarrassed about my mom not being able to speak English and me having to be family translator for most things. Now I look back and think it is the greatest thing that I ever got to do.” Annalee added that learning how to code switch between district realities made her who she is and a lot of her experiences of growing up, whether that be, “Going for what I want, being bold, not being shy, asking questions, and advocating, I think really stems from my first generation experience,” she stated.
Oftentimes our identities coincide with where we come from, but as her background comes from two different cultures, Annalee never felt like she quite belonged with either. “My identity, my experience as a biracial child was never feeling enough of any given culture. My Asian side would always describe me as really Mexican, that I looked really Mexican, or was too Mexican… and not really shunning me for it, but making it really apparent that I was not like them, my body type, or my curves, or whatever it was, it wasn’t like them….And then on my Mexican side they would always call me china, very Asian-looking chinita, china,” Annalee explained how the discrimination was different depending whom she was with.
Despite the identity struggles that she faced being biracial, the impact poverty had on her upbringing changed her perspective on how she viewed her life and her appreciation of it. Similar to her mother leaving her home and becoming very independent at 18, working to send money back to her family, Annalee has embedded that same work ethic of perseverance. Being from a lower income household and growing up with such humble beginnings gave Annalee an unfounded sense of admiration in regards to her mentality that setbacks in life do not have to be considered as such because they cannot truly break us. Both her parents never went to high school or college and were blue collar workers, in fact her mother did not work until she was in middle school and they took public transportation everywhere because she didn’t know how to drive. The only way that she recognized that there were so many hindrances to her breaking cycle of poverty, especially where she grew up, were the people she surrounded herself with in high school. Due to this, her peers helped guide her, at a time when she had no idea what the SAT was. They were the ones who told her to sign-up for it, and she showed up to take it cold. “It is things like that, little graces, that I was fortunate enough to cross paths with that really helped me,” Annalee noted.
Early Education Years
Annalee attributes a lot of her academic pursuit, curiosity and achievement to a specialized gifted program she attended. One day in second grade she recalled her very strict teacher, Ms. Oland, pulled her out of class to take a placement exam. At that point she was going to a school in National City that was severely gang-infested, but Ms. Oland saw that she would thrive in a gifted program. The following year she spent 3rd through 6th grade at an alternative specialized school. Annalee was fortunate enough to attend school with a small group of around 20 kids, allowing her to develop a strong work ethic and discover that she was good at a plethora of subjects, in particular those based in math and science. Although encouraged by her parents to pursue a career in a medical related field, Annalee thought she was going to be a lawyer because she had always been fascinated by that world and many of her core strengths aligned with something in that profession. But, once in a high school on the other side of town everything changed, she was unsure of what she wanted to do at that point.
College Years and Becoming an Educator
After graduation, Annalee attended the University of Santa Barbara having to adjust to a life outside of San Diego. While at UCSB she took an ethnic studies course and fully realized the significance of her experience that she had from growing up in San Diego. Throughout college she started to travel alone, growing into a whole lifestyle which she loved, and kept imagining herself working in international law. Annalee began her studies in international business yet soon decided this path was not for her. She changed her major to economics, and eventually, after much trial and error Annalee ended up double majoring in Spanish and a Global/Social Studies major which focused on socioeconomics and politics with an emphasis on history. At this point she was still open to law, but began to fall in love with history. Call it fate, destiny, serendipity, when Annalee was about to graduate after studying abroad in Spain and Italy twice, she did not study for the LSAT and knew she could not take it when arriving back in the States. Now, two days before her collegiate graduation she walked past a booth on the UCSB campus that read, “Are you graduating? Do you need a job? All majors accepted,” and she thought to herself, “What’s that about?”
It turned out that due to a teaching shortage, LAUSD was offering temporary teaching positions to people for one year with any major without any training required in teaching children. As long as you had your degree and passed the background check, they would give you a teaching job. She recollected, “I remember being so naive, and innocent, and airheaded… thinking that it would be an easy job, it’s a great job, it’s an 8-3 job and then I will just study for the LSAT. This will be great because I can teach from 8-3, I can live on my own in LA, study and then apply for the LSAT after a year. If you can imagine that was 22 years ago,” Annalee remarked. However, after her first year of teaching it was everything she didn’t know that she cared about and wanted. Continuing to pursue higher education, Annalee was able to get a job fairly quickly, teaching both Spanish and History to English language learning young adult students when she was barely 22. She was hooked and fell in love with teaching.
Without a doubt higher education has always been an immense passion for Annalee, and after her undergraduate degrees she continued with a master’s degree and credential to pursue her career path. As an educator she feels it is her responsibility to identify and support students whose circumstances were similar to her own growing up, and empower others to do the same. “People are often a product of their circumstances, it’s only in the right circumstances that you have the general awareness of how to tackle any given issue or challenge,” Annalee emphasized. Even though her alternative career goals could have made for a more lucrative lifestyle, Annalee does not regret anything because teaching has really become her purpose in life.
Educator at South Pasadena High School
Annalee taught for Los Angeles Unified School District for nearly 7 years prior to transitioning to South Pasadena. She taught at high-achieving magnet schools within underserved, immigrant communities. She thrived as an educator in this environment and could communicate easily with her students who were learning English. It was a difficult decision to move schools and districts, however after meeting her husband at a teacher training and later on marrying, she was commuting from West Covina and decided to look for a position closer to home. It was not until they were eating at the old Baja Fresh in South Pasadena when her husband, who was coaching at Cathedral at the time, suggested South Pasadena School District as an option. Ironically, there was a position open for a Social Studies teacher and Annalee thought to herself, “Well I guess it was meant to be, I will just go ahead and apply.” Unfortunately, at the time of her interview she had been going through a personal crisis, her youngest daughter had just passed away about two months before. “I was just not feeling it at the time, and I did not really want this interview to go well,” she had thought to herself. She went into the interview surrounded by the gaping eyes of what felt like the entire history department, principal and assistant principal, and felt very intimidated. While she was being interviewed Annalee recounted that it was the most bizarre and supernatural thing to have happened because every question that they asked, she had a seemingly perfect response, and she remembered thinking to herself, “I am going to work here. I am going to get this job.”
Finally they asked her, ‘What can you offer South Pasadena High School?’ and of course there are the cliché book answers, but Annalee knew that she would be honest. She said, “Listen, I have a really young family, I have just undergone a pretty bad tragedy in my life, and truthfully I know what you want to hear, you want me to say that I stay after school until 6 at night and be here at 5 in the morning, and I can’t, but here is something I can guarantee you every single day that I work here. What I can offer the school every single day is a good attitude and I am going to work my hardest.” Annalee firmly believes that attitude is contagious and every single day, regardless of what is going on in her own life, she brings a positive outlook to her students. Within an hour she was offered a position teaching Economics, which she declined, as her real passion was World History. The interview committee knew they had found an amazing educator and sure enough she was hired as the new World History teacher. She has now been teaching at South Pasadena High School for 15 years.
Life Achievements & Accomplishments
Ending cycles within her own immediate family intertwined with education and dysfunction has been a prevalent goal and accomplishment for Annalee. She is proud of who she has become and the growth and maturity that happens very naturally as people evolve. Annalee particularly attributes her faith to that more than anything. In terms of school and community, Annalee is most proud to be a teacher and be associated with the lives of so many of her students who have continued on to do great things. Ultimately she remarked, “I don’t think you could put a salary, or a price tag on that… there is nothing monetary, any label or status that could ever really show how meaningful this is.” In the end, to her, it is about the love, the relationships and the purpose she has.
consejos/advice to the next generation of Latinas & Youth
“Growing up I really think that I had a vision of what or who I should be, I felt like I was in pursuit of the wrong things, chasing things that are very fleeting. I think I did that because I let others define what I should aspire to or who I should be, and that is one of the hardest things to shake off. If I am being really honest to anyone who is a young person, it is easier said than done and not only takes time, it takes maturity, it takes evolving, it takes experience, it takes failure, it takes success, and it takes great people for you to finally shed all the expectations that others have for you and the preconceived notions that people have about you, along with the barriers and the definitions that people have imposed on you either consciously or subconsciously. I would encourage young people to pursue their purpose, not to pursue money or even happiness. It will be hard to find what your purpose is and different for each person, but your joy will be in the true pursuit of purpose.”
