25 Years in Higher Education

Twenty-five years in Peralta

A Journey

I was so excited to be full-time faculty I said yes to all requests. I thought this is what teamwork looked like until I needed the team to support me.

I said yes to teaching canceled classes at the last moment in the summer. I even said yes to buying books without reimbursement.

I said yes to working in the summer while on vacation. I said yes, even though no was an option.

No one explained my options to me or what my contract entailed. Tenure trek just meant harassment. I have never received a compliment in 25 years from an administrator. All evaluations have been what I am doing wrong, yet when I request staff development funds to attend a training, the answer, yes, was no.

I grew silent. The eager professor who volunteered for everything started keeping her public and private persona separate.

No one wanted to know her.

Hired for one position and then evicted from her offices and position one summer, COA was never the same again.

For a year or two I office surfed between my car and trunk and the student lounge.

I shared an office briefly with a colleague who had no space for guests.

Eventually a retiree relinquished her office and I had a space.

Since Covid and illness, I have not seen my new office and since I am retiring, I am not sure I ever will.

I remember fondly the days when Kelly Purnell and I were a part of a learning community, the first at COA. We had a lot of fun over the course of 4 semesters.

I'd matriculated at Holy Names College through learning communities and I am a fan of this kind of pedagogy for first year students and students who need more connection.

I taught in Puente the first year tenure. I was also faculty rep for PAAA.

As PAAA rep we had Gatherings at Sherrone's house. We chartered a bus and went to Allensworth.

We coordinated Black History events in collaboration with Professor Carlotta Cambell, Speech Communications and Robert Brem, Mustafa Siddiqi, History and the English departments.

We had a faculty talent show. We also had end of the year COA dinner parties with live music.

At the end of my classes we'd have presentations in the F-building. One year my Critical Thinking class got newspaper coverage.

The mayor and City Manager came. I had really sharp students.

The topics were homelessness, food deserts. . .

In English 201 we wrote and performed skits on topics ranging from hip hop cultural icons like Tupac to scenes from The Color Purple.

Students wrote essays on social entrepreneurs we went to plays. In one class we watch a film about Shakespeare behind bars and read the work.

When Tookie Williams was on death row we read his autobiography and children's book.

We did a survey of women in hip hop, Tupac and his mom plus selections from his musical Canon and collection The Rose that Grew from concrete.

We read about nonviolent protest in Liberia led by women. We watched films connected to literature.

Often I structured courses around productions. When the Color Purple was being produced we read it and went to the theatre.

When there was an exhibit on Gordon Parks at BAMPFA we read one of his books.

We went to see a Baldwin film and read The Fire Next Time. There was a companion film connected to Hunter's Point when Baldwin came here and the youth he met. We watched that film and juxtaposed the events of that time to now.

What if anything has changed?

There was a lecture at City College of SF and we hopped on BART and went. The professor is a scholar on this period so it was engaging to learn about this period and what happened when SFPD killed a young unarmed Black man.

Reagan, then governor threatened to send in the National Guard. He said he was not going to tolerate another Watts. My mother said the government opened up the Shipyard for jobs. This is where she learned to program computers, fix tgem, and do keypunch.

On another trip to SF we saw John Hope Franklin, we hopped in our cars and went to an author event at Black Oak Books. We jumped on BART to hear Dr. Dyson at MoAD. We went to AAACC to see the Medea Project Theatre for Incarcerated Women perform My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. We had dinner at a restaurant afterward or before, I forget. I'd get free or discounted tickets.

When I see students working in Alameda or shopping locally we stop and chat. They tell me about some of their favorite assignments.

One of my favorite assignments was the trial of Bigger Thomas.

When Oakland selected Ernest Gaines's "A Lesson Before Dying," as "The Big Read," I assigned the book and gave students extra credit to attend any of the series of events at OPL, Laney College, CSEB.

In the hip hop culture survey we looked at Refa Ones art and visited Joyce Gordon Gallery where the artist gave us a private tour and talked about art and politics. He'd attended the Oakland Community School. His dad was a Black Panther.

More recently he painted the Oscar Grant mural in Fruitvale.

In Freshman Comp for many years we read a book called the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I'd attended an author event and thought Happiness would be a fun topic to center a course around.

(Women Hold Up) Half the Sky was another project theme I used in the Spring Semester.

Students had to profile a woman who was changing the world for the better. She had to be alive and living in the Bay Area.

We wrote about misogyny in hip hop. I think that was our midterm. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson was our go to. Our station was Hard Knock Radio on KPFA.

When I taught at Laney we read Youth Outlook and the Beat Within, a magazine that featured work from incarcerated youth.

All the writers and editors were 25 or younger and they were paid. My daughter was a photographer for YO from high school through college and after that. She was young.

One of the issues I will never forget were poems and letters home for Valentines Day. The topic was love.

We also wrote about love and the science around broken hearts.

We had so much fun as a learning community. The text was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Our science professor looked at brain transplant. Was it possible?

Students were able to see a real brain 🧠 and heart.

I taught a research unit in the biology class because all classes had to write an essay.

For the counseling psychology class they went to Glide and fed people on Thanksgiving one year.

We spent the weekend in SF and went bowling and dancing with Danny our dance teacher. It was so much fun.

What I loved the most was sitting around after hours problem solving together. How or what can we do as an institution to facilitate a student's success?

Everyone didn't complete the classes, but most of our cohort did.

Another semester we adopted Jurassic Park. That was cool, specifically the math involved. I learned as much as the students as I saw how my colleagues integrated the learning so that the thematic language flowed between disciplines.

I think one of the important outcomes was how academic work is not separate from our day to day lives or interests. Math is a language just like English and dance and biology.

These were my happiest years.

I hardly ever taught English 1B, but when I did it was pretty amazing.

One semester Jovelyn Richards taught us how to write a scene and perform it.

Another time tongo eisen martin came and taught a class on politics of writing.

Michael Socrates Moran, co-founder and Artistic director of OTP came to the class to talk about the hero's journey.

Charles Blackwell would visit each semester to talk about poetry and Black esthetic. He is also a painter. One year I had a performance at the Beat Museum in SF and a few students came. That was the semester I was kicked out of graduate school.

One year, when I was still adjunct Elsie Washington substituted for me. A NY writer, she is credited with writing the first published AA romance novel. She moved to Oakland to be with her sweetie, Kamau Seitu. They are both ancestors now.

I hosted poetry reading on the student center. One was after Bush was reelected. It was poetry for peace.

I hosted a forum with formerly incarcerated women, students and staff.

I participated in Constitution Day with Robert Brem, History faculty.

I had so many ideas that were squashed like an African American learning community, international travel in the African Diaspora, plus so many opportunities to collaborate on engaged literacies.

When I taught at Laney I was off campus at United Indian Nations when we collaborated with artists and educators like Dr. Brightman and Sherman Alexis and ?

These men and women came to our class and talked about being indigenous.

We went to the sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz Island many times. We read a poetry collection by an Indigenous author.

Diversity?

No, more hidden legacies. Whose voices are absent from the discourse?

Let's explore them. Who is missing from the chair next to you? Let's explore that geography.

This is the role of education. Noting 📝 noticing snd making room for the silenced to speak.

Listening is an art the dominant culture needs to practice.

The noisy soundtrack is the reason why nothing changes

No one can hear. The static is almost unbearable.

It took this single parent who spent a semester on her older daughter's couch when she was evicted, ten years to get a full time job. I taught at Chabot, Contra Costa and Laney and Vista for ten years.

I think I had three interviews with presidents. One told me he couldn't hire two Black women, so he hired one Black woman and a white man.

I saw two single men hired one Black the other white.

I saw a married couple hired at the same time.

By the time my final interview rolled around and Dr. Cervantes offered me the position, I thought it was an April Fool's joke on me.

So you see why I jumped into the pool with boots on and the life jacket on the shore.

I hosted Reginald Lockett during National Poetry Month at the Library.

Include photos and writing from students.

Photos of me too.

Go to the college and get the portfolios.