(gentle bell music)
- Hi, I'm Mika Nash.
I'm Dean of Continuing Professional Studies,
the online adult division, at Champlain College.
And I'm here with Dr. T. Leon Williams,
who is spending some time with us to talk
about how to work with students of color in the classroom
and how to increase retention and solve all things.
So, would you mind just introducing yourself quickly?
- Yes.
My name is Leon Williams, and I,
I was fortunate to go to,
attend a small private institution,
Ohio Northern University.
Probably a school I shouldn't, been accepted in actually.
I was a 2.7 high school student graduating senior.
I earned a 11 on the ACT twice, an 11 my junior year
and an 11 my senior year.
And the joke has always been, you didn't get no smarter
no whole entire year, so.
But yeah, I earned an 11 and I got in
through the grace of God
to a premier private institution in Ohio.
Finished up a bachelor's degree in business management.
I went on to get my masters, I played college football,
so I was able to be a student athlete.
I went on to get my masters, and I was fortunate,
the Dean of Students at that time,
thought I would be a great person to serve
in the role of director of multicultural affairs
slash assistant football coach.
And during the interview,
I asked him why would he have interest in me?
He said, "Well, you're exactly the story
"that we want everyone to hear and to share.
"Public education, didn't have the grades,
"didn't do well on standardized tests but in four years,
"you've earned a bachelor's degree in business management."
And that led to me becoming and serving in a dual role
of director of multicultural affairs,
assistant football coach, getting my masters
in counseling education.
So I coached for many years
and then I had this interesting thing happened.
I coached for about eight years in this dual role.
And this interesting thing happened where I felt
that there were enough black coaches
that I needed to be an administrator in higher education.
So after that, from 1993 to 2000, in 2000,
I never prepared a college coaching resume.
I mean I think back on that now
because coaches make a ton of money now.
But I chose the route of being
a black African-American administrator
because I hadn't seen too many of them other than my mentor.
So I chose the route of Multicultural Affairs
and student life, and I ventured to a place where
people didn't believe diversity could work.
It was in northwest Iowa, a small institution,
Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, and there,
I arrived, there was about 1% diversity.
And we were the only black family in town.
There wasn't a lot of diversity amongst faculty and staff.
People said, why would you take your career
and go to an institution that has no diversity,
after coming off a strong seven years
out of Ohio Northern University?
But I felt that in order to be authentic and genuine
and give respect and reverence to the field,
you need to go to a place where it would be difficult
and challenging to implement diversity,
as opposed to taking over another office
that already had the structures, the systems,
the recruiting efforts, the faculty on board.
I chose a place that didn't have no foundation.
And so, in eight years, from 2000 and 2008,
the population of diversity grew from 1% to 12%.
It was the largest increase in diversity and retention
and matriculation to graduation that any school
had ever seen in a eight-year span.
And it really propelled my career,
I learned a lot about diversity
and how to implement diversity and how to recruit students
and retain students and help them matriculate to graduation,
the understanding of they need a family and a support system
so on and so forth.
So throughout all this time,
I'm journeying with a beautiful wife and children
who are taking on all of these cultural differences
and opening our eyes as a family.
And so it did as much for us that it did
for students, I believe.
And so, in 2008 I had an opportunity to move
to North Carolina and continue that diversity work
at Elon University.
And so, I have had in totality 20 years
of a wonderful experience of higher education
and I've met some wonderful colleagues along the way,
even my current co-author, and the reason why I'm here
your institution today, Maria Erb was traveling with me.
She opened me up to another phase of diversity
and deepened my understanding of first in the family
and first-generation college students.
I have a ton of wonderful colleagues
that have really blessed me to come to this understanding
of what diversity is,
and how it should be cared for and nurtured.
- So you said earlier on that, you went to a place
where they didn't believe diversity could happen.
What does that look like and how do you transcend?
- Right, right, because it's, geographically it was located
in a place where the institution and others
in the profession of diversity and multiculturalism
didn't believe students would go to.
So that's not necessarily a knock on the institution
as much as it is, how would you get students to go
to a remote location, an island if you will,
a place where there is not a fostering of diversity.
And if you think about our map,
and you look at this small private institution
that was in northwest Iowa.
I'm talking an hour from South Dakota
and North Dakota border.
Where was the diversity going to come from
that would really impact the campus?
So you can recruit within the state of Iowa, right?
So you can get students of diverse backgrounds,
within the state of Iowa but you may be drawing
the same perspective that's already on your campus
even though they may look differently,
they may have a different language that they use
or they're from a different country.
Because of the culture of the state you may be drawing
the same perspective.
So my understanding was okay, not only do we need to recruit
within this state, we also needed to recruit in the Midwest.
So we recruited students from Kansas City, Missouri,
St. Louis, Chicago, Illinois, Omaha and Nebraska
and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
So we were able to bring students,
now you're talking about reshaping a campus culture.
And the interesting thing was how our students
from Iowa City and Des Moines interacted
with students from Chicago,
but they were both black or both Latino
or both Asian-American, it was completely different.
And that really opened my eyes up
to geographical diversity also matters.
I think you need that in-state recruitment of diversity
and continue to value that diversity but there are also
some distant diversity that is necessary on your campus
to help shape the perspectives
that are already on your campus.
- Hmm, so you talk about this, is the culture
and the shifting of culture and I'm reminded of,
it makes me think about sort of where we are right now,
where Champlain College has been an institution
that has had around 10 to 12% diversity
for as long as I can remember and I'm in my 11th year here.
And when I started at CPS at the online division,
we were about there, we were about 10% students of color
and we had between six and 700 students,
and over the last few years, we have created partnerships
with very diverse organizations,
the federal government being one, several,
AT&T being another one for example.
And our numbers have really shifted.
And I remember hearing from someone who was a CDO
that once you hit about 30% students of color,
people from underrepresented groups, you feel the difference
in the experience.
I think we started feeling it a bit before that
but certainly we began to feel, there were classes
that were 50%, 60% students of color
and we started being, when you were talking about,
that first position that you went to,
I was thinking about being called
that it feels like that when you talk about,
you could have done this, this would've been easier
and you did this other thing.
And so, I'm thinking about that idea of culture shift
and what that means and what kind of work folks need to do
who are on the ground supporting those students.
How do you walk that walk of that shift?
- Right, I think the first thing,
especially in my professional and personal experience
was to come to an understanding of where I was really at.
When I left Ohio Northern University
and I took on this responsibility at Buena Vista University,
it was because of the lack of diversity by perception,
lack of diversity by cultural celebrations,
lack of diversity of
in my particular case, black consciousness.
That environment influenced me to look deeper
into who I was, because there was such a lack,
you were more intentional to study yourself.
Because of the conversations around you,
because of when you walk into meetings,
you're the only black person, it made you think of you.
So before we ever get to students as professionals,
we have to examine where we're truly at
and have an honest dialogue and conversation
about our own bias.
That teaching, that self-exploration allowed me
to understand and put programs in place
and have conversations with professionals
at a much deeper level because now I was thinking,
what is it like for you to walk in either comfort
or privilege and now having to embrace difference.
And so, what I was going through,
were you going through similar things?
And so, it's interesting, my first connections
at Buena Vista University were with women.
- Ah, yeah, there's--
- Makes sense.
Another marginalized, historically marginalized group
who they tend to, at that particular institution
they got it before others.
So the diversity work became a little bit easier
because now as I cast a wide net, I was able to bring up
people pulling on heart connections
and relating to them through our experiences
as opposed to going in with deep pedagogy
and deep diversity research.
I went in in a very practical sense
of building relationships on what mattered most to us.
And now that you have that heart connection,
now you can do work more effectively and these,
my colleagues became branches of the tree
I was trying to plant.
Before the tree was actually grown, they became branches
so they were able to talk about Leon's heart connection
before they ever knew me as a professional,
and whatever my agenda was,
whatever my job description, my objectives.
So helping people understand where they're at
and having a honest genuine dialogue about it
is the place to start.
And that takes a lot of transparency,
that takes a lot of courage because you're gonna actually
disclose where you're really at on this subject matter.
I have wonderful colleagues in Iowa,
when I first started actually teaching
a Martin Luther King class, we actually spent four months,
me and these two white female colleagues just getting
to know where we're at.
We co-facilitated this class.
It was during our January term which is a short term
to talk to them and to learn about their honest perspective
of what blackness is, what Martin Luther King was all about,
what Gandhi was all about,
what Henry David Thoreau was all about,
what the movement is all about, what is solidarity,
what is truly non-violence, how does this next generation,
how do we teach this next generation?
That took months to get to an honest place
to be able to facilitate a classroom.
Most of us, when we have a diversity agenda on a table,
there's not that much of an in-depth preparation
for the diversity work or the diversity conversation.
So what happens is once diversity is presented,
now you have to draw from your bias as opposed
to your consciousness per se,
because you haven't done the prep work.
It's just like service learning.
If we go on to a Boys and Girls Club, YMCA,
dealing with kids that may be at risk of some sort,
or it's labeled as "at risk" but we're serving,
you can do more damage walking into those settings
having not done the prep work,
because you're going in with the lens
that is stereotypical, a stigma, etc.
We need the hours, we record the hours
but we don't really address the needs of the people
because we don't understand the needs of the people.
So for example, instead of going into a setting
to help kids read, I would challenge you
to look at institutional oppression, structural oppression
and individual oppression because not only do we need
to help kids read, why is there a lack
or why are students performing,
why are their reading comprehension levels low?
So I don't want you to just go in and serve,
I want you to understand the structures
that serve as umbrellas that walk
with these students, as clouds.
And so, it's so much prep work and cleansing
and I had to strip myself coming from predominant
black community K-12, black teachers, black schoolmates,
some white friends sprinkled
here and there, black community.
Before I became a great professional,
I had a lot of stripping to do,
and here's another added piece.
My mother is from Alabama, my father's from South Carolina
before they moved to Ohio.
Two major slave states.
So how much direct and indirect grooming
and teaching did they offer the kids?
And they didn't even know.
We talk about that in the book that we're going
to be sharing later about their experiences
and this is part of that scholarly personal narrative,
me sharing how that impacted my perspective
of white America and of blackness
and where did we fit in the conversation,
given that they came from two slave states
where their experiences were, and they're in their 70s
so you can do your math and see what time and era
did they grow up, that they became parents
and what perspective did they bring with them from the South
to now raise their children in the north.
So it was an interesting dynamic,
there was so much cleansing I had to do
before I ever could be effective as a diversity leader.
- And that's the conversation
that you were talking about earlier,
that idea of understanding identity so that the,
you're sort of forced into that identity space.
It reminds me of, we had a speaker come,
an African-American man come to speak to a group of leaders
or aspiring leaders and everyone was white,
and he was the one black man in the room,
and he stood up in the front and he said,
"I want everybody to talk about what they're aware of
"right now, sort of what are you aware of,"
just kinda mindfulness thing.
And people were, I don't know,
I'm thirsty, I'm tired, whatever.
And he said, so let me go.
I'm aware that I'm the only African-American man,
I have the darkest skin of anybody in this room,
I'm very aware of that.
And everybody became very uncomfortable and he was not.
It came from a place of, I want you to be aware
of how I'm walking through my day here.
And it created a lot of really good conversation as a result
and I think that is a gift that we can give to students
to be aware of and it's very difficult
to navigate those conversations as a person
in a majority group where you're,
perhaps you're worried that you're gonna say the wrong thing
or that you're gonna put people on the spot.
So talk to me about what it looks like to be an ally
in this space that you're talking about.
- So being an ally for, helped me go deeper with that,
being an ally for the, help me, help me.
- So what does it look like,
when you talk about making those connections that are based,
those heart connections that are relationship based?
And it was you sort of reaching out to white women
that you felt could understand at some level
what does it feel like to be the only white woman,
or the only woman in a room.
There are those natural points of connections,
how do you come at it, would you suggest
as a white person, as a white male, as a white sis male,
how do you manage supporting folks who come
from underrepresented groups really being a voice
for diversity, not serving so much as,
although I think in terms of service often
but what does that look like?
- Well, there's several things there, okay?
So if I came from a place of oppression
in my mind, alright, that I was historically marginalized,
I'm using words now that I didn't use back then
but I was experiencing.
- Okay, just giving voice.
- That's the blind spot, okay, of diversity
through that lens of oppression.
The same is true, in innocent ignorance
when it comes to privilege.
So let's take a white male who may say to me,
"I don't fully understand why this is a concern of yours."
I'll give you an example.
A white professor called me at the same institution in Iowa,
he called me, no, he sent the email and he said
I want to talk to you.
So he came to my office and he came to talk to me
about the students, the black students sitting together,
Latino students sitting together in the lunchroom.
Now, our lunchroom like most cafeterias is glass
and you can see through.
So I said, well, there's a few layers to this.
I said one, they spend their entire day in classrooms
where they don't see much of themselves,
so they look forward to the fellowship in being in a setting
where they can be more comfortable, alright?
Because his whole idea is shouldn't we break that up,
shouldn't that be more diverse and spread out?
I said well, I'm not gonna go tell people
where to sit and eat.
I said, but I think if you look closer into that cafeteria,
I think the basketball team eats together,
the volleyball team eats together,
the softball team eats together.
I said it's not necessarily a black cultural thing,
as much as it is and we don't give credit
to students for this, it's a friend, it's a likeness,
it's a like-minded thing,
it's who you want to break bread with.
All of us have certain people we really don't invite
to our house to eat, and people that come that kind of
we're hesitant or have apprehensions about,
we brace ourselves when they walk through the door
or when they put their car in park.
So I wanted the professor to understand
you have to go through some cleansing yourself,
because your perception is that this was wrong.
So if I have to go through the cleansing
from a historically marginalized place,
so too do people who walk in privilege.
It's a blind spot because you don't recognize
it as privilege, that you're in a classroom
where you are the majority, and you don't know
what it feels like to be the one, the only if you will.
So, in teaching those who walk in the majority
or walk in privilege or they're the male dominant figure,
it's helping them understand and unpack privilege.
You can't appreciate diversity, you can't,
if you don't unpack that privilege.
And we go the other way, we ignore our privilege
and allow it to spew out of our mouth,
our actions and our behavior as we interact with people.
And then someone else, it's someone else's responsibility
to check you if you will, alright?
I need for you, and this is what we're going
to be talking about later,
I need for the oppressor
to take a close examine of themselves.
Paulo Freire says in his book,
"Pedagogy Of The Oppressed" and I'm paraphrasing,
the oppress has the higher calling,
they have to first free themselves
before they free the oppressor because it's not
in the nature of the oppressor to free himself or herself.
And so we have a responsibility, and so we need to cast
that wide net to get a team of allies and advocates
to help be voices in those conversations
that I particularly don't sit at the table.
Because it's not in your nature to think of me in the same,
it's such a complex thing to get people to cede
their privilege and unpack it.
Because now I have to tear down a little bit
of what has built me up.
Because I hide behind that in my competency,
my degrees behind my name, my title on my job
and when I lose some of that, I lose a lot of self.
It's easier for historically marginalized people
because we come from a place where sometimes
we value ourselves less than any way.
And so, when you have a classroom
and talking about massive stereotype threat,
there are some students who walk into classrooms
that are majority white, and from the onset
just by visual eye they lessen their abilities,
their competencies because they're more in tune
with what the classroom look like as opposed
to performing at my best and competing with my peers.
So, you lessen yourself.
For privileged individuals, the one thing you don't put out
as a sacrifice is self, because you stand behind that.
And so, it's to help those in charge,
those leading institutions and from the president's cabinet,
administrators, is helping you understand
your privileged seat.
And so unpacking that knapsack which is a Peggy--
- Macintosh.
- That was her work.
That's still relevant today because that's, is playing on,
and here's what happens do I find very interesting.
When you're a colleague of privilege,
you tend to team up with privilege and disconnect
from the issues that may be playing out
in someone else's life.
So we can make decisions at the table
that may be a detriment to other people but I'm gonna agree
with it because I'm at a table of privilege.
Personally, I don't agree with it, I can go home
and voice that to my spouse or partner, and say,
I really had a rough day at work, but at the table
I agree with it,
because that consent, that membership, that status matters.
And I need to sustain that because that is
what has gotten me here.
But as a result, we have students suffering, homelessness,
poverty, sex trafficking, human trafficking,
all those things that play out in the grassroots,
in the gutter of, and ghettos of where I come from.
I noticed people didn't truly care
and Dr. King had this wonderful quote,
we would have to repent in this generation,
not for the hateful words of the evil people
but it's the appalling silence of the good people.
- Yes, right now.
- Absolutely and that's our problem from society, politics,
all the way down to our public education.
- So what you're talking about really
is sort of physician-heal-thyself, right?
So before you start worrying about being an ally,
spend some time really thinking about
what makes you able to even sit in that place of ally,
and own it, and don't feel bad about just own it
and then move from there.
- Just own it, and deal with it
and it's a difficult thing.
My first incident of higher education,
student walked in my office crying
and I asked what was the problem.
And some football players, now mind you, I coach football.
So football players had threw some things at him
and he felt that this was the only place he can go to
to get some help.
The student was gay.
So the students who were throwing things at him
was calling him names, and attacking him verbally.
Now, I am wearing a very masculine hat,
I am wearing a very student athlete hat, I'm a coach.
I had never dealt with this personally.
I knew from the time he opened his mouth and told me
the story that I was going to have limited support
for this student.
I knew it, I knew it, how many students walk in our office
and we know from the time they're opening their mouth
or they're one of our students that we're teaching
that because of our bias, because of our stereotype,
because of the perspective and the attitude we have,
we know from the onset that we're not going to help
these students to our full potential.
Once that student voiced that concern,
I didn't even follow up.
It was a shameful act as a new young professional
and I learnt right then, regardless of how I felt,
regardless of what group I belong to,
what group I wanted to protect,
any student that walked in my office,
my job is to serve them.
That was my first lesson in higher ed as a professional.
I will never forget it, because it opened my eyes
to diversity, it opened my eyes to bias,
it opened my eyes to care and concern for students.
If we all have that self check, that moment
because we have these experiences where we have
to check ourself and come to grips with,
I'm not fully equipped to do this job
and lead students in conversations and help students.
But see, instead we dismiss those moments
and we continue to teach students.
What we don't know, students know that you're
not serving them for their best interests,
because they're taught that lens of identifying bias
and stereotypes and discrimination.
They're taught that through experiences
where they can identify and they feel some certain way
about their experience, that's why retention is an issue,
matriculation to graduation is an issue,
the professor's inability to manage a classroom is an issue,
students feeling that they're being attacked
in the classroom, all of that
because we missed those moments to learn
from our own experiences.
So earlier you talked about at-risk students
and really you talked about them at a younger age,
sort of in that K12 age.
And I want to ask you a question that I'm struggling with
right now as I think about at risk,
because in the adult student population,
adults go on and off at risk.
It's sort of that will,
depending on what's going on in their lives.
It could be a kid that goes into rehab,
it could be a parent who's sick,
it could be anything, promotion or a loss of job
or natural disaster.
We've created a matrix if you will
of what at risk looks like, and sort of grading
those levels of at risk.
I wonder, and let me just give you the background quickly.
I was listening to Code Switch last week
and there is a Code Switch about the idea of weathering.
And weathering, I don't know if you're familiar
with the concept but the idea is that,
it came from this realization
that white women and black women,
if you take just sort of those women postpartum,
black women were much more likely to die than white women
regardless of socioeconomic status.
So you could have a very well-off black woman
who is much more likely to die than a than a woman
who is very low socioeconomic status who is white.
And they talked about weathering
and what happens to the body physiologically just growing,
I'm sort of thinking about your experience of you know
what this looks like because you felt it, their experience,
what is your thinking about the idea of at risk
sort of assuming that, and I'm queasy
about even asking this but assuming at risk status
for students of color just because
of that weathering experience of growing up in this society,
what does that feel like to you?
- And help me, what's your question out of that?
- I guess the question is, when we think about at risk
our outreach to students is different,
the way that we work with student,
we're gonna more deeply be much more holistic
and sort of direct in the way that we're supporting students
we're gonna do lots and lots of outreach,
we're gonna make sure that you feel our presence
as advisors, administrators and so forth
much more than you might if you're just,
you came in soaring and you just kind of keep on soaring.
So the question is, does that raise you to a level coming in
with an at-risk status that is as a result of race,
what does that feel like to you?
Is that appropriate?
- It's interesting, there's several ways I can answer that.
When you live in, I'll use my example of Youngstown, Ohio,
public education, the hood, the ghetto, all the stereotypes,
you don't think of yourself as at risk,
I didn't learn that I was a "at-risk" student
until actually a white coach pointed out to me
that you fall into this population.
And see, when you're in it you don't even know
that there's a stigma on you.
See, just like ghetto and you're from the hood and all that.
Many years ago, that wasn't a conversation,
it was where I lived, where I grew up
but the writers and the experts and the scholars,
they begin to put these pockets in place
to say, oh, this is what we call y'all,
this is the box you live in.
What happens then is one or two things,
it's sink or swim, right?
I am so competitive that once I figured out and learnt
that you already had a negative perception of me,
I was more motivated to prove you wrong.
Here's the problem with that,
you're setting the bar for me now
because in my eye, I'm trying to live up to your expectation
to break that boundary, that glass ceiling.
So I spend my life trying to be accepted in a
out-of-a-box experience
but in a box comfort zone country club if you will.
So, when we have these stigmas and labels of at risk,
it can play out in such a way
where it motivates people, alright?
Where others, when they realize it,
depending on their support system from home,
depending on their support system from friends,
if there's no success stories from their community
because they're a product of their environment,
some people, they don't perform at the level
that they should because they don't feel they
have enough support to do so, now that they understand
they are at risk, so it's sink or swim.
Either you get motivated to do it or you struggle
because you don't have the structure and the support.
But it's interesting because at risk was not created
by people who are historically marginalized.
- Yeah, that's right.
- So again, it's a box placed on a group of people.
And it's interesting, the people that placed
the stigma on you are the very same people
that you're trying to live up to.
What a psychology and training of, and so,
the criticism of higher ed at least in the streets
has been you're only getting a degree
to go work for somebody.
- That's right, and to perpetuate...
- Right, and so when you think of at risk,
these are the type of things that come to mind.
These are conversations, the perspective that I'm sharing
that people have and they're talking about,
but here's the code switch.
I will never articulate to you how I feel about that
'cause I still need you.
- Yeah, right.
- Here's my dad, who had to get knee replacement
and I was home, this was many years ago.
And I took him to the doctor.
And he gave me directions, this is before GPS,
he gave me directions and I pull up to the doctor's office
and we're sitting in the car.
And he's sitting there and I'm starting to open my door.
And I said, "Dad, what's going on?
"Was this the right place?"
He said, "Yeah, this is it."
And he kind of puts his head back in his seat
and he says, "I'm tired."
I said, "But Dad, you need the therapy because you had
"a new replacement, they're gonna get you back stronger."
He said, "No, no, no, no, I'm tired of having to go
"to white people to be fixed.
"I've been doing it my whole life.
"If I needed a loan, if I needed a house, if I needed a job.
"Here I am, the latter part of my life
"and I need help with my knee, and I'm still going
"to white people."
It blew my mind because here's my father
towards oh no, I pray to God to give him many years
but towards some later years of his life
and he still has inside of him resentment for living a life
that his only upgrade in life, his only upward mobility
is through white people.
That's what at risk, when there's a deep stigma,
that's what it does to us.
And I was like that's amazing because at the time he told me
this happened I was working in Iowa
doing strong diversity work and I was like
that's important for me to know.
That you build students up where they don't resent life.
So they have to come off and under the rock of oppression
to live a life as a champion, that's a different training.
So yes, this institution and many others,
we have to strengthen and empower students
to not see life through the lens of oppression,
historically marginalized, that they're lesser
and that someone else is superior.
And so, one of the things we did in Iowa,
immediately at Buena Vista University,
no more minority, no more students of color,
students of diverse populations.
It balanced and equalized everyone's involvement
and attention on campus.
I challenged the president, students of diverse,
take students of color, take minority out of your language.
It made us equal. - Okay.
So a kid from Chicago didn't have to say, "Student of color,
"I'm a student of color, what's a student of color?"
Because that's not a Chicago experience.
You see what I'm saying?
If you recruit students here from Philly, student of color?
I'm not a student of color, I'm a black, I'm a proud person,
I'm a Latino, I'm proud.
But see, there are structures that we have to deconstruct
in order for those who live on the margins
to feel part of it, and come to the table
feeling good about their experiences in who they are
which also means those in majority have to celebrate
with those who are less fortunate, if you will.
- If you can think about a message
for our diverse populations, what is the message
when you consider what they carry with them as they come in,
which for me what I'm very aware of is
for all of their adult students,
regardless of how they present, they come in
with a level of shame and that shame is,
I didn't finish it when I was supposed to finish it,
so now I gotta finish it and I'm different from other people
and I'm not good at that.
There's all that language.
How do we work with students to,
especially as I'm thinking about your words about at risk,
how do we work with students to kind of elevate
above all of the obstacles that they are carrying with them,
I mean there are obstacles placed in front of them for sure
but they are carrying. - Absolutely.
So what's the message to them
and what is the message as well to our faculty
and our administrators and advisors
in supporting these students?
- Very good question.
It's much of the work that you're very familiar with already
through your scholarship and your family
is that personal narrative.
My colleague and co-author Maria helped me understand
when I was writing these monologues,
I was doing it for the people.
But she helped me understand, what's your thought process
in writing it?
Why, how did you come to these points of reference,
to pull and draw King into the 21st century
and to the present?
What was it like, where did this come from
and she questioned and said dig deeper, tell me more,
what about your family, what about your upbringing?
We are so ashamed of the experience, the narrative
that we oftentimes try to leave it.
And I want to say to students, bring it with you
because that's the diversity.
If I come from Philly to this institution,
I need you to bring Philly to the institution.
In the same respect, Champlain has to be ready for Philly
and all that it has to offer.
So for example, if you come to Champlain College
you should be able to experience a New York, Philly,
New Jersey experience here.
See, in Buena Vista University, you come to this
and this was very relevant and pertinent
to our in-state diversity students who came from Iowa City
and Ames, Iowa who came to this small private institution
that they've been talking about their entire life.
Now, they're having a Chicago experience in Northwest Iowa,
because a student from Chicago that I was recruiting,
I said, "I need that flavor to come with you.
"I don't need you to be straight and narrow,
"walk differently, talk differently and it's okay
"to blurt out without raising your hand."
Because their perception,
because of the environment they were in was to change,
to be accepted for white America.
- [Mina] To code switch.
- Right, but I need you to just do the opposite.
It's the celebration of the narrative that you have
to bring with you, but see America is set up
in such a way that we often have told people
that that narrative don't fit
into the American structure of success.
Well, who created that bar, and who,
and I learned this from your family scholarship
is that the scholarly personal narrative allows you
to write freely without being concerned about the grammar,
the grammar, the punctuation.
Just write, just express yourself.
There's so many people who fail to write
and tell their story, because they're worried
about their articulation, how eloquent they're gonna be,
if they're on camera or amongst people.
So there's a lot of giftedness that stay suppressed
because we're afraid of acceptance.
So those in the majority, those in power of teaching
and learning and scholarship,
you have to create an environment where difference
is welcomed as opposed to
inadequacies are welcomed.
We don't want you to dummy down to where you allow anything
but how do you celebrate the art of who and the expression
of who these individuals really are?
How do we celebrate that without feeling that
here's another piece?
I know it's grammatically incorrect,
but I don't want to address it,
I want this student to continue to write.
So we have to have the skills and the pedagogy talent
to be able to coach someone to bring them along
in their writing but not insult them to make them feel
like they're not competent and that they can't write.
And so we have to understand for one, through my seat,
keep the narrative going.
Every journey in your life becomes a comma, not a period.
So it's not over, you have to continue to write.
When we don't measure up to others,
we usually put an exclamation point or a period
at the end of our story and we quit, we give up.
Your adult learners understand it's only been a comma
in my life, that's why they're adult learners coming back
into the setting to say I can finish this degree,
I can continue to go on, I can improve my life
because they understand you can no longer
put a period at the end of my story,
because it's still being written
and that's the beauty of it.
Is once you come to that consciousness,
and you can't come to that place of consciousness
if someone doesn't allow you to think freely in that vacuum.
My head coach, I was a freshman in college,
I had my first term a 1.25.
The institution pretty much said and I'm paraphrasing,
if you don't get it together, you're out of here.
I was the only football player in study table
for the rest of the entire year.
The head coach would stop in to that room
and he never talked to me about football.
He talked to me about life,
he talked to me about where I was from.
He was a white coach.
He talked to me about where I'm from,
he talked to me about my family,
he talked to me what it was like to live in Youngstown Ohio.
He talked to me like your extended family,
your cousins, your uncles, who else has played,
who else has attended college?
He never once, 'cause to me, every time I seen him
I thought he's gonna come in and we was gonna watch film
and talk football X's and O's.
He never once did that.
He wanted me to understand that this conversation
means more than any football conversation.
But what he did is allow me to express myself freely,
and he told me something that motivated me beyond measure.
He said to me there are people betting
that you won't make it.
There are people banking on the fact,
even though they've given you an opportunity,
there's a little invisible box that they have placed you in
that say he will eventually fall into this box.
That's a higher ed's example. - Yes.
The prison system is another example,
that's why we build prison, because we know
based on third and fourth grade performances and involvement
that eventually these number of individuals
will eventually end in this box.
We have to allow people to express themselves in their way,
create that platform.
No matter how insulting it was, it was the first time
in my life that a white guy told me
that there was such a system that was betting on me failing.
No one had ever told me that.
I've heard it from uncles,
I've heard it from my family, I've watched movies
but here is the voice of the majority,
the privileged saying,
we don't think you're gonna make it,
from the school you came from, the community you came from,
the family structure, that's how we think.
He shared the golf course conversation with me,
and people know that.
So I want to motivate and inspire people to say,
keep telling the narrative, keep walking in the narrative,
it's just a comma.
- Thank you so much.
- Oh, thank you for the opportunity.
- It's been a pleasure, thank you so much.
- Thank you.
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