Sacramento’s City Management Academy (CMA) is a 10-week program run through Sacramento’s Community Engagement Department. Each week featured multiple department staff and elected officials who spoke in detail on their operations, goals, and new projects.
Author Archives: Jenny Winstead-Rodriguez
Reflection on the 2023-24 School Year
I have been teaching theatre to students since 2017, which is when I worked with Youth N.O.W in Watsonville, California at a summer camp for at-risk youth. I remember an adult checking in on my class that summer to “make sure everything’s OK” and later finding out that a boy had put a “HELP US” sign in the window that she could see in the recess yard. I was so embarrassed and felt such shame. I’ve come a long way since then…
Where’s your accent?
Why folks find the need to ask me, a Kentuckian in California, why I don’t have an accent | I was born in raised in Louisville, Kentucky with family all over the state, from eastern Kentucky hollers to western Kentucky suburbs. I moved to Los Angeles in 2017 where the question about my accent quickly followed the question where I was from.
On a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling today?
Mental health and its role in theatre instruction | An acting teacher in college gave my class an assignment one time to prepare and perform a eulogy about a loved one. The instructor asked us to imagine that our loved one had died suddenly and traumatically, encouraging us to use this as fuel in our eulogies. Not yet understanding that this assignment was not normal (to say the least), my peers and I dove into our projects. We performed for each other a few weeks later, blowing snot bubbles and weeping as we imagined ourselves at our dear family and friends’ funerals. It was after I performed my eulogy (written about my then boyfriend, who is very much still alive), I realized this acting assignment didn’t feel like acting at all.
Are we playing a game today?
I was chatting with a fellow teaching artist recently about creating more efficient lesson plans. We both agreed we’d like to “cut the fat” and get to the meat of each lesson, but struggled with our limited time with students. My colleague said something that I had a strong reaction to — they said, “maybe I should just cut out some of the theatre games from my lesson plans so we have more time for the learning objectives.” I audibly gasped. Not the theatre games! Those are the best part!
Being a woman out loud
I read a rather aimless book last year about the experience of being a woman pedestrian and despite being pretty dry it was the first time I read a dedicated 300+ pages about the very act that haunts me: Walking. Or, more specifically, walking outside as a woman alone.
Dreaming of Shaker Village
Once a year or so, or perhaps more frequent as it was in 2020, I ask myself the same question: Do I want to be a nun or do I just need some space? I don’t think I’ve earnestly considered nunhood before but I still pose this question to myself. No, it’s simply just space that I need.
No boys allowed on my reading list
At the end of 2019 I tasked myself to only read books by women-identifying writers for 2020. Towards the end of 2019 I was adding titles to my (some may say meticulous) reading list and realized my nonfiction folder was dominated by men. This fact that I listed so many men isn’t necessarily ridiculous, but it is curious considering that the last several nonfiction works by men that I read in 2019 felt like sludging through mud.
Guide to the Internet’s best spots
My list-making is genetic. My mom uses any rational surface as a notepad for her lists, including the margins of church bulletins, empty space on envelopes, or the backs of flyers for the neighborhood kid mowing lawns. She makes lists beyond just your generic to-do.
The age of advice
I learned the power of saying no at my very first job, an ice cream store just a few miles from my house in Kentucky. The store owner’s elderly mother, Marge, begrudgingly became the manager because her daughter
Jenny Winstead-Rodriguez 