Imposter
Today in the penultimate day of the Mountain Scholars Institute, we did a freewrite on mentors we've had in our lives. I wrote about Julie Graham. I have been lucky to have several truly influential mentors in my life, but she came to the top of my mind this morning. I wrote about how we met for the first time at Rao's Coffee in Amherst. I had a coffee and she had nothing as she was recovering from throat cancer and the only thing she consumed was nutritional liquid that she fed herself directly to her stomach. She had a raspy voice that belied the trauma her body had gone through, but her intellect and charisma was bright and intact.
I heard rumors that she was very demanding and could be very harsh, so I arrived nervous, and even though I was returning to graduate school as an adult, I was transported to my first year in college when I got my first college essay back with the dreaded, "Come see me" in big red letters at the top of my paper. Julie's first question to me was not about the weather, the summer, or work, but instead she asked me to define an economy. I was startled into my first intellectual conversation with the person who would come to be my mentor for the next few years. We spent about forty five minutes passing ideas back and forth about what an economy might entail. I had never thought to try and define an economy, so I was moving in uncharted territory. I can't help but imagine that she was testing me, seeing if I was someone she could work with. At the end of our meeting we decided that we could define an economy as a system created to improve the quality of life for people, and that when that goal was obscured or forgotten, that was when we start to see economies fall out of balance and reinforce inequities. adversely affect the environment, and all the other ills we associate with a capitalocentric world view.
I'm sure it was all elementary to Julie, but she wanted to see how I thought, if she could push me with questions, and if I could move conceptually with her. For me, it was as nerve wracking as a job interview. I had to calm my nerves by breathing deeply, and pressing my palm into my thighs. Drinking a cup of coffee in the midst of this was probably not the best choice. I was already a dean at the community college, had been working on economic development through the creative economy, and had worked to secure several grants from the Mass Cultural Council, and yet, with my first meeting with Julie, I was back to being a student again. My old tropes, an almost cultural instinct of deference to the teacher, the old feelings of inadequacy... what people call imposter syndrome, settled in. And at the same time, I knew that this time, I could approach education differently. I could be more active in what I wanted.
I was lucky and she asked me to meet her at her house and together, we built and taught the most invigorating and ambitious courses I have ever been involved in. I relearned how to teach from Julie. She provided the conceptual framework, but we then helped the students generate the agency to become educators and generators of their own data and knowledge through interviews, videos, and a course wiki. Fairly common, if not dated technology today, but at the time, it felt like we were part of the revolution.
More than the experience of teaching with Julie, or the theory and methodologies she shared with me, was feeling of collaborating, of co-creating, and that I could be a co-creator. I will always be indebted to her for that. She gifted me with a sense of possibility, that among these intellectual giants, I could forge a small space that I could inhabit. I am just a minor figure, but have been close enough to have touched and embraced greatness, and that has imbued me with the strength to do the work that I continue to do today.
Thank you, Julie.
I hope I can do the same for someone else in my life.
Peace,
Leo
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Gyeongdan--Korean Rice Cake
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From Our Friends:
From Inside Higher Ed:
A Push for Equitable Assessment
COVID-19 and nationwide antiracism protests have intensified conversations about inequity in higher education. One research group hopes to use the moment to promote more inclusive ways to validate learning. »
From Higher Ed Jobs:
Justices Rule LGBT People Protected from Job Discrimination
by Mark Sherman, Associated Press 
This pride month, the LGBT community achieved yet another important victory. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Title VII -- a landmark civil rights law -- protects gay, lesbian, and transgender people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court. The cases were the court's first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement and replacement by Brett Kavanaugh, who is generally regarded as more conservative.
From the New York Times:
When you take a comprehensive look at black and white men — as Charles and another economist, Patrick Bayer of Duke University, have done — you see that the black-white male wage gap is as large today as it was when Harry Truman was president. (I go into more detail, including charts, in this article.) |
From The Magazine: “Racial income disparities today look no different than they did the decade before King’s March on Washington,” Nikole Hannah-Jones writes. “More critical, the racial wealth gap is about the same as it was in the 1950s as well. The typical black household today is poorer than 80 percent of white households.” The central reason is centuries of government policies that have denied opportunities to black Americans — from slavery to the Homestead Act to Jim Crow laws to federally mandated segregation that affects housing prices today. The only solution, Hannah-Jones argues, is restitution: A federal program to repay black Americans for the wealth that the government has taken from them. |
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From ACE:
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In order to lead campus-wide efforts to address historical educational inequity, a new position is emerging on campuses: the academic diversity officer, or ADO. These Higher Ed Today blog posts are written by ADOs who discuss their role, the challenges they face, and the opportunities these positions bring. |
From Freedom for All Americans:
So for Give OUT Day, we’re also lifting up several Black-led LGBTQ organizations:
- The Trans Women of Color Survival Fund, which provides transgender women of color with financial assistance for food, clothing, and more;
- The Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, the only national organization working to end anti-transgender discrimination that is led by Black, transgender people;
- The Okra Project, a collective that brings home-cooked, healthy, and culturally-specific meals to Black transgender people nationwide;
- The National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black LGBTQ people;
- The Trans Justice Funding Project, a community-led funding initiative that supports grassroots justice groups run by and for transgender people.
Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From the Online Learning Consortium:
VIDEO: Keynote Address: Centering A Critical Curriculum Of Care During Crises
We are excited to share this video of keynoter, Maha Bali, with you. Her keynote calls for reimagining online education (and indeed education as a whole) in ways that move away from outcomes-based design approaches, and towards more critical curriculum design approaches that center care, empathy, equity and social justice. Away from single pathway pedagogies in for-credit education, and towards more open, connectivist, agentic, and culturally responsive pedagogies.
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