Wheeler, Wendy

Finding the excellence in every individual, especially oneself. Striving for social justice. Defying boundaries in all walks of life. Choosing the more challenging path instead of the easy one. These are the statements summarizing educator Wendy Wheeler's professional and personal philosophy. Wheeler's refusal to accept the status quo and her ability instead to see situations as they should be and could be might have relegated her to the realm of the dreamer and idealist, except that behind Wheeler's dreaming is the heart of a pragmatist and the iron will to turn dreams into reality. In the field of youth and community development, academics and practitioners alike seek Wheeler's input on a wide range of topics, looking for a fresh perspective and new ideas. Seldom does Wheeler disappoint. Never constrained by conventional thinking, Wheeler's innovations in youth and community development have sparked numerous new programs and research directions, all rooted in the commitment of challenging individuals to find the excellence in themselves and the road toward social justice.

Wendy M. Wheeler was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1959. The only child of June and William Wheeler, a secretary and a building contractor, Wendy grew up in the American suburbia of the 1960s and 1970s. Good public schools and libraries sparked her pursuit of education at an early age. During elementary school, faced with the challenge of thousands of books sitting on the shelves in the Studio City public library, Wendy decided the only way to handle the problem was to read every one. She methodically started with the As and progressed through the library's entire back wall of books in alphabetical order, by author. This challenge may have been the last one that Wheeler ever approached systematically and methodically.

Not all of Wheeler's youth was spent in intellectual pursuits; in fact, many of her high school contemporaries would think of her as an athlete first and a scholar second. Wendy played intramural team sports in junior high and competed on interscholastic school teams in basketball and softball in high school. This was the mid-1970s, and female athletes in high school were still more of an exception than a rule, but Wendy always did what was right for her, regardless of what was expected.

In terms of athletics, competitive sports were available to high school girls at the time, but other opportunities were not. Although traditionally female home economics classes and traditionally male industrial arts classes were beginning to integrate when Wheeler began high school, not all teachers were quite so accepting of the new policies. The male teacher who taught auto mechanics was notably reluctant to accept girls into his courses, and required many prerequisites. The young Wheeler, who had no time to take those prerequisites because of her more academic program, begged him to let her take auto mechanics, but he refused. It was typical of Wheeler to ignore the conventions of [Page 1142]male/female, academic track/nonacademic track or prerequisites to pursue the spectrum of education she desired. Unlike many of her peers, who developed an academic snobbery by placing greater value on the courses required by universities, Wheeler gave equal value to math, to physical education, and to vocational courses, and equal value to the students who excelled in each.

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