Tacoma scholar leads by teaching others to be leaders

By Mike Wark
UW Tacoma

Kate Pasley works with an ethnically diverse group of high school students at Rogers High School in Puyallup, supporting their efforts to build a club that provides a safe haven to discuss racism and diversity, as well as to plan some fun events for all the school’s students.

“People ask me what I’m doing here and I say, I’m just hangin’ out,” says Pasley, a 25-year old UW Tacoma student.

But she’s doing much more. Her approach is subtle. With a tool bag of knowledge about leadership and organizational structures built through study and experience, she offers suggestions and support, spending three days a week at Rogers.

“Areas we’re working on include increasing membership, really identifying an identity for what we’re going to be about in the school and building the team and the dynamic,” says Pasley.

She’s lined up some high-powered support. The Mary Gates Leadership Endowment is supporting Pasley’s work with the student group, which is called Illusions of Color. The club was established to become a visible and influential presence for the advancement of diversity issues in the Puyallup school and community.

Lunch time, on a rainy winter day at Rogers High School, UW Tacoma student Kate Pasley, at right, with glasses, hangs out with Alexis Brown, president of the school’s “Illusions of Color” diversity club, as members practice the step-dance routine a day before tryouts for the school Step Team. Step is a popular new activity at Rogers - something the club helped initiate.

“They are so exuberant and have so many ideas, part of my job is bringing their feet back to the ground,” she says of the students.

And she is instilling hope in these students as they sort out their lives, according to Pasley’s mentor, G. Kent Nelson, a UW Tacoma business faculty member.

“Few students have the talent Kate does for translating management and organizational leadership theory in an everyday sort of way that works for the activities of these kids,” Nelson says.

Nelson is teaching Pasley to be a leader, and Pasley is teaching the students at Rogers to be leaders.

“What we have is a transformational leadership situation, which is like a domino effect,” says Nelson. “Kate will reach a small group of students, who in turn will go out and reach more students. That’s really the positive impact of this kind of approach.”

Pasley got involved at Rogers as a project last spring for her leadership class in E-Business Administration at UW Tacoma. Illusions of Color was just getting started. At the time, Puyallup was the focus of news coverage about racial tension in the school district and community. The club evolved from mediation efforts with the students, who grew to understand they needed to learn self-control and work to teach others about diversity.

Pasley made the connection with Rogers through her friend, Mark Walker, who was a staff mediator at Rogers and became the club’s first advisor.

“I wanted to be with them so they knew that what they did matters. Not just because of what Mark did, but that others were supportive. It’s important to have someone there who doesn’t have to be there as part of their jobs. That means a lot,” she says.

Pasley is unobtrusive but kids regularly check with her in deciding what to do next. She supports the club’s efforts to build bridges with other student leaders, helps students explore career options, and gives advice to Illusions of Color president Alexis Brown, whose senior project is called “Helping others through leading.”

“I’m learning to be a leader teaching others to be a leader,” says Brown.

“I’m actually doing the same thing so we commiserate,” laughs Pasley.

Pasley’s path to Puyallup was part of a long personal search. After graduating from Stadium High in Tacoma, she considered studying music at Pacific Lutheran University, but decided to attend Tacoma Community College to figure out her future.

She worked her way to management at a local Top Foods grocery store, attended a Bible college but decided against becoming a pastor, and was accepted to the UW’s Seattle campus where she found her English major didn’t offer the tools she sought. Researching her options, she realized an interest in business administration.

“Then I read John Stanford’s book, Victory in our Schools, and saw what someone who didn’t have an educational background could do with an understanding of business and leadership,” says Pasley. “So I decided to be a teacher and, if life goes there, an administrator.”

To be certain of her choice, she got a job as a para-educator in the Federal Way schools and loved the experience.

“With every student, you have the opportunity to affect their achievement and their future because every achievement makes a difference to what they believe they can accomplish. Teaching for me is about the opportunity to be involved in the moment,” she says.

To become a teacher, she enrolled in UW Tacoma’s Business Administration program, then discovered the national “Teach for America” program that trains people with any degree to teach in return for a commitment to teach two years in an under-resourced school. Kent Nelson helped her apply. After graduating in the spring, Pasley heads to a summer institute and student teaching, likely in the Bronx. Come fall, she’ll be teaching in Baltimore. But that’s the future. Today, she’s focused on earning her degree and quietly supporting the kids at Rogers.

“I think I’m always the most surprised to see something happen as a result of my work. Like when the students say something back to me that I’ve suggested. Or when the kids invite me into their lives - to watch their step team practice, to go to the library, those things always surprise me when they let you in,” she says.

“They are remarkable people. I want to be sure the spotlight is on how remarkable the kids are and what they are capable of. I feel I’m the honored one because I get to work here,” says Pasley.