Pate McMichael

Pate McMichael is a professor of practice at California State University, Chico. He is the author of Klandestine: How a Klan Lawyer and a Checkbook Journalist Helped James Earl Ray Cover Up His Crime (Chicago Review Press, 2016) and Operation Chrysler: Stolen Valor Behind Enemy Lines During World War II (2019). His work has been anthologized in Words Matter (University of Missouri Press, 2016) and The Bitter Southerner Reader, Vol. 3 (2019). For 15 years, he has worked as a freelance journalist, publishing long-form narratives in Atlanta Magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Bitter Southerner, Zocalo Public Square, Lake Oconee Living, Georgia Backroads, Athens Magazine, and St. Louis Magazine. He interned with The Brownsville Herald on the U.S.-Mexico border and also worked as a student reporter for the Columbia Missourian and Vox magazine. From 2007-2019, Pate taught journalism at Georgia College, a public liberal arts university where he advised the student newspaper, The Colonnade, at the rank of senior lecturer. His students received national, regional, and statewide recognition during his tenure.

How the immigrant founder of a preschool builds community in Northern California through dance, diversity and determination

By Pate McMichael | June 9, 2021

Mi Escuelita Maya is in a working class neighborhood at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Chico, California. A mural on the building depicts children from diverse backgrounds flying kites in open spaces. One of the founders, Maria Trenda, helped build the preschool in 2007, just before the Great Recession, on a corner lot just blocks from her home. Her first estudiantes are now entering college.

Trenda’s school is an homage to her past. For 30 years, her mother ran a preschool in Mexico.