The Power of Purpose

August 1st will mark 17 years for me at Western Technical College. I had no idea I would stay this

long back in 2002, when I thought this was a one year stopover between teaching jobs. It's been good and rewarding work, but I feel like I've accomplished more in the last 12 months than in the prior 16 years. In the last year, I've offered a variety of training on and off campus, and I've had the opportunity to present at conferences across the country on this thing we call poverty-informed practice, and I've watched the discussion at my college shift in the same time frame. Last fall we rolled out a college strategic plan that discussed equity and inclusion, but did not contain the word poverty. In contrast, this fall will feature a keynote address and two days training on poverty-informed practice. The keynote speaker is me by the way, which is unusual. My college typically brings someone in for our all college day. I've also been invited to lead training at one of our sister colleges in October and January in addition to our State System Office giving me an opportunity to present at a large conference in December. In fact my speaking schedule has gotten full enough to have to turn down some opportunities. In this last year, I commonly get asked the same question, and it usually takes on the form of "what's changed?" This week I'll try to explain by going outside my comfort zone a little and talking quite a bit about myself. I've always believed poverty was the problem, but in the last year, I've stopped saying it softly or apologetically. I don't compromise much and being less "reasonable" has accelerated the pace of change here and made connections across the country. It's been a little over a year since I changed my approach to talking about poverty on my campus, and I want to share what has occurred since making that choice. Maybe it will help people be brave and find the power of having purpose.

Last June was an interesting time for me. I had applied for a Vice Presidency at my college (I thought I could help) and had made it to the final round of interviews, an all day affair on a Friday. I spent the two days prior to the marathon interview day in Springfield, Illinois learning from Dr. Donna Beegle, and I'd had a bit of an epiphany while I was there. I was always an advocate for students in poverty, but if I'm honest I didn't go all in, because I was afraid I would lose my influence if people thought we were doing too much too fast. Instead, I was very reasonable and compromising and told myself incremental progress was better than no progress. But I woke up that morning before day 2 of Dr. Beegle's training with this persistent thought "our students with poverty barriers teach us like no other students could." These students make us get better in ways all students benefit from. After literally years of raising awareness that poverty was the obstacle to student success, I now had an affirmative case for removing that obstacle. 36 hours before the biggest interview of my life, I changed my whole presentation and inserted language that said I would lead my college by making it the most poverty-informed college in America. I spent the whole interview day telling anyone who would listen what I believed wasn't just right, it was smart and was good business. Now, I'm a pretty good presenter, and I think I'm a pretty good interview, and I was on fire the whole day, but I didn't get the job. I was pretty sure I was winning until toward the end of the day, one of the key decision makers said, "I'd love to know what poverty-informed is, I don't really understand it." My heart sunk because I knew I hadn't been effective enough yet to make it obvious what that meant for the college.

I received the rejection call early the next week. It hurt a little because I had laid my heart bare, and at the end of the day, my college wasn't ready to go where I wanted to take them. Strangely though, I wasn't that upset. Poverty has been my issue since Day 1, and now I had a way to talk about it that could change things. I've been fortunate through my life to have an ability to change people's minds even on difficult topics. Preparing to make the case had given me clarity of purpose, and purpose is powerful. I sent out my first "Poverty Informed Friday" email that same week and decided to do what I could in my own sphere of influence. My staff was incredible and responsive, and we started identifying barriers to success we could remove as quickly as possible. These included changing policies and physical spaces to work better for students in the crisis of poverty. In July, I was procrastinating on some graduate school work and decided to write a short article on LinkedIn about what we were doing (read it here). I wasn't sure anyone would ever read it, but I liked telling the story, and it helped me coalesce my thoughts about what we were doing. I shared it on my Facebook page, LinkedIn, and eventually on Twitter. Much to my surprise, it started to get shared and has been read thousands of times, all over the country and world. If I'd known that was going to happen, I probably would have edited more carefully, but people seemed to connect to the amateur and authentic nature of what we were doing. None of this happened immediately, but I enjoyed the writing and began to try to do it weekly.

People are drawn to purpose, they just are. First it was my co-workers who were friends on social media and said they were inspired by what we were doing and wanted to participate. My family started to tell me the stories mattered too. My cousin is a 6th grade teacher in Missouri and started to share the articles with her students. And when I shared a story about a student named Emmie (Emmie's story), my cousin said one of her young students was inspired to share with her classmates that her family had experienced homelessness, and what it was like. When I shared the story with Emmie, she said she got goosebumps, and I realized that our little project was also allowing people who had been traditionally left out to have a voice. Our purpose had expanded. We didn't just want to get better outcomes for students in poverty, we wanted their voice to be heard and count. We were becoming partners. Now I started to look for kindred souls in the larger world. I had read about great work happening at Amarillo College (article in the Atlantic), and my newfound courage (purpose makes you brave) allowed me to Tweet my first article at their president, Russell Lowery-Hart just to say thanks for inspiration. I remember when he responded and re-shared the article, because I took screen shots and sent to my partners at work like I was a 47 year old fanboy. And then he shared it with Sara Goldrick-Rab, someone I'd admired for a long time, and she said "we need to get him (me) to Real College." I'm pretty sure I signed up the next day. All of this happened within 2 months of writing that first article and less than 3 months after the failed interview. I hadn't really increased my expertise or even come up with something terribly innovative. I just stopped protecting others comfort when I discussed where we were and what we should do. I'm less fun than I used to be and perhaps less popular, but I know I'm more effective.

Purpose is a powerful thing. In less than 12 months, from a place of limited influence, I have accomplished more than I had in years. Don't let me give you the illusion this stuff is easy, because reality is I meet overt and covert resistance on a daily basis. Even this week, I was challenged on the GED Assistance fund we have made more accessible and poverty-informed (read more here), an issue I thought I had put to bed a long time ago. Since increasing the access to support, the usage has gone up 500% (a good thing), straining our donor resources. This led someone to push back and say we needed to reestablish screening criteria... Very frustrating, but being poverty-informed says we hold our ground and identify more resources rather than ration them. My partner Mandy and I talk endlessly about our right to be comfortable when others do not have the ability to be comfortable. We have never settled on the right answer (agreeing 100% isn't our best thing), but we both generally agree that most of us need to be a little less comfortable, or we run the risk of moving too slowly or not at all. Dr. Beegle uses the phrase "living in the crisis of poverty", and crisis is exactly what we are responding to. When we accept the truth of students being in crisis, it makes us more assertive and willing to put ourselves out there for them. I suspect many of you were like me and advocated in gentle, compromising ways to try to win people over. I'm asking you to rethink that. I'm asking you to make the affirmative case that we don't throw people away. I'm asking you to explore being slightly less comfortable, perhaps less widely popular, but far more effective. If I've learned anything, it's that a watered down version of purpose gets watered down results, and we don't have time for that.

From Gangs to Graduation, Dio's #RealCollege Story

A little more than a month ago, a student asked me how come I had told other students' stories but not his yet. I was thrilled to take him up on his offer. I was grateful for the opportunity to spend some time with a student I've come to know pretty well, and who has a great story to tell. His name is Eldioju, but we all call him Dio. He's a recent graduate of Western and is back this summer pursuing a second degree. On a personal level, he and I have bonded over our shared love of basketball, although he was a much better player than I was. Dio was kind enough to share his experience making the transition from the South Side of Chicago to a college graduate. I thought I knew him pretty well, but I learned a lot that day. It is interesting to see the level of personal accountability he takes and to see the transformative power of education. I could say more, but I'll let Dio tell his story. As always, forgive the amateur video editing by yours truly.

Dio said a lot that stuck with me that day, but I was particularly struck by his  refusal to blame circumstances or "make excuses" as he said several times. It was also great to hear the power of relationships as he pointed to people on campus who made him feel welcome, wanted, and yes, loved. His grit and determination are to be admired, but I would argue they shouldn't be required. It's not an excuse to acknowledge the structural barriers of poverty, it's just a fact. We have to design our college so someone without Dio's remarkable resilience can make it too. So as we become poverty informed, we strive to do just what Dio said at the end of the video. We strive to look at people as individuals and not be afraid of them or of differences. When we remember that people come from a context and poverty is a circumstance, not a character flaw, we start to treat each other differently. And sometimes treating people differently means you get to meet "a nice guy who tries to help people." Our students teach us how to improve every day and I'm glad Dio took time to help me.