Giving Voice

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.

Reflecting and Aspiring

I received an award last week. It was completely unexpected and beyond humbling because it came

from our students. I truly had no idea, but I'm not here to brag. The year-end award (our spring term ends the 19th) made me start thinking about how far we've come in the last year since we committed to a poverty-informed approach to serving students, and of course it made me think about how far we have to go. In the last 12 months we have lived with the dichotomy of radically changing our mindset toward student success, while at the same time being overwhelmed with what lies in front of us. I have had some opportunities this spring to share our story, and I've been pleased to see the positive reaction, but I have also been amazed at what we see when we really start to look. So today, I'd like to share about our successes thus far and the mountain of work we see ahead. There is no turning back.

Acceleration is one of the core principles of our poverty-informed practice. A redesign of developmental education in favor of just-in-time support has made a difference for students, but our most successful effort so far has been the emphasis on Credit for Prior Learning (CPL). Helping students earn credit for what they know when they arrive is a wonderful method for immediately creating a sense of belonging and starting them down a college path. CPL validates life experience for a population that has been marginalized, and gives them a dose of self-confidence. People close to me often describe me as having a secret chip on my shoulder, which I can only

attribute to growing up with less than the people around me. That chip on my shoulder can make me defensive even now, and it can cause me to misinterpret people's actions as questioning my credibility. I'm 20 years from any serious financial struggles, and it is still there, so I often think of our students who are in the crisis of poverty. How do they feel, and how do they interpret our actions? What would we do differently if we understood their behavior in their context? Anyway, I think CPL is a wonderful way to begin undoing the inherent power differential in our educational system and acknowledge the value of adults who have learned things along their life path. Valuing the life experience of students is why we set a goal of awarding 222 CPL credits this year to adult education students (which would be a 100% increase), and I am pleased to say we are poised to shatter that number (we track it on the board pictured, in real time). It is a win on every front. Not only do we create self-efficacy, we eliminate the financial burden of unneeded coursework, and the college benefits because earning credit propels students toward earning more credit. We've been fortunate our college has not put financial barriers to CPL in the way of students without means. CPL isn't a silver bullet, but it feels pretty close some days.

Partnerships have been another success in our work this year. We reached out to a local workforce

agency and partnered by offering space to their staff. They in turn began enrolling students in Food Share Employment and Training (FSET) and Title I of the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Are you thinking you maybe don't know a lot about FSET and WIOA? Well, I thought I did, but I have learned so much since we began working together. There is no escaping the reality that poverty is a resource issue at its core. Partner agencies bring resources to the fight we would not have otherwise, and the agencies benefit by serving their mission in a location where consumers are plentiful. And who better to serve with these important supports than people demonstrating the courage to pursue college to escape poverty. I've written before about how important those programs were for my family, but I also know programs are often burdened by stigma in today's world. It is a poverty-informed win to offer these services on campus. Not only are they needed and useful, but there is a dignity to having them attached to getting an education. Until we normalize help and remove stigma, this feels pretty important.

Another recent partnership worth noting is with our sustainability office on campus, and its forward thinking leader, Dr. Casey Meehan. Casey has told me on several occasions the issues he is working on related to climate change, resiliency, and sustainability will hit people in poverty first and disproportionately. We also discussed the generous nature and sharing culture which so often exists among people without much, and how in many ways it is a model for a sustainable future. So, we began to look for things we could do together and came upon a small but significant first step. Casey has identified funds to regularly add fresh fruits (purchased locally) to our snack offerings to students (AKA "The Bowl"). One of the things we are learning about partnerships is you just don't know who your partners might be. You can't be afraid to tell your story and see who stands up to help. I think historically we were almost apologetic about advocating for people in poverty, and we were dead wrong. People with barriers will expose our areas for improvement faster than anyone else could. They help us improve our college for everyone, and I'm grateful to visionaries like Dr. Meehan who understand and invest in the future of our community.

Speaking of vision, where do we go from here? As I said at the beginning, we cannot go back, simply because we know too much to be silent (credit Dr. Donna Beegle for that one). While it is overwhelming, I can also say I am completely energized to see where we go in the next year. Our growth in enrollment and the success of our CPL initiative gives me confidence what we are doing isn't just right, it's smart. In the next year, we need to grow exponentially because it is disrespectful to ask people to wait. I want us to coalesce on campus (and off) and eliminate life barriers because life barriers are completion issues. False walls between academic supports and other supports must come down. They don't make sense to students, so we need to let go of them. Help is help, no matter where it comes from, and we must resolutely remind people help is normal, natural, and needed by everyone at some point. I want a united front relentlessly focused on retaining students in new and creative ways, and a culture which believes retention is the job of every single human being on campus. A culture dedicated to meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and moving people quickly to better economic realities changes everything. I'm excited we are taking a team to Amarillo in May, and I hope we return on fire and ready to change the world. Let's get to work!

Would You Trust You?

I had the opportunity to present at a local conference last Friday. It was a public health summit that was brave enough to take on the intersection of health, racism, and poverty. My part went fine, but I was really floored by an earlier presentation by a colleague. Shaundel is a powerful and effective speaker on race and one of his themes was the idea of "would you trust you?" Shaundel's lens was on racially diverse communities being reluctant to engage in the healthcare system after a pretty negative history (Tuskegee syphilis experiment for example). Given that history, and myriad other examples, he asked if you were in the other's chair, would you trust people like you? The parallels to the work we are doing struck me at a visceral level. Dr. Donna Beegle often tweets that students from generational poverty have an 11% chance of succeeding without poverty informed support. And so, if we were pushing education at you as a solution to changing your reality, but you knew at some level that 9 out of 10 fail in the current situation... Would you trust you?

When we began last summer with our "No" audit (read more here), it was in many ways an effort to

regain trust, although I wouldn't have labeled it that way then. When we took a look around and realized we were sending so many signals inadvertently which caused students to feel suspect or unwelcome, it was shocking. I wouldn't have trusted somewhere that made the assumptions we seemed to imply. We had signs on locked doors that said, "staff only." And we made them red just in case you got past the outer door and didn't notice the door was locked as well (sarcasm inserted here in case I wasn't clear)... It might seem like a small example, but I think it's symbolic of a fundamental problem with not being poverty informed. We built systems on the wrong assumptions, and the assumptions that were implied eroded trust with the very people we were trying to connect with. So, when we changed our signage to be more welcoming, we weren't just being nice, we were changing our signals, instead of signaling "we assume if we don't have warnings, you will make the wrong choices." Would you trust someone who thought about you that way? So, when we changed the signs, we also were stating we want you here and we want to help, not judge. It was respectful and was a way of showing we believe someone who can solve the crisis of poverty, can be trusted in our space.

The question of what you assume about people permeates our poverty-informed work. We have been stunned at how many policies are built to prevent abuse, more than are built to promote success. I stole a line from Cara Crowley at Amarillo, with my own little twist, on Friday when I told the group about questions that arose when we started putting food out for students. I said people asked me 3 questions: How do we make sure the "right" people get the food? What if people take "too much?" and What if we run out? Channeling Cara, I said my answers were: I don't care, I don't care, and get more... Take a moment and listen to the questions behind those questions. There are assumptions people can feel. There are assumptions people shouldn't get "too much too fast." I'm pretty certain we don't hold ourselves to the same standard. Would you trust someone who thought you had to have resources rationed to you? Our poverty-informed approach tries to identify and surface assumptions which reduce trust, so we can choose actions that build trust and change assumptions. This idea of what is your basic assumption about human behavior should fuel discussions about policy and procedures. Do your policies support the students you have or do they look for opportunities to punish?

When pondering the question of whether you would trust someone like you, I was drawn to an article that came across my desk this morning. It was an excellent piece from an educator wondering if he could have done more to support a student he described as "vulnerable to the slightest of breezes." (What more could I have done...). It made me think of a similar sentiment I read in the Atlantic when they profiled Amarillo College (Amarillo profile), and they quoted President Russell Lowery-Hart saying "It isn’t enough, we’re not doing enough, we have to do more." Besides stealing the quote for my LinkedIn profile, it has caused me to continually question how much is enough. I like to think my family trusts me, in part because I would do whatever I could do to get them what they need. If I want to earn the trust of our students, am I willing to go down those same paths? As I challenged the health summit Friday, are we willing to be uncomfortable? Because the people we are asking to trust us are very uncomfortable and choosing to come to us anyway. While signs and food are great places to start, are there other actions that demonstrate we are worthy of their trust?

Last spring, I asked my division to adopt a mantra that every barrier that can be removed, should be removed. It's been a powerful shift for us, but I still get questioned on it. Sometimes it's pretty direct, like when someone told me it felt like "welfare." And sometimes, it's more subtle, like when people question whether we can sustain something or if we have a process fully developed for rationing out resources. I've even been asked if I have an assessment process to see if there is a benefit to feeding students... really. There are assumptions of scarcity (In case you doubt there is enough) throughout those questions as well as a fairly dark view of human nature. I'm a generally positive person, but I will admit to getting worn down on occasion. And if I'm perfectly honest, sometimes it's me asking the questions. I'm not sure how much is enough, and I'm not sure how much we can do, but I think we must do what we can, and what we can do is probably a lot more than we have done historically. Like anyone else, I must challenge my assumptions regularly. As Dr. Beegle says, we know too much to be silent, and I want to make sure if the tables were turned I would trust someone like me.

"The Bowl"

I went hiking with my daughter this morning (That's her in the picture). She is trying to jolt me back

toward fitness after I've neglected myself a little too much all winter. It was very nice, but the nicest part of the morning was including her in my Sunday morning ritual of delivering my weekend purchases to work to stock "The Bowl", our snacks in the lobby for students and anyone who wants them. We were talking about the increased amount of food we are going through (enrollment is up 40% since we started this work:)), and some of the things I've learned through almost a year of trying to create community around food. I thought I'd share some of that learning today.

The first thing I've learned isn't always so pleasant. I knew there was a lot of judgment put on people who are poor, but some days it is just too crystal clear. Poverty is a circumstance, not a character flaw, but that does not seem to be a universal belief. I have been asked many times how we ration what we provide. The simple answer is we don't. As I've written before, we think of The Bowl as hospitality for guests (food for thought), and we would never limit guests or judge them. But I see it every day in subtle and not so subtle ways. One of the less subtle ways is when people note something we are providing is name brand rather than generic, or is something they don't buy at their own home. The subtext always feels like we are doing something people don't deserve or is "too much", which seems suspect to me. These comments are often couched in the guise of concern about our ability to sustain what we are doing, but to be honest it just doesn't feel right. I often talk about the lessons of The Bowl and one of the clearest is that bias runs deep and I think examining how we react to The Bowl is a good way to find our own implicit bias. In fact, I use it as a way to expose just that conversation. What a great way to ask people in a relatively safe space, about why they feel the way they do. Our requirement to stand in awe of our students also causes us to make sure the food is presented nicely. That means when people bring us leftovers from meetings (interesting how often we feed ourselves) etc., we make sure it isn't just flung on the table but laid out for guests we care about. To be fair, The Bowl has also brought out the best in many folks, who contribute regularly, but I'd be lying if I said The Bowl didn't give us a chance to explore our own biases.

The Bowl also changes our proximity to students and that matters (power of proximity). I've been asked several times recently to present on our work and depending on the amount of time I have, I can be kind of verbose, or I can be pretty concise... When brevity is required, I have begun to discuss poverty-informed practice as "an intentional choice to love the students we have." It is hard to truly love someone from a distance and The Bowl puts us together, whether we are serving food or congregating around it. Just last Wednesday, a student saw me carrying in some food and thanked me for buying her breakfast most days. We laughed pretty hard when I showed her the sweet roll in my hand that I was enjoying myself. Our commitment to The Bowl as hospitality, not charity levels the playing field just a little bit and allows us to engage students as the adults they are. I also think for someone like me who grew up with occasional food insecurity, food and love are intertwined. My mom took great pride in feeding us, and even taking us out to eat once a month or so. At her funeral I told the story of how we went out to eat and how she told us it was to learn how to behave in restaurants. But as an adult, I suspect it was more about showing us we could have what other people did and our struggling circumstances didn't mean we couldn't do things that made us happy. My Mom (pictured with her grandchildren above) was quite a lady (lessons from Mom), I can feel the connection between food and love to this day. So, if we actually love the students we have (I feel like I should say trademark Amarillo College), food is one way to show it. It is a concrete, tangible act of caring that connects us in their pursuit of a different future.

The Bowl has also taught me a lot about perception of scarcity and how we build so many systems around fear of scarcity. Currently The Bowl is 100% stocked by donations, and as I said, usage goes up every week. Our original premise was that if we run out, we simply do, but I will admit that premise is anxiety provoking. Even this week, as the food seemed to fly out, my mind began to spin about whether we should have designated "fill-up" times or some other solution to make things last longer. In the end, I chose not to, because The Bowl is at some level an act of faith. I believe that purpose is compelling and sustainable so we trust that more food will appear and people like me will dig a little deeper. I can talk more about that in a moment, but first I want to talk about the effect of a scarcity mentality. So many policies and procedures at our campus and elsewhere are designed around a fear of running out of whatever resource we are distributing. It makes me think of emergency funds that don't get distributed (my own evolution) because of a fear of not having enough, or of not giving it to the "right" people. I often describe what we are trying to do as providing the things my middle-class kids get by default to people who didn't get them by the same accident of birth. Do you know the excess of resources my kids get? Isn't it remarkable that we feel like we have to ration things to people who have been left with so much less through no fault of their own? It gets back to the bias I mentioned earlier, and it is important to call it out. I love my children, but they certainly don't "deserve" things that people born to tougher circumstance do not. We work every day to not let scarcity pervert our systems of support. If we don't have enough to give everyone what they need, pursue more resources, don't withhold what people need.


Lastly, The Bowl has led to a months-long conversation between me and my work partner, Mandy. When we discuss The Bowl and the things it exposes, it always leads to the same discussion. The general topic is basically how much we can and should do, once we know the effects of poverty and inequity. I tend to be the compromising one who thinks we move incrementally toward a better and fairer world, and Mandy is more struck by the urgency and unfairness of current conditions. As people who have chosen careers that are focused on helping others, the question of how comfortable we allow ourselves to be, when others are struggling comes up again and again. Neither of us is rich, but we each live comfortably and sometimes that doesn't feel right when you are surrounded by people who are struggling to meet their basic needs. It doesn't sit right when those same people have the courage to pursue education in a system not always well designed for that pursuit. As I make my purchases every Sunday, and they grow larger, I am facing a very concrete version of this argument. It seems embarrassing to worry about how much I spend on the weekends, when I still go out for lunch or join friends for happy hour after work. There are many other examples of how we could be slightly less comfortable on behalf of those who have so much less, but the unanswerable question is how much is enough? After months of pondering (and debating), my current answer is I don't know... But I do know we have a guiding principle that "Every Barrier That Can Be Removed, Should Be Removed", and that provides some guidance. When you combine that commitment with truly loving the students you have, I think you will end up in the right place, or at least on the right path. Truthfully, we can probably all choose to be a little less comfortable while we pursue making the world a fairer place, and that's what I'm challenging my team to do. I don't know how much is enough, but I know we can continue to do more together. And for now, we keep on filling The Bowl.

Signs of Growth

I've been a little neglectful in my writing in recent weeks. My side hustle as Women's Basketball coach at my college led to a pretty historic season, and I wasn't able to keep up as well as I'd hoped. But many wonderful things are happening at Western, and as I get back to weekly writing, I'd like to start by sharing a few. It was just last summer we audaciously declared our "movement" (our declaration), and a remarkable transformation has happened since then. We have miles to go, but our explicit mission to combat poverty and to the idea that every barrier that can be removed, should be removed has generated energy and interest. We have presented at conferences (with more upcoming), responded to inquiries from other schools, generated newspaper coverage, we have a TV segment filming tomorrow, and last week our district board wanted to know more about our efforts and how to grow them. I don't know for sure what constitutes a movement, but this seems close...

One of the most rewarding things about the growth in our work has been the connections with other institutions fighting for the same cause. Regular readers are well aware of my admiration for Amarillo College and their Culture of Caring work. We have modeled so much of what we are doing on their work, so I will admit to being a little thrilled when they borrowed an idea from us. The very talented Jordan Herrera credited us as the inspiration for their new "Grab and Go" table for students. My partner Mandy said they named theirs better than we did ( The Bowl), but we all agree food for students is a good thing. The Bowl has been so symbolic of what we are trying to do, so it's wonderful to see it catching on. In fact, I have another college joining me for a conference call this week to talk about doing something similar on their campus. If you are looking for a place to start becoming poverty informed, building community with food seems like an excellent place to start. We are currently doing it with donations only, and it serves as a daily reminder of our mission to meet basic needs so students can change their economic reality.

As I mentioned earlier, I also had an opportunity last week to share with our district board. The words "poverty-informed" aren't in our strategic plan (yet), but the work within our division has drawn attention as part of our focus on equity. If you get time with your board, you must take advantage, and I certainly tried to. As we evolve, I'm trying to learn how to talk about this work in concise ways. I'm very leery it will be perceived as a program or a project, when in reality it is philosophical. So, I shared the following four statements to help them understand our point of view. I told them poverty-informed practice is:

• A mindset that allows us to stand in awe of our students who face the impacts of poverty daily and choose college anyway.
• A form of first choice service that acknowledges the audacious courage it takes to pursue education when even your basic needs are tenuous.
• A commitment to reduce barriers for students, so they may use their education to change their economic reality.
• An intentional choice to love the students we have.

It seemed to land home, and we all had fun laughing at my discomfort with talking about love due to my rather repressed Midwestern upbringing. But I have come to believe love is exactly the right word (More on that), as love implies a level of commitment to students other words simply do not convey. The board was supportive and interested and the questions were good ones. The most unique comment I received was from a long-time board member who told me "I've been listening to you for years, but I think I'm starting to get you." I'll take it! At some point in a movement you need influential folks to buy in, and that day helped. It was also helpful to be able to share with them some clear evidence we aren't just being nice, we are making progress. Our enrollment in courses in my area increased 30% last summer, and 40% this fall. We believe that is directly related to the increased sense of belonging we are creating for students as well as our intense focus on accelerating their progress toward stability. This acceleration shows up in many ways and is a fundamental premise of our work, but the clearest indicator is the growth in Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) among our pre-college students. Last year, students earning a high school credential also earned 111 college credits through contextualized curriculum and activities that focus on CPL. We have already exceeded that number this year and have spring and summer terms to complete. CPL is a key to our poverty-informed approach, because it not only saves money and accelerates progress, it creates belief and increases self-efficacy. Anytime we can do more than one thing at once, we do.

As interest in our work grows and the evidence of success begins to mount, we keep reminding people we aren't just doing the right thing, we are doing the smart thing. A poverty-informed approach isn't just a feel-good tactic, it's a workforce solution in a tight labor market. A poverty-informed approach doesn't benefit some at the expense of others, it allows our students with the greatest barriers to teach us how we need to improve for ALL students. I'm looking forward to sharing what our local news puts together with our student Andrea tomorrow (remember Andrea), and I'm looking forward to continuing to give voice to these people who can teach us so much. Our poverty-informed division (and more of the college every day) exists to move people as quickly as possible to meaningful post-secondary training, so they can change their economic reality. When we achieve that goal, students benefit. But our community also benefits, our employers benefit, and frankly the college benefits. When I think about the success or failure of our movement, the universal benefit is what gives me hope. No matter your point of view or frame of reference, this work matters. Let's get to it!