Reflective Essay
Lilla Watson, an aboriginal artist and educator, said, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.”
Life is a process of learning and unlearning, of attempting to build and unbuild in community with others. My educational story is intentionally unfinished. There is no linear arch, but rather moments directed by critical dialogue. I realize my place in the world as one who needs to speak out but to engage with humility.
What draws me to education is a love for stories and learning through the eyes of others -- at its core, education is about connecting. It is part of my becoming and society’s path towards healing if used in a justice-seeking manner. Education has made me feel untethered, leaving me with infinite questions. When I think about how it shaped me and who I am today, I struggle to articulate it because I feel like I am pieced together by people who touched me -- family, friends, teachers, professors, mentors, and even strangers shaping my belief systems. They become a part of me.
I constantly feel in community with others, but sometimes I am unsure how to hold the pain of stories, truths of darkness, lack of humanity, and power. The shoulders that I stand on have taught me to believe in my heart as much as my head --the cognitive coupled with the affective to dream of hope, expansion, centering humanity, and love. While everyone meshes together into an unfinished quilt that I hope will remain unfinished-- stitched together by my community, untethered by growth and learning.
Primary and secondary school
My mom and dad have been my foundation rooted in strong convictions. They opened my world with gentleness and acceptance when taking my sister and me to Chaverim, which means friends in Hebrew and is a Jewish disabled adult social group, -- a weekend almost like a fantasy where differences are celebrated, and acceptance is the standard. They gave me the gift of education, at a high school and college that empowered me. Oakwood and Pitzer made me a better person - as they joke that they will work for the rest of their lives to repay loans. In elementary school, I was the one who cried on the last day of school, wishing never to leave kindergarten, then first, second, and so forth. At home, my marginalized identities were celebrated. I was empowered to be a woman and proud of being Jewish. White folks have the luxury of choosing to unpack their racial identity and the privileges given. It is a privilege to be complicit, but from when I was 15 on, I decided not to support a system that hurts so many consciously. My understanding of my identity stems from relearning, self-reflecting, and recognizing that the world was built for people like me. And that it is not the burden of people of color to explain systemic injustice.
When I began driving around age 16, I would park in a lot that was about a 10-15 minute walk to school. My Dad would call me nearly every day after I texted him that I got to school safely. I think he did this to keep me company. He would end the conversation with “do good, be good.” I would always chuckle at that moment, thinking it was sweet, but a more intense meaning came about as I got older. I began to question, what is my definition of good? How can what I deem good potentially produce or replicate harm? How does my higher education position and identity affirm or question certain systems? How can I continue working in the community with others, understanding my limitations given my identity?
Undergrad/Post grad
A common theme in my education narrative and my personal story is the creation of community. When I find myself in a new circle, my first instinct is to immerse myself in learning and to make connections. These circles have expanded my world. My relationships transform me and allow me to see how education can move someone through the stages of self-interest to self-awareness and finally to social awareness.
I wanted to be a political science major when I first entered undergrad. But, I felt we were intellectualizing social change in a way filled with inaccessible jargon for the communities we wished to partner with. I saw media studies as expansive, as something that would be accessible inside and outside of the ivory tower of academia. My experiences working with Indigenous communities of educators seeking sovereignty in education curriculum, formerly incarcerated artists, arts education spaces, members of the LGBTQ+ ballroom community sharing their stories of drug addiction and abuse in a documentary film, and an after-school theatre program -- allowed me to witness the transformative potential of community-based education partnerships. They are all seemingly linked to how education has the power to level the playing field of opportunity or to enforce hierarchy and power. All the stories simultaneously promote resilience and healing - dreaming of institutions that center humanity, love, equity, community, and justice rather than power, domination, and individualism.
These partnerships strive to reconcile with history's skewed victor's perspective, redressing historical injustices, advocating for reparations, and acknowledging the sovereignty of communities harmed by imperialism and colonialism. Rewriting history is not a linear process extending beyond the confines of traditional text-based approaches. All the partnerships have in common the usage of art, whether that be film, oral history, visual art, or even dance. In community-based education initiatives, it is crucial to democratize media use within academic spaces, elevating it to the same high regard as textual scholarship. Non "academics," specifically creatives and artists, are typically siloed in academia and seen as less credible because their work is non-textually based. Additionally, many cultures, specifically Indigenous cultures, orally pass down stories or collective memories. Therefore, to dream of a liberatory, inclusive educational future, it is necessary to include multiple modalities of curricular materials.
My mentor throughout undergrad, one of the most formative people in my academic journey, Barbara Junisbai, said that teaching and learning is about pluralism. It is not about mastery. It is about opening new doors, going through the doors you already thought were closed, and going through them again in a different way. We should not want closure, but rather the opposite, to be opened within education.
I believe that community-based education and the democratization of multimodality in curriculum is the answer to opening doors that we thought were closed. These closed doors include the white nationalistic political decisions to ban critical race theory and other culturally sensitive pedagogies in schools. The doors can be opened by finding creative avenues to ensure these stories can and will be told. Rewriting true history and seeking justice has become inherently political. Children, parents, teachers, and communities can access narratives that may be banned textually by utilizing public sources and a multimodal curriculum. The 1619 Project is the perfect example of this. Media can mitigate and open doors against oppressive rulings that our country is presently perpetuating by promoting honest and truthful history that is not fabricated to make one identity look superior.
So, where do I fit in this? Learning from my thought partner from my thesis, Indigenous educator Andrew McConnell, told me the story of the Hodinoshoni and Toowoomba codified an agreement through a visual wampum belt – a beaded belt with two purple lines running against a white beaded background. This belt signified the concept of sharing, creating a parallel pattern, and the idea of “staying in your own lane” while working towards a common goal - promoting sovereignty through working with our non-Indigenous and Indigenous communities. I intend to continue to work alongside communities, understanding who my audience is and following the lead from others-- intentionally building partnerships with teachers, community members, and students to build an expansive curriculum that promotes truth and uplifts and empowers all identities.
In my portfolio, I am specifically committed to two core objectives: a) exploring the democratization of knowledge dissemination through multimedia within academic and social change spheres, and b) integrating multimodal scholarship into public access arenas in collaboration with educators and survivors of historical injustice in efforts to seek justice and move towards a path of education liberation. This is particularly relevant in light of technology's pervasive influence on society. By prioritizing equity and inclusion in adopting multimodal scholarship and expanding curricular horizons beyond text, we can also aim to enhance accessibility for diverse learners. My long-term goals are utilizing multimedia to produce a curriculum around revisionist history through modes of storytelling, and oral history accounts for a more inclusive (hopefully student-centered) pedagogy.
