Cindy’s Story

In 1973, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin and teaching for six months in the small coal-mining town of Auchinleck, Scotland, I went home to Houston, Texas to teach 7th and 8th grades at Northwood Junior High, an under-resourced school north of town that enrolled mostly students of color from poor neighborhoods and that was not air conditioned even in the heat of the Texas summer. During the three years I taught at Northwood, I learned how much I didn’t know about teaching, how much I had failed to learn during my undergraduate studies in teacher education. Although I had learned how to work with very smart and hardworking students who had a marvelous preparation for high school and a range of resources to support their studies, I had not learned how to work in effective ways with very smart and hardworking students who lived in poor communities, came families with few resources, and attended school districts that lacked even basic resources and support services. I had been prepared to teach the canonical texts of British and American literature, but not, I am ashamed to say, to read, appreciate, or teach the works of most writers of color from the U.S. or around the world. I had been prepared to teach AP English, but not to teach basic writers and readers. I had been prepared to teach White students, but not Black and Latino students. In fact, you could say that my own education was only partially complete, and that I failed, in many ways, to bring a rich set of teaching skills to the Northwood students. 

Why UT?

In 1975, hoping to address this situation, I enrolled as a graduate student in English Education with a keen recognition of my limitations as a teacher and with an increasing understanding of the intersections between race, class, wealth, power, and education in educational settings. For the next six years, Geneva Pilgrim, James Kinneavy, Edmund Farrell, Julie Jensen, Walter Lamberg in English Education and, later, Steve Witte, Lester Faigley, and Maxine Hairston in the Department of English helped me understand the social, cultural, economic, and educational mechanisms of these intersections, and introduced me to the scholars and works that explained how and why they existed. I’ve spent the rest of my career, trying hard to live up to their teachings, and to be an activist scholar and educator in the field of composition and digital media studies at Michigan Technological University, Clemson University, the University of Louisville, and Ohio State University.

Advice for students

My advice to students?  Have great fun teaching, but make yourself be brave and responsible; learn as much as you expect students to learn, and just as constantly. Confront your own demons and challenges so you can better help others to confront theirs.