Learn more about Pasadena City College's commitment to institutional equity, diversity and justice by clicking the button below! Read on for a few thoughts from me about my educational lens.

For me, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are each about creating classroom spaces that welcome all students, all voices, and that celebrate all experiences. Employing a DEI framework as an educator is about centering student voices, affirming everyone’s non-academic experiences and expertises, and celebrating what makes us different while simultaneously embracing the things that connect us. As a teacher from a low-income, first-generation, system-impacted background who now enjoys academic and financial privilege to some degree, I try to create welcoming learning environments rooted in recognizing privilege, creating growth opportunities for everyone, dismantling racism, asking questions, centering diverse voices, and doing the hard work to dismantling barriers to fostering a leveled playing field. To this end, I try to employ a pedagogy of discomfort (not always popular at first): “a pedagogical intervention whereby students are urged to interrogate their taken-for-granted beliefs, assumptions, and privileges; to pay attention to their own and others' emotions; and to work for personal and social transformation.” (Porto & Zembylas 2024).  And, I try to do this grounded in love and acceptance.  

When I first began teaching, my teaching style and practice was informed by teachers in my past who had a strong influence on me as a human being. Let me tell you about a few of them. A favorite middle school teacher, Mrs. Carrick, was short with a curved spine from a childhood illness that caused her to permanently hunch over. She had short, curly hair and wore glasses, and she wasn’t the “warm and fuzzy” type; she always said it straight. I found out years after being her student that because of her illness, she was in constant pain, but in our classroom that was never apparent. She challenged her students to be authentic with one another, to speak truth, and to share our opinions. Of course, that meant we had to be vulnerable with one another, and we had to listen to criticism even when it challenged our egos. That was tough, but important. I loved Mrs. Carrick’s spunk, her sass, and how much she expected from each of us. She had very high standards and didn’t accept many excuses. She gave me my first typewriter (That’s right — a TYPEWRITER!) and encouraged me to write by inviting me to start a school newspaper in 8th grade. That gift changed my life. 

In High School during a tumultuous time in my life when my parents were battling drug addiction and we lived daily with food and housing insecurity, I found love and acceptance from my Drama and Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Christiansen, and my counselor and Psychology teacher, “Doc” — Abe Doctolero. Both of these educators always had an open door policy for every student, treated students like equals, and offered questions before advice. Sitting in their company, students always felt heard as they each would gently guide students to reflection and problem solving on our own. They both had wide shoulders too — you could cry in their offices and they would listen and be present. I didn’t have many safe spaces to cry during high school, so for me, both of these men were beloved “uncles” who not only got me excited about the content of their courses — theater, creative writing, and psychology — but they both also empowered me to believe that I was smart and capable and that my voice and contributions mattered. No one in my family had ever gone to college, but Doc and Mr. C both encouraged me to apply everywhere. They both also placed a great deal of responsibility in me by asking me to be a Teaching Assistant — helping with errands and secretarial paperwork, hours that offered me a glimpse of what a responsible, educated, caring person does with their time. They both were instrumental in my future studies in Creative Writing, Theater, Psychology, and Narrative Therapy. As their former student, I live today as part of their lineage. 

Since I didn’t have money for college, I found myself at a community college where I was very lucky to find two life-long mentors and friends, poets Katherine Harer and Rich Yurman. These two were very close friends themselves, and most students who knew them talked about them interchangeably. They were both very funny, passionately dedicated to poetry, and felt deeply that education was a gateway out of poverty for working class students like themselves (and like me!). They taught Composition, Literature, Creative Writing, and they ran the literary magazine Talisman. They helped generate in me excitement and passion about reading and writing and learning, and they modeled how self-love and self-acceptance were gateways to freedom and revolution and even world change. They were old-school hippie revolutionaries with 1960’s sensibilities and I loved them both so much. They became life-long mentors for me. They helped me transfer to a four year college, and beyond that, they wrote letters of recommendation for me to go to graduate school and we kept in touch over several decades. 

I could go on, of course. I have had more mentors throughout my education and in my personal life, and I count myself so very lucky to have found people who championed and supported my dreams. I am grateful to have been vulnerable enough and open enough to receive  their love, attention, and advice. I share these experiences as part of my Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lens because I believe that I am the result of these people and many more, and that my beliefs about the classroom as a “radical space of possibility” as writer bell hooks said, are rooted in these educational experiences and the teachers I learned from — the teachers that loved me.