Inspired by  Lorgia García Peña’s book, Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color, our group (Karanja Carroll, Tara Coleman, Alexis Jemal, and Erica Roe) elected to explore community-building as our public knowledge project. The purpose of this project was threefold: 1) We aimed to center for the voices of our students. 2) We wanted the project to build community through the discussion of community building and the sharing of community-building strategies. 3) We wanted to create a repository of community-building techniques, suggestions, critiques, and offerings. The project consisted of creating an Instagram account for people to post their responses to questions and organizing a virtual launch on zoom on 12/6/22, 4 – 5 PM.

We asked our students the following questions: 

1. How Do We Create Community in Education (the classroom)?”
   • What is one thing your professor does that you would imitate or change if you were teaching this class? 
   • If you were leading a group, what is one community-building strategy from your classroom that you would adapt and how? 
2. “How do we hold each other accountable for building community?”
3. What does accountability look like when building community in the classroom?
4. What are the challenges to creating community in the classroom?

The organizers invited their students to post responses to the Instagram account handle Notthemasterstools or using the hashtag #Notthemasterstools. Approximately 30 people from the CUNY community (including about 5 of the organizers’ students) attended the Zoom meeting. 

The Zoom meeting began with Karanja opening with a warm welcome. He introduced TLH and the team. Importantly, he introduced our project and gave context for our project on community building. Lastly, he discussed examples of his methods of community-building. Erica and Tara presented the community building project. They displayed the Instagram posts and discussed community building methods in their class. Erica displayed a powerpoint with her students’ thoughts on community building. They discussed strategies such as pair share, mentimeter, and charades. Tara also introduced her student’s comments using Jamboard. Tara opened the discussion for comments from the audience and several people shared. Many of the comments provided a smooth transition to the last section of the session on accountability facilitated by Alexis. Alexis introduced herself and gave examples of community-building strategies that she uses. After a brief introduction on accountability, Alexis led the attendees in an activity wherein the attendees used Jamboard to answer the questions originally posed to the students. While participants answered the questions, two songs by Nina Simone were played. After about 10 minutes, the attendees debriefed the Jamboard and shared what resonated for them from the postings. After a generative discussion, we asked if anyone had questions or comments. We encouraged participants to continue using the hashtag and we thanked the guests for coming. 

Our event (fellows Alcira Forero-Pena, Ted Gordon, Bertie Ferdman, Jessica Yood and Lori Ungemah) pulled CUNY alumni from BMCC, Baruch, Guttman, and Lehman to serve on a panel entitled “From the Classroom to the Workplace: CUNY Alumni Speak on their Experiences” and was held via Zoom on Thursday, December 1st, from 4-5pm. We wanted to hear from students how their educational experiences across CUNY campuses had informed/translated to their professional lives. Given the many conversations on the value of a college degree in the “real world,” we were curious what the students had to say about their time in our classrooms and in our colleges, and how they could reflect on their time at CUNY.

We gave the alumni panel three questions ahead of time so that they could come to the panel prepared (and so they wouldn’t feel that this was an interrogation!). These questions were:

1. How did college—and specifically CUNY—prepare you for your professional experiences? What expectations going into college did you have about what your education should do, and did your education meet those expectations?

2. What advice would you give to undergraduates about getting the most of their education while at CUNY?

3. What advice would you give to faculty about teaching and learning in preparation for the workplace?

It will come as no surprise that the students’ answers were heartfelt, honest, thoughtful, and intelligent. We will summarize their responses for you:

Q1: Alumni reported that the mentorship they received at their respective CUNY institutions are what most prepared them for professional life. They said they were encouraged to explore, to volunteer, and were advised by their faculty who forged personal relationships with them. That the intimacy they felt with their faculty—that their faculty saw them for who they really were—was what pushed them into new spaces (clubs, classes, majors) that prepared them for work. One student mentioned that the advising from their department and by departmental faculty had made the biggest impact.

They also valued opportunities to be leaders on their respective campuses, and in these leadership roles to be involved and to be heard both by peers and faculty.

The appreciated CUNY for the second chances they felt like they received from our colleges—regardless of past academic failures, documentation status, accents—they felt CUNY welcomed them and valued them for exactly who they were.

Q2: All alumni encouraged current students to GET INVOLVED. Recognize your own agency. Ask for what you want. Get to know your faculty. Everyone is a commuter at CUNY, so you must create a community for yourself. Don’t limit yourself to what you have done before, try something new. Make college fun because the work is hard. Be your best academic self (this might be our favorite quote from the event!).

Q3: Alumni asked that faculty be more inclusive in their teaching methods; that sometimes how they teach excludes students from certain backgrounds who aren’t familiar with how to learn that way. The asked faculty to extend the hand, to mentor students, to form relationships with the students they connect with and support them. They asked for explicit reminders to come to office hours (constant reminders!) and to say that you can come to office hours just to talk, it doesn’t have to be for help or because you are not doing well. They reminded faculty that many students are nervous or scared of us because we are adults and their faculty, and that we need to find what we share with students so we can advise and mentor them effectively.

If you are picking up the overall theme to this event, it was that FACULTY MENTORSHIP was the greatest asset for student success professionally. It wasn’t any one subject we taught, or any sort of skill, or any type of pedagogy—it was the human relationships that we forged with our students that made the biggest impact. They noted that they loved feeling supported by us, but they also appreciated feeling celebrated by us as they left CUNY and went on and were successful in life. They loved knowing we were still in their corner and cheering.

As we all recalibrate post (ish)-Covid, we appreciated hearing that what students want from us is simply for us to see and support them as mentors. They want that human connection. That is what prepared them most to be successful in the world of work.

Ajay Kalladeen (he/him) is from rural Guyana, South America, and came to the United States by himself in his early 20’s. He is a graduate of BMCC and Baruch College and worked at Apple for eight years before switching to the public sector to work for New York Empire State Development Corporation where he provides IT support to all levels of the organization. He says he is the true example of BMCC’s motto “Start Here. Go Anywhere.”

Leo Gonzalez Dominguez (they/them) is a Mexican Indigenous Queer playwright and performer who began their education at BMCC and transferred to NYU where they are pursuing their BFA in Dramatic Writing. They are also an Artistic Fellow at the Signature Theatre. Their most recent work, Parole In Place,received a public reading in collaboration with PEN America, New York Theatre Workshop, and the National Queer Theatre for the World Voices Festival.

Neisha-Anne S. Green is Director of Academic Student Support Services and The Writing Center at American University in Washington, DC and is a PhD candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has been the keynote speaker at multiple international and national conferences, in talks addressing writing center work, literacy, antiracist pedagogy, and multilingualism. Neisha is a multidialectal orator and author, proud of her roots in Barbados and Yonkers, NY and as a CUNY grad! An accomplice always interrogating and exploring the use of everyone’s language as a resource, Neisha continues to collaborate on workshops and publish on anti-racism and anti-racist pedagogy and is working on her book Songs From A Caged Bird.

Hector Carvajal (he/him) is a graduate of Guttman Community College and student at the University of Rochester, and he is the founder of Don Carvajal Café, a coffee business that pulls from his Dominican roots to build a business model that is both fair to producers and inclusive to customers. In just two years, he’s taken the brand from operating out of his dorm room to a city-wide distribution network. https://doncarvajalcafe.com/

Jennifer Cachola (she/her) is a higher education professional who has earned an Associate of Arts in Communication Studies from CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College; a Bachelor of Science in Media, Culture, and Communication from NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; and a Master of Arts in Youth Studies from CUNY’s School of Professional Studies. Prior to her path in higher education as an academic advisor, Jennifer worked in retail/customer service for 15+ years and was super grateful for the opportunity to start her career and pay it forward to the institution where she earned her first degree and now six years later, has recently advanced to a senior academic advisor role at BMCC.

Bringing Freire to CUNY:

“Reading the word and learning how to write the word so one can later read it are preceded by learning how to write the world, that is having the experience of changing the world and touching the world” (Freire & Macedo, 2005, p. 12).

The year was 1947. 

The place? Northeastern Brazil. 

Young Paulo Freire faced a seemingly impossible task–teaching illiterate peasant workers to read. 

Freire empowered them beyond simply acquiring the life-changing ability to read. He also wanted his students to push against oppressive structures circumscribing their lives.

Freire was incredibly successful–by the 1960s, he inspired a movement to eradicate illiteracy across Brazil.

Freire’s efforts further benefited learners worldwide. This includes those we are incredibly fortunate to work with through CUNY and the Mellon Foundation’s Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH).

Transforming Classroom Practice:

Late-capitalism diminishes education, lessening its impact. Teaching can become narrow, desiccated, even detached from the world when we have little time for reflection. 

Imaginative scholars like Freire and Macedo (2005) broaden educational possibilities. They invite us to expand our conception of learning, whether in Brazil or New York.

Inspired by Freire and other educators we have studied collaboratively through TLH’s insightful seminars, we focused on writing the world. In short, how could we widen narrow classroom confines to positively impact the broader world our learners inhabit?

Manifold Folds in Many Media:

Our TLH scholar cohort is sharing student work on Manifold–a fantastic platform for multimedia:

Shawna Brandle–Choosing How to Write the World: Choose Your Own Adventure Assignments with public-facing outputs. It explores several options students can elect–from blogging on CUNY Academic Commons or personal websites, to teaching their own classes, and translating course materials. Privacy, safety, intellectual property, and licensing are discussed, so anyone adapting these assignments will be able to address ethical questions in their classes. 

Kate Culkin–Writing the World Through Memorials: Students develop projects that memorialize and teach the public about a person or group they identify as critical to understanding American history. This assignment is part of a semester-long investigation of the idea that history is an interpretation, not repetition, of facts and the power dynamics at play in those interpretations. 

Dino Sossi–Institutional Advocacy: Students share government petitions supporting crucial social movements and improved corporate practices to benefit the world.

Yan Yang–Art from My Perspective: Students research artwork from their culture and introduce them in an informative explanation in the style of Smarthistory, the leading art history website. Student writings serve as knowledge sources and example projects for future BMCC art history students.

Writing CUNY, Writing the World:

Talented CUNY learners produce incredibly thoughtful work despite demanding lives. Manifold amplifies vital student voices, celebrates their genius, and inspires them to write the world in their own fashion. Empowerment through the power of words. Hopefully Freire would be proud.

References:

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (2005). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Routledge.

Revisit Manifold as students continually submit new resources.