Monday, March 25, 2019

Winter Reflections of a Community College Teacher




I’m a writer.  I’ve spent hours writing letters of recommendation for students, writing grants, and articles relevant to teaching, learning and community development.  You could say I’ve written grants to pay my way. 

You could say I’ve written letters to assist students to survive.  I mean this literally – about survival.  In the case of one former student, my letter to document that he was an emancipated minor, a good student invested in his education provided documentation to attain loans. 

There are many stories.  I write best when I write as though I’m there, talking to you in person, and you are willing to listen.  Typically my ability to share thoughts on paper is sought by students and members of the community.  Yet there are times when I’ve felt unsafe to write, because I’m telling an alternative story.                                                                                          

While I listened to information about our college’s financial stability, I looked out to staff, faculty and administrators and felt the backstories.  Backstories included our families we hope to continue to provide for, children and grandchildren we expect to continue to care for, our many community obligations and responsibilities we commit to uphold. 

And, because I’m one of the elders in our Cascadia clan, I experienced a flashback of remembering past moments of my own professional journey that shaped me. 

This is where what I write may become difficult. 

I want to describe my thinking to put down a bridge.   

You could say that as I listened, I remembered when I was cobbling together a living by working several part-time jobs in human development.  I worked for King County, City of Seattle, the State of Washington, and Seattle Central Community College.  All jobs involved teaching, learning and community development.  I had just completed the M.A. in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College.   I was grateful for work that I loved, and to find myself recruited for work that was meaningful, challenging and integrated. 

In this memory it was 1992-8. I was teaching for a new program at Seattle Central that met the professional development needs of child care providers by offering classes in locations where those teachers worked.  I drove to an array of unique church-based, African American child care programs.  Sometimes, I met in the evenings with child care providers who offered nontraditional hour care (weekend and evenings). 

As I identified the needs of those I was there to serve, I wrote grants based on my ability to assess needs.  One grant from the State of Washington brought one million dollars to King County to support children with special needs.  In essence, the grant I wrote was able to explain why and how the funding would be used based on the understanding of community needs.  In other words, families were making do with little resources.  And yet, when their needs became evident in a manner that showcased an institutional pattern—for example, that families with jobs outside of the nine to five struggled to find child care—then we were able as a region and state-wide, to develop plans.  Some of the funding I worked on was administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the HUD grant King County was awarded assisted families who were homeless to use vouchers for childcare so that parents could look for housing and work.  I could go on.  For instance, to tell you about a proposal I helped to write to Bill Gates in the days before the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to request funding to build a child care program in downtown Bellevue for families of low income and homeless status that Mr. Gates did approve.   

This was a formidable interlude, one that continues to sustain my passion for community, driven by the knowledge that I know nothing unless I learn from and with the community.  I appreciate that this patchwork of jobs provided me opportunities to connect with hundreds of diverse staff and community leaders.                                                    

During this busy time I worked with Fran Davidson and Tilman Smith to launch the first anti-racism support group for white women educators in our state with the purpose to challenge and change those behaviors that sustained institutional racism.  We met monthly at Seattle Central and named our group White Women Organizing Against Racism (WWOAR).  We presented and consulted at conferences, local and regional, and leveraged funding for Dr. Peggy MacIntosh to speak with our group.  This commitment to hold ourselves accountable to learning eventually led to the opportunity to bring The Peoples’ Institute for Survival and Beyond to Washington State for the first time.  The work of the Institute provided powerful, ongoing support to strategize ways to interrupt institutional racism as it overtly and covertly impacted the lives of the children and families our work was intended to improve.

This next part shares a personal example of how I learned to work as an ally.  It begins when I was asked by the director of Primm Child Care Center in South Seattle to assist with national accreditation administered by NAEYC, the National Association for the Education of Young Children.  To be honest, I couldn’t understand why the director, Fannie Williams, would invite a white woman who lived in Kirkland such as myself to work with her staff, children, and families who were predominately African American.  She confided that I was chosen because I demonstrated a willingness to take leadership from people of color.  I cautiously accepted her call to lead her program through accreditation and truly hoped I could live up to her expectations.  I listened to her reasons to pursue accreditation, an extremely rigorous process.  She believed the process would bring a necessary validation of her program.  We hunkered down and worked through the labyrinth of expectations.  At times there were accreditation requirements that Mrs. Williams was not willing to adapt to.  For example, she explained that she would not give up the manner in which the lunch program was organized.  In essence the child care center had one designated lunch table such that all 25 children and their teachers sat together at one long table.  But here’s the reason - while eating this meal, the minister came to the area and greeted each child by name and acknowledged each teacher.  NAEYC preferred that children sit in small groups of five with one teacher.  This would not have worked based on the communal ritual of coming together that was held in high regard by this community.  I developed a culturally, relevant alternative written plan to defend the rationale for her program’s lived experience.  This may seem like a small matter but it is not.  Many child care programs would not even enter the accreditation fray because it was believed they would not be accepted for their cultural differences reflected in their care of children.                                                               

To this day I hold what Mrs. Williams thought of me as the rarest of complements.

But though I was sought by Mrs. Williams, I was the one who learned from her program.  For example, on my first visit I descended the stairs to the basement child care where I found framed photographs of African American leaders mounted on the stairwell walls. 

The photos included those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Rosa Parks, to name a few.  To be honest, I could identify few of the photos.  But I learned because the children knew, and the reason they knew is because the photos were placed at child-eye level with the names of each leader posted, as well. 

I tell you this because I had visited hundreds of child care centers throughout the county and state and not one program had taken the time to illuminate history for the children in this manner.  You could say the photos in the stairwell provided a way to integrate history within the daily comings and goings of families. 

And perhaps most important to include is the memory of the afternoon I spent talking with two toddler teachers at Primm Child Care who had been partners in that classroom for many years.  The teachers opened up to me as they rocked youngsters Octavia and Melvin that their main concern for the children was the world outside the enclave of church and child care—would that waiting world embrace the children to reach their potential?   

The teachers’ concerns developed into a working plan to engage in dialogue to build alliances between home and child care, and child care and public school.  In this way the accreditation process came to mean that we thought critically as a community about the how and why of our practice.  You could say the staff at Primm came to know and believe in their worth.  And, that each piece of the program was understood at its deepest roots and served to connect those in the program, as well as visitors such as myself.  Primm Child Care did achieve accreditation and we celebrated.

So, I have been fortunate to learn and accept guidance and leadership from people of color, a core value.  Because it is a core value, I would like to respectfully bear witness to my perception of the need for greater acknowledgement of the ongoing leadership presented by people of color and allies at Cascadia. 

Could we do more to embrace and utilize those resources that are home-grown by our own Cascadia faculty and could serve to unite us in the important work we say we strive to do, such as to address institutional racism.  There are many opportunities but just consider one – The Communities of Color Coalition that organizes and hosts an annual race conference along with monthly professional development sessions.  This year’s conference on April 20th at Everett College is open to attendees from the region.  Invitations to this annual conference have always been offered at no charge to Cascadia.

There is so much more to say.  I hope you will consider my thoughts an invitation to explore our stories.  My hope is for authentic dialogue.  This was difficult to write and sent with good will.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Summer Solstice

Riff to Summer Solstice from Point Hudson Jetty


Sometimes the pack of yellow dogs you see is not coyote,
merely a trio of black-tailed deer marooned in pale light.

Gaunt one looks me in the eye, hesitates, then scavenges
low tide scrabble kelp, tattered magenta, while two does
stand aloof, in the margins of a dream.

Aloft, fake hollow owls perch mizzenmasts of yawls
moored in the cove, rigged for Glacier Bay, the Bering Sea,
the deep, measured in fathoms, orange survival suits.

Even local cormorants hitchhike dinghies towed by beamy
oak ketches, the Cascade mountain chain, scissor-cut,
like the first time we sail the Sound, close-haul, starboard tack,

squall beating down our coordinates, salt air frizzled like splayed
rind of tangerine, and the pomegranate
for Rosh Hashanah, my friend, Wendy, gave to me,

meaning, precious the New Year—bitter seed to stain the tongue,
plum pink, hue of the emissions plume
over the cardboard box factory, south of town, like the tint

of diesel fumes from the Foss tug as she putt-putts the Strait,
Anacortes-bound—the otter by the pier, pewter in morn’s
first glint—see her?—carbon dioxide exhalation rising, quicksilver,

to the chime of the halyard cleat, bleat of the buoy bell—the Bay
a vat of crimson; and East, backlit wings of doves.


Denise Calvetti Michaels, first published by Crosscurrents, 2012, the Washington Community College Humanities Association Literary Arts Journal
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Friday, June 14, 2013

www.rustlingwrens.blogspot.com

To find recent updates to my writing life, visit www.rustlingwrens.blogspot.com

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

EDGE Reading at Elliott Bay Bookstore

Please attend the reading for participants enrolled in the 2011 EDGE Professional Development Program for Writers scheduled for Saturday afternoon, March 26th, at Elliott Bay Bookstore.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Jack Straw Writers Program

I'm thrilled to be one of 12 writers chosen for the 2010 Jack Straw Writers Program. Already I arranged my schedule to devote time and space to my project daily--and it's delightful to have the structure of deadlines, workshops and a curator who believes in the potential of my work, as well as the other writers.
The project will challenge me and for this I'm grateful.

Friday, October 24, 2008

October 24, 2008

Haven't written since August....but received email request to link to http://www.italianamericana.com/

Monday, August 4, 2008

American Sentences: August 4, 2008

Monday morning post-its: e-mail Zach/new users add printer/dream

project--Seattle campus/complete in-kind report by late August/