For the last six years at the Media Center for Art, Education and Technology (MCAET) in Salinas, Director Emiliano Valdez has been quietly building something rare in public education – a place where professional-grade media production, arts education and hands-on technology collide, with access as the organizing principle.
Born into the Teatro Campesino family, Valdez grew up on film sets and stages, from the groundbreaking Zoot Suit to the now-classic biopic La Bamba. As a child, he saw theaters filled with Latino audiences who saw themselves reflected onstage for the first time. That early exposure, he says, erased any sense that Hollywood or storytelling was off-limits.
After studying broadcasting at Cal State Los Angeles and spending years designing after-school media programs across San Benito County and Gilroy, Valdez moved fully into education. He helped found the Luis Valdez Leadership Academy in San Jose, teaching visual and performing arts before a former principal nudged him to look at a posting on EdJoin: director of MCAET, housed at the Monterey County Office of Education.
Weekly: What made you decide to follow the teaching aspect of media, rather than follow in the footsteps of your family?
Valdez: Art is one of the great educators. It really is, and so when you think about arts being an educator and then I intersect into that space, you know, I really am blessed and privileged to have been raised in that environment.
My father and my uncle – they have never had a normal job in their life. They have been artists their entire lives, and that was a dream of mine always. It just happened that I found it in this particular avenue where I come to work not because it’s just a job, but I come to work because it’s an opportunity to spread that power of using art to educate.
With the advancement of AI, what are your thoughts on how you use it in film or broadcasting?
We have this view that Hollywood has sold us that AI is going to take over the world and turn into robots and try to kill us. That’s a possibility, for sure. I think education is evolving. I think we as people are evolving. I think keeping things human-centered is really important. And so I’m thankful that currently, AI is requiring human interaction to function.
We have to decide what serves us and what doesn’t serve us, and I think that we have to get back to the human connection.
Is there a specific memory that stands out from when they filmed La Bamba?
I got a chance to be in a couple of scenes as a background actor, and that experience was great.
My memory would be specifically with the concert scene at the end of the movie, but all of Ritchie’s family was on the set – his actual real family, his mom, his sisters. They were there just to watch this unfold. Just the role of family and how my family was a part of this is beautiful and forever ingrained.
What’s next at MCAET?
I would love to see more independent filmmakers turn to our spaces. But something I really want to do here is to create a parent program, for parents to come through and get certified and start giving adults this opportunity to shift into this kind of technology space to understand what that collaborative work looks like.
What mark do you hope to leave?
What I’ve created would not be possible if it weren’t for the previous directors who were here. They had vision to create the space. I did not design the space. I’m just using it a little bit differently to create access.
It’s a lot like what I described to you about being on the set of La Bamba – very familial. We’re very close together, and it’s just a great experience representing Monterey County in different places and different cities when we get hired to do things for other educational entities.
For myself, I think I’m always going to be a teacher at heart. One of the things that I would like to do post-MCAET – I would love to just take all of the information that I’ve amassed being in this wonderful place and learning how to share that story and help other agencies build similar programs, because it’s really important that we all provide access to those who don’t have it.
The more that we do that, we create a stronger economy, we create more success and it breeds happier people.