LOS ANGELES — Dolores Sheen, who is the co-founder of Sheenway School and Cultural Center in Los Angeles, knows a teaching opportunity when she sees one.

“Taking a lemon and turning it into lemonade,” Sheen said, who is lovingly known as Aunt Sheen and at 83 has dedicated herself to education. 

Aunt Dolores is carrying on the vision of her father, the late Herbert A. Sheen, by running Sheenway School and Cultural Center as a private nonprofit organization to educate kids from underserved neighborhoods.

The belief has always been that education is the best way to level the playing field, and she has lived with a purpose to educate the children of South Central LA by teaching them life skills not found in a textbook.

“But you’ll know how to create a business. You’ll know what you’ve done with your hands,” Aunt Dolores told her students one afternoon.

This month she and her students launched their new classroom on wheels, the Sheenway Student Mobile Bakery. It is immersive, all-encompassing, and a hands-on lesson in entrepreneurship.

“I’m hoping that it means it’s a hands-on way of using a skill that you thought was beneath professionalism,” she said.  

Aunt Dolores includes concepts in her lesson plans to teach and reach. From learning how to make food to learning how to run a business, the learning does not stop.

She does not just teach; she invests and believes in her students. Her passion for learning is contagious.

For more information on the Sheenway School and the newly launched mobile bakery, visit SheenwaySchools.org.