Millersville News
This festival challenges societal perceptions and broadens understanding by showcasing films that explore the experiences of individuals with disabilities.
Millersville University’s Disability Film Festival is celebrating 15 years of disability empowerment.
The films “Elevate the voices of those made invisible or marginalized.”
As a junior in high school in the School District of Lancaster, a young Jassinya Alvarado-Padilla ’14 met an associate professor in Millersville University’s Educational Foundations department at a cafeteria tabling event. Dr. Miriam Witmer was there recruiting mentees for the Color of Teaching, an organization she leads that supports high school and college students of color considering careers in education through mentorship.<br /> <br /> “In my schooling journey, I had limited teachers who looked and sounded like me,” shares Jassinya. “Dr. Witmer offered to be my mentor.” For Jassinya and many others, school was what she described as a “safe haven. I loved school. It was a consistent place, a place where I could be free,” she explains. “Life wasn’t always easy at home. I had great parents that worked a lot. Sometimes when I came home from school, the electricity and water weren’t on, and we always figured it out, but it was unpredictable. But when I got to school, I forgot about the ‘adult’ worries I had.”<br /> <br /> With support from that mentorship program and a scholarship, Jassinya went on to attend MU, and majored in early childhood ed. Her first full-time gig was teaching high school English at a charter school in Reading, Pennsylvania.<br /> <br /> Fast-forward to today, Alvarado-Padilla is now back at Millersville as a student in the University’s Doctor of Education in educational leadership, a joint program with Shippensburg University, and on the precipice of becoming a two-time graduate of Millersville. “As a first-generation student, I never imagined I would get my doctorate,” explains Jassinya. “The first doctoral graduation I attended was Dr. Witmer’s, and it was impactful to me. I saw that she did it her own way, and I knew I could, too. In many ways, the experiences I was exposed to, as a result to saying yes to mentorship, saved my life and changed the trajectory of my life.”<br /> <br /> In a full-circle moment, Witmer is now serving as a member of Jassinya’s doctoral committee. The investment that Witmer made in Jassinya’s personal and professional life has translated into her work as an educator. Read more at the link in our bio!
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