Saturday was a big day, it was graduation day! For those of us in education, graduation is the confirmation of our reason for doing what we do. After all these years, I've been to a ton of them, but they are all special and re-energize me on some level. The picture is my friend Dio in his cap and gown, and that's the president of our college photo bombing in the back:). Dio is a pretty remarkable person, and I've been glad to get to know him a little bit over the last few years. He's a huge basketball fan and knows the game, so we connect on that front. So, I was a little taken aback earlier in the week when Dio challenged me with a semi-playful taunt of I "told everybody's story but (his)." I immediately said we will capture some time on video soon (stay tuned), but it made me think about what he really meant. Part of our movement towards the most poverty-informed approach possible is to give voice to people who have been left out, and Dio was reminding me his voice should be heard too. It made me wonder where else we might miss important voices in our poverty-informed conversation.
Last fall I attended the #RealCollege convening in Philadelphia (read more here), and one of the rules espoused there was "No conferences about students, without students present." They backed up their rhetoric with funding to support student attendance and with student-led panels. It's the best conference I've been to in years, and the feel from the strong student element was a primary reason. I thought back to efforts I've been involved with on our campus to include students, and how we struggle to do it well. I spent many years on a Diversity Advisory Team at my college, and while we always attempted to include students, they invariably faded away. The most consistent participant was a returning adult student who was an officer in our student government, but even she eventually told me that students felt like they were watching a meeting not participating in it. I never solved that issue, and when I look back, it's uncomfortable to think about. We would often turn to the student representative (it was rarely more than one) and ask them "what do students think about (blank)?" As I've grown my knowledge in equity and inclusion, it was a stunningly patronizing and privileged question. No one ever asked me to represent all the middle aged, middle managers with gray hair, but we did it to them all the time. So, it has me thinking about how we honor people who deserve a voice, but rarely get one. If we aren't sure how to effectively include our students in general, what are we doing for those with the most barriers and who may have been disregarded for much of their life?
My mind keeps coming back to the inherent power differential in the staff/faculty to student dynamic. Perhaps beginning to dismantle as much of that as possible is a place to start. In an age where every fact in the world is 5 seconds away on a smartphone, the act of "teaching" has changed anyway. Simply distributing the information I hold to someone who hasn't seen it yet was probably never good teaching, but now it's not even practical. Information is cheap, but relationships are gold. Building relationships of mutual respect seems to be a very poverty-informed way of seeing the world, but what does that look like? I don't have all the answers, but for us, it starts at the point of first contact. If you want to pursue Adult Education in my division, the first "instructors" you will have are the Dean and Associate Dean in the orientation we call "Introduction to Adult Learning (IAL). It's selfish on some level because I want to get to know students, but it also reduces barriers between us, because we use first names, and we have real discussions. We work to become something other than our titles because IAL is a relatively casual experience, and the emphasis is on the student and their plans. It is important to us students know immediately we have no interest in gate-keeping or evaluating their worthiness, rather we are there to become partners in their dreams.
All too often in education, I hear stories that make me think of a kind of tortured Harry Potter Analogy. I hear too many conversations where we seem to be functioning as sorting hats rather than advocates for success. If you didn't read Harry Potter, the Sorting Hat is placed on students' heads and assigns them to their house at Hogwarts School. The houses all seem to have a prototypical profile and type (find your house here), and the house they are sorted into has a lot to do with their character arc. Our education version comes out in insidious phrases like "s/he wouldn't make it at the university" or in behavior that tells students they don't belong because they don't use words the right way or some other hidden rule. Did students have input in how their class runs or was it all preordained? Students in poverty might not meet our norms on day 1, but that does not indicate what they are capable of learning. It is all too easy to slide into a place of judgment and decide what people are capable of without ever adding their voice to the conversation. Dismantling the power differential starts to change the conversation to "what does this person need to succeed" instead of "they don't have what it takes to succeed". How many times are we making sorting hat judgments and leaving potential untapped? After nearly 20 years looking at higher education from the inside out, I know we have not figured out this thing called "college" so well that we know who it is for and who it is not for. In addition, things change so rapidly, including an economy which basically requires post-secondary training, that the old rules don't apply, if they ever did. I would also argue a poverty-informed approach empowers the college to pursue solutions rather than selecting winners and losers in the new age.
I don't want to imply we have this stuff figured out, because we don't. I just suspect our journey to being poverty-informed in our offices and classrooms is going to require us to give greater voice to those we serve. Just this winter, we were pleased to include a student on a big college trip, and none of us anticipated her panic when we sent her an expense report to get reimbursed for the trip. How do you reimburse someone who has nothing? How many other assumptions did we make? For instance, we assumed this person would meet her group at the airport, until someone offered a ride. So, it was a double edged sword for us. We made mistakes, but including the student's voice in our work made us get better. That is the fundamental premise of poverty-informed practice. Our students with barriers show us ways to get better more clearly and quickly than other students ever could. So, we must find a way for their voices to be a legitimate part of the conversation. I look forward to my longer conversation with Dio, and I will be anxious to share it here. His voice and so many others must be added to the conversation.
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