A Stevenson high school student and award-winning poet hopes to change the world.

There are teenagers who dream about the U.S. presidency, but some may be motivated by ideas of celebrity. Emily Amador, who in August will start her final year at Stevenson High School in Pebble Beach, wants to “write policy,” she says. Her goal would be to at least represent her district in the U.S. Congress and be a role model for others. This daughter of Mexican immigrants is part of Stevenson’s mutlicultural body of students, and she has ambitious dreams.

Raised in the South Central Los Angeles area, Amador and parents recognized that schooling opportunities are not equal. “I was very stubborn,” Amador says, describing the fight that ultimately placed her in a good middle school that in turn helped her build a competitive academic profile and led to a high school opportunity in Monterey County. The last three years in the Del Monte Forest are in stark contrast to her neighborhood, where her house would tremble from police helicopters.

Amador received a lot of help from school counselors, who exposed her to other programs and opportunities: a semester with the School For Ethics and Global Leadership in Washington D.C., a scholarship from Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Amador has many talents, but the Weekly encountered her as a poet, who won the local annual 2022 Robert Campbell Monterey County High School Poetry Awards hosted by the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts.

Listening to this restless young idealist, one believes everything is possible. So when she says she would like to become a U.S. president one day, one can only root for her.

Weekly: A boarding school?

Amador: (Laughs.) When my high school counselor told me about boarding schools, I thought they were disciplinary places for bad kids. But I fell in love with the idea. Some people ask my parents why they chose a private school, especially that I have six other siblings, but they believe it’s an opportunity for me –  to cultivate the skills I need in order to help alleviate the problems in my community which include mass homelessness, prostitution and systemic racism.

And you agree?

Yes, but I also started reflecting. I didn’t feel right to be using the opportunity I had and just run away with it. So I’m reflecting on ways to give back. My community made me who I am. My parents brought me up to always treat people how you want to be treated. Also, my family and many of our neighbors are very different from how they are being portrayed by the media. This is my home; seeing its condition makes me sick. Because I know people who live here. I’m hungry to do good and I will use every opportunity and every person I meet on my way, because I know it takes a village.

Let’s talk about benefits that come from a school like Stevenson.

It benefits me in so many ways, I did report on this my freshman year. One of the things is overcrowding. At Stevenson, I have eight, nine other students in the classroom. In my middle school, the classrooms were packed. At Stevenson, the majority of the school are boarders. We have students from Germany, Ukraine, Mexico and Asia. I was attracted by how many clubs there are there. I experienced a culture shock. I went surfing for the first time in Big Sur. And I love the newspaper section, where I started to reflect on politics, started writing op-eds and pouring everything into that. I received some racist remarks because of that, but it’s great to use my writing for something different than school applications. People were celebrating it.

Tell us something about your poems.

I started in middle school but got a bit more serious about it in high school. “I am – Yo Soy” speaks to my reality as a first-generation student with two Mexican parents. “Crooked Fingers” is a piece in particular that was inspired by my distinct features. My fingers are not the straightest and many features reflect my parents and grandparents.

I used to be really ashamed I did not fit the American beauty standard. However, I learned that these unique features are beautiful and a reflection of strong and graceful ancestors.

You are planning to become the president.

I don’t want to be part of politics if it means media, news, left-right, rivalry. I want to be part of politics, which means policy work, change-making. We need actual change. Fight for immigration rights, learn how to organize and mobilize, and learn about laws. I learned a lot of that through the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) in Los Angeles.

This article was modified on Thursday, July 14, to add the clarifying language to the online version.