I'm Scared of "the New Normal"

So, if you read these articles regularly, you've met my friend Sarah (Sarah's story). I've been thinking a lot about her during recent weeks as we have all had to retreat due to the pandemic. I know she's safe, but she's home alone, and she just became an online student even though she didn't want to be. We chat on Facebook, but I worry she's isolated and isolation isn't good for anyone, but maybe Sarah more than most. Sarah has a gift for connecting with people, so being unable to go to church, or help people who are homeless (her great passion), or attend school in person must be really hard for her. So, I'm thinking about Sarah, but I'm thinking more about what she's taught me, and I'm afraid the world might lose that lesson when we come out of our current crisis. I have a dream of co-presenting with Sarah around the country on the realities of poverty and how it intersects with education and everything else. I want to do this work with her because she's been one of my great teachers, and what she's taught me more than anything is the power of proximity. I even wrote about it once before (proximity article), and I'm afraid our current circumstances are going to cause us to lose the importance of this fundamental need to fight poverty.

Sarah is my friend, but we are certainly different. I'm old enough to be her Dad for one, and we grew up differently. I grew up in a mix of situational and working-class poverty, and Sarah grew up in much tougher circumstances. I knew in theory there were different kinds of poverty, and they impact people differently, but Sarah made that theory real for me. Sarah is a person of deep personal faith, and I am not, but she's never given up on trying to fix that flaw in me:) Where Sarah really started to change things for me was when we started talking about how to work with the people around our campus who were homeless. I wasn't sure where to start, but Sarah knew them, and she made sure I did too. She took me (and others) to the Hospitality House right next to the administrative center at my old college. We didn't go to volunteer; we just went with my friend Sarah to meet people. We went to be in proximity to the truth of their stories and their humanity. This led to joining Sarah at Sacred Grounds, a coffee sanctuary where she also helped people who were struggling. I often went with my friend Mandy, and people began to think we might be Sarah's parents... I am not exaggerating one iota when I say being in proximity to the people Sarah knew changed everything for me. Never again have I walked past someone on the street without making eye contact and saying hello if it seemed appropriate. Sarah connected me to people in such a way that I didn't even notice my colleagues looking at me during a recent trip to Nashville when I gave my leftovers to someone living on the street and engaged in a brief conversation. My colleagues are good people, but Sarah had changed my world view, and I forgot my behavior might catch my colleagues off guard. I even sent Sarah a note thanking her for making me a better person during the trip. My friend putting me in proximity to people living outside my norms was powerful, so of the many things I'm terrified of during our pandemic, one of the greatest is we will lose our ability to relate and connect.

I can see it already. I was at Walgreen's a week ago, and I noticed the man sitting by the door. I was emotionally overwhelmed at the contrast between me stocking up on medicine, and him appearing to have nowhere to go. I stopped (as has become my habit) said hello and asked if he needed anything. He declined and settled down next to the building. I had watched several other people walk by him and steer clear and do everything they could to not "see" him. We cannot lose the ability to see each other. This feels like the danger to me as we must practice physical distancing (I refuse to say social distancing because we must still engage socially with whatever tools we have). I cannot stop thinking about the societal divisions becoming more apparent in these times. Some of us can stock up on groceries, and retreat to homes in relative safety, while others are losing jobs, homes, healthcare, or more. The thin nature of the fabric holding our society together is being exposed. Even in my industry of higher education, we know our changes will leave the most vulnerable more exposed than ever. We try with every tool we have, but we are forced to provide online courses to people who go home to places with one device shared between children and adults all trying to go to "school", if they are lucky. If they are less lucky, we are stuck with giving them advice like, "the wifi is still accessible from the parking lot or next to the building." If you wonder why the community and technical colleges were the last to close, it's because our mission is to serve exactly the people being hurt most directly. Even our best solutions are inadequate, and I'm afraid if we lose proximity to these stories we will forget, and we will go backwards.

I'm worried about the fragility of my friend Sarah who has been battling the crisis of poverty herself as long as I've known her. I'm worried she doesn't have what she needs to succeed in school, because a switch to online is a struggle. I'm worried her teachers won't get the proximity to her I was lucky enough to have, and they won't understand how remarkable she really is. I'm worried in a world of typed communication, her syntax and grammar will obscure her giant heart, and her desire to change the world. I guess I'm just really worried the loss of proximity we are all being forced to endure will separate us in ways we may not recover from. I'm afraid distance makes detachment too easy, and people will retreat into their own struggles and assign blame to choices they don't understand. That blame can lead to judging and as my friend and mentor Dr. Donna Beegle always says "If you are judging, you cannot connect. If you cannot connect, you cannot communicate. If you cannot communicate, you cannot break poverty barriers." For those of us worried about poverty barriers, this loss of proximity is terrifying.

This crisis will pass. I'm not a scientist or doctor, but I trust those who are when they say we are going to go through hard times before it passes. I'm not dismissing what's to come, but I am thinking about what comes after. We will have choices. We can choose to retreat further into a world of those who "have" and can protect themselves, and those who "don't have" and suffer greater and greater consequences. We can call it the "new normal" and say there is nothing we can do about it. This kind of detachment is a vision of the future which feels far too likely and scares the heck out of me. I have always believed human nature is fundamentally good, and times like this will put my belief to the test. We do have another choice. We can realize how interconnected we all really are, just like my friend Sarah has always known. We can realize our fate is only as good as the fate of those with the least among us. We can stay in proximity (emotionally if not physically), and we can just do better. So when the next virus comes, and we have to retreat to our safe spaces to take care of each other, we can feel like there are spaces for all. And we can feel like we aren't leaving our most vulnerable students with inadequate tools to make the changes they are working so hard for. So, I'm afraid of the ''new normal" if it means I forget the lessons my friend Sarah has taught me. I promise her I won't forget, and I'm challenging you to not forget either.

It's an Emergency

As I've talked more and more about the idea of poverty informed practice, the concept has solidified around three ideas for me: Meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and supporting people just when they need it to accelerate their progress. I've been using a "poverty-informed" triangle for a while, but I updated it for my recent presentation at Achieving the Dream. Instead of talking about belonging and belief, I've boiled it down to creating environments where people don't just feel "welcome", but rather know they are wanted. It might seem small, but I think it's an important distinction. If you are somewhere in my age range, you can remember when we used the word "tolerance" a lot talking about diversity and inclusion. When I think about that word now, it seems so patronizing to tell someone you would "tolerate" their differences from you. My prediction is we will feel the same way about the word "welcome" before too long. So, our college is shifting from saying everyone is "welcome" to making sure students know they are "wanted", especially if they have felt unwanted elsewhere. It goes beyond poverty, but it is definitely informed by poverty. Students in the crisis of poverty often feel as if they aren't really supposed to be on campus; we are going to make sure they know it is exactly where we want them to be. And it has me thinking about other well-intentioned efforts many of us get wrong.

On the right side of the triangle is the idea of accelerating progress and supporting people "just-in-time." Much of the support is academic, but for me it broadens out to emergency support and basic needs support as well. I'm pleased to say there are campuses all over my state and the country with food pantries, grab-and-go food, and emergency funds to bridge the moments that prevent students from succeeding. But I also know we live in culture which wants to make poverty a character flaw instead of a context. And because this point of view is baked in deep, we inadvertently build systems in opposition to their stated purpose. Emergency funds are a great illustration of how we can get this wrong in my opinion. My college has a number of emergency funds, most of which existed before I arrived, but I am proud to say we built one in my first semester through an internal campaign as well. My only request was that it have the lowest possible barriers to student access. In essence, I wanted to say if a student asks for help, we believe them, and they get it. My history says this will be a difficult ask.

I have had to evolve on this issue over the years. 20 years ago, I bought into the idea of teaching "financial literacy" as a primary strategy to help students in financial crisis. I reject that idea now. I often see emergency funds coming out of offices with the term "financial literacy" attached to them. Let me be exceedingly clear, financial literacy works very well for people with money, but in my opinion, it is a bankrupt concept (no pun intended) for people in the crisis of poverty. You cannot manage or be literate about that which you do not have and implying that becoming more "literate" is the solution transfers the blame to the person in crisis. You can see the hard wiring of blaming the poor for being poor. So, when I see "emergency" funds coupled with financial counseling or with literacy workshops, I get kind of irate. This sort of "help" feels like lecturing a gunshot victim on ducking faster before you stop the bleeding. it's ineffective at best and damaging at worst. I know a number of students who stopped going for help because it felt dehumanizing. The irony is the people giving out the assistance genuinely see themselves as good people and helpers. I'm angry at myself for my attitude 20 years ago, and I'm angry at so many emergency aid programs today.

So, what do you do? Well Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab built the gold standard model with her Faculty and Students Together (FAST) fund, which essentially operates on a sort of "rich uncle" model, where help comes directly to students and does not impact their financial aid. I'm hoping the faculty union at my college will explore pursuing that model, but in the meantime there are ways to run your emergency funds better, even if they aren't gold standard. Number one, stop making people ask multiple times for help. Let's set the default to if you have the courage and vulnerability to ask, we just believe you and get you what you need. If this makes you immediately think people will take advantage, I'd challenge you to examine your view of people. Do you really think people will "abuse" such a system, and if so, how many? Even if there is a percentage, is building barriers worth telling the 95% of people who just need help we think they are suspect and need to be screened. Do we really think there is a benefit to making them tell their story multiple times, and then wait to see if they "qualify?" It is an emergency! That's why we call them emergency funds. The second thing I would do is challenge us to think about how we talk about the students we serve who access these services. Do you know how often, I've heard someone referred to as a "good bet" or "bad bet"? Isn't that dehumanizing and awful? Can you imagine having the vulnerability to say you need help, and how you would feel if you knew people went in another room and decided if you were worthy of betting on...

So, as with so much poverty-informed work, it isn't particularly complicated, it is just hard. Our choice about supporting people "just-in-time" is as much about changing our mindsets, as it is about figuring out how to deliver the help. Instead of helping as many people as we can with the resources we have, we use a scarcity model to hoard resources and develop systems to decide who deserves help and who doesn't. That is corrosive and toxic in my opinion. At my last college we removed all criteria from an emergency fund for GED testing. We simply said if a staff member heard you needed help, you got it. The usage of the fund went up 500%. It strained the resources, but so what? We pursued more resources because we discovered our "criteria" were keeping people from asking. If you have similar systems, you need to ask yourself the big questions. Are you trying to help, or are you trying to pick winners and losers? Do you believe needing help is a normal part of life or do you see it as a sign of weakness and a character flaw? My point of view is obvious on this one, and even if you aren't entirely sold, think about all the energy and effort wasted to sort out who gets help and who doesn't. What if we just trusted the people we serve and redirected the time we gain to making things better. That is how we treat an emergency.

Policy and Unintended Consequences

At the end of my first semester as Vice President, I learned I had a duty I was not aware of. It turns out if students run out of appeals to return from academic suspension, their last chance is to reach out to me. I had roughly half a dozen students contact me in December and January desperately seeking to return to school. Our current college policy is you are on academic warning if your semester GPA is under 2.0. You are academically suspended a first time if you have two consecutive semesters under a 2.0 GPA, but that suspension can be appealed to a committee. The committee is full of great folks who look at the circumstances and work on a plan for a successful return if they can. Most appeals are granted, and the student returns with requirements they must meet. If they don't meet those requirements, the policy says they are suspended from school for a year with no opportunity to appeal. But there is a backdoor appeal (students are resourceful) and it involves reaching out to me. As I said, I had a few to review before spring term and I agonized over it. It brought up some memories, and more so it brought up concerns we weren't accomplishing what we meant to.

The memory is a story I had not thought about in a while. In 1991, I had transferred from UW-Madison to UW-LaCrosse. My Madison experience is a long story, but I left there with extraordinarily mixed results. I was academically eligible, but there were giant GPA swings, and switching between part-time and full-time status, and I had never spoken to an advisor or had anyone reach out to me about my odd record. But that is another story, and in 1991 I had transferred in search of a fresh start. I signed up for a full-time schedule, had a full-time job, and wanted to get my life in order, sincerely. But my demons resurfaced. I didn't have a name for it back then, but mostly I was struggling with a pretty serious anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, in those days, I thought I was just a procrastinator and lazy. Whatever it was, after about 6 weeks I stopped attending classes and went into avoidance and hiding, which was not a new behavior for me. Unsurprisingly, I got a 0.0 GPA for the term and over the Christmas break I got a letter. It said due to my academic performance, I was suspended from the college for the next 2 semesters... I'm guessing the letter said other things, but I don't remember them and that is the point. All I knew was I had failed, and I was in trouble. I'm guessing the letter probably had an appeal process, but I was never going to do that. I was ashamed, and I would have done anything to hide the truth from people I loved. This means there were probably wonderful staff at the college just waiting for me to come in so they could help me get on track, and I'm sure the policy was intended to do just that. Realistically, I was never going to come in. Instead let me explain how that first brush with policy started a series of events that defined most of the decade for me.

With my new suspension, I knew I needed to have a cover story. So, I quickly told my family I was unsure of my future and I needed to take "time off" from school to get my plan straight. It was plausible and felt like it might buy me time. But you don't know what you don't know. I had student loans, and apparently you must start paying those six months after you drop out; who knew? I didn't have any money (I worked 3rd shift at a fast food restaurant), so I needed another plan. Being broke sometimes steals your ability to make decisions which make sense to others. It's part of the context of being in crisis. My decision was to quickly enroll at a school up the road which was on a quarter system and could take me in March, staving off the student loan problem. Of course, I was still broke, and it would add miles to my commute, but between anxiety and financial difficulty the short-term decision was the one I made. I enrolled at the last minute, with no real financial plan and unsure how my suspension in one state impacted enrollment in another (this was pre-internet, I'm old), and this was obviously a recipe for failure. My term did not go well, but the policy at my new college said I was just on a warning. That meant a letter I could ignore. I felt like I'd dodged a bullet and enrolled for fall. And still in three colleges, no one had reached out to me except with a letter. I'm sure the letter had all kinds of resources in it, but shame makes it easier to throw those things away and hope for a fresh start on Monday (like dieting).

To make the story shorter, and since it isn't fun to remember, the next term didn't go well, and I received a one quarter suspension. I remember the letter said you could appeal or just sit out, so I sat out. And when I returned, I didn't make the standard again, and this time the letter said you sit out a year. I vaguely recall some language about an appeal, but c'mon, was I really going to do that? After all my failures, now I would go ask for mercy? I was an intelligent guy, I had all the test scores to prove it, and here I was. I also grew up poor, and it made me defensive about asking for help. We blame poor people for being poor, and we celebrate "boot strap" stories about overcoming obstacles life has put in the way. The combination of those two things made it seem like seeking help was a weakness, and it was my job to fix issues caused by my deficits. My year suspension turned into three years before I returned. In between was default on student loans and the destruction of my credit. So, in 1997, the bright, talented 18-year-old from the fall of 1988 returned to his third campus as an emotionally beat down 27-year-old. And that 27-year-old told himself when he was scared he would seek help, and sometimes I did, but even though my grades were good, it was still a struggle financially. I was certainly past believing anyone thought I might "deserve" extra help. And in the spring of my 2nd year back, I was out of money, and it was over. Maybe it was desperation, or maturity, or maybe my confidence had returned a little bit in the prior year, but for the first time I looked on campus for assistance. I went into the financial aid office and asked to speak to someone. It's hard to explain how ashamed and anxious I was. I still remember his name. It was Greg and he had a beard, that's all I remember. But he asked what I needed, and I said I was out of money and didn't know what to do. I'm getting teary eyed writing this, but he didn't judge me for a second, and he told me about unsubsidized loans, and suddenly I had a lifeline. I didn't have to work 40 hours a week, I didn't have to quit. I didn't have to fail. I never told Greg, but he changed my life. I'm where I am today in large part because he was kind and solutions oriented. I was a former loan defaulter, and I was 11 years from when I started college. I don't know what the policy said I deserved, but Greg saw me and gave me hope.

So, what's the point? The point is policy has impact, and it doesn't always match the intent. My colleges had policies of letters with wonderful information in them. And if I'd had the courage to read them, maybe I'd have shortened my journey back in 1991. I wonder how many students read those letters, no matter how well done they are. How could I know most appeals are granted? Who knows there is an appeal to the Vice President not really spelled out in policy, but just in practice for those who navigate the system? When I think about the half dozen students who came to me, I wonder how many didn't. Our policies are supposed to help, not punish. I don't think we design punitive policy on purpose, but I think being poverty-informed means we need to look at what we are doing very carefully. My own behavior plus some policy impacts kept me in difficulty for much of my 20's and wasted a lot of college resources too. Although I was not well off, my parents are college educated, and I suspect the reason I kept returning is because they had made it through on their crooked path. I can't help but think of everyone who didn't have an example to follow. It would have been very easy to just go away and stay away, so I guarantee people make that choice every term. How many could be pulled back with a personal touch like I got from Greg? How do we build resources and policy to make that happen?

So, in the meantime, we have to agonize over policy, and I needed to suffer with the students who came to me. I didn't let all of them back into school immediately. I did speak to each of them in person or by phone, and if my decision was to delay their enrollment, I asked them to meet with me personally to make a plan. I'm not saying I did anything magic or even the right thing. I'm saying a poverty-informed college doesn't hide behind policy, we wrestle and agonize with these decisions because being a professional requires it. I'm not anti-policy, on the contrary, I'm advocating for understanding the power and implications of policy choices. I'm advocating for transparency and for policy with a student success focus at every turn. And more than anything, I'm advocating for human connection in policy to normalize help and remove stigma from struggle. We all want better outcomes, and careful policy making and application can give us those.

The Problem with Policy

Since last spring, I have developed a habit of using the slide pictured here when I present to groups. I heard someone say love your students not your policies when I attended Amarillo College's Poverty Summit in May, and it stuck with me. As I ask people to get comfortable with uncomfortable realities of our students' rates of success, I'm often drawn back to this notion of what do we love more. And if we truly choose to love the people we serve (I wrote about the topic a while ago) more than we love our policies/rules, what does that mean in practice? What does that even look like? This part of my presentations always gets mixed reactions. There are of course, nodding heads and smiles as people picture a situation which might have gone differently, but there is always a sense of discomfort and maybe even disapproval I can feel in the room. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why that is, let me try to explain.

So, first let me say I get the uneasiness when we start looking at policy. My current job is Vice President of Academic Affairs, which means I have responsibility for a large number of policies. In fact, one of my year-one tasks is to review all academic policy for my college with my team. Colleges are large, complex organizations, and policy and procedures are needed to keep us open and able to do the work we do. I think some folks get nervous when I talk about students vs. policy because they think I mean anarchy:), but I'm really talking about embracing the gray areas and the difficulties of the work we do. In fact, my colleague Josiah Litant and I had the opportunity to spend a day at the Minnesota State System office early in my tenure visiting with our Vice Chancellor. Our wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of topics as I oriented to the system, but we were particularly focused on the statewide initiative called Equity 2030. In the course of that discussion, we talked about eliminating achievement gaps and barriers to doing so. I honestly can't remember who said it, but eventually someone said policy was, by design, inequitable because it tried to make blanket rules that treated everyone the same. We can quibble about the truth of the statement, but it seemed profound to me. If being poverty-informed is an equity-minded approach, we need to consider our policies and our use of them very carefully. I think we find our next point of discomfort right there.

Policy can save us from personal pain. It's not fun to make a decision which impacts someone else negatively. I will be spending this week analyzing appeals from students who have struggled academically who want to return to school. Our policies on this are pretty clear, and if I wanted to, I could use them as the reason I am choosing to take away someone's opportunity to go to school. That's what I mean when I say policy can save us from pain. The simplest thing would be to figure out if students were in compliance with stated policy and then decide if the student "deserved" to be reinstated. Well, anyone who has read my writing knows I hate the idea of "deserves", so I'm going to agonize over those decisions. I don't know if I will get them right, but I think we are obligated to live in that discomfort and look for the spaces in-between our policies if those spaces support students, particularly students built for norms they might not match. In a business like education, we can't run things strictly off flowcharts and decision trees. If we could, we could just be automated. I would argue gray area decisions are what makes us professionals, those difficult decisions where we have to wrestle with outcomes mentally and emotionally. So, I think asking people to love students more than policies can make people uncomfortable because owning the consequences of our decisions is difficult. I agree it is hard, but I believe a poverty-informed college commits to being in that difficult space.

Ideally everyone in education would be there for the right reasons, but we know it just isn't true. So, I think there are darker reasons some people attach to policy without evaluating it for equity, fairness, or desired effect. These reasons can include wanting to be in control of others from a position of power and using policy to do so. I sincerely hope this is a small number of people, but I've run into it personally, so it seems worth bringing up. This tends to manifest in a mentality that people have to "earn" what they get, and when they don't, we talk about their lack of commitment or "grit". This particular branch of bad policy use is very dangerous in my opinion because it can always be couched in words like "it's just policy." On a micro-level, this can be course requirements for students which ask more of students than we would ever ask of staff. On a more macro-level, this can look like policies built on middle class norms that make students in the crisis of poverty "other" and deficient by definition so when they fail, it is their fault. A policy which puts blame on the less powerful is a very convenient way to absolve ourselves of responsibility for helping. The poverty-informed approach I'm advocating for has a default to helping and an ownership culture as opposed to absolution through policy. Dr. Donna Beegle challenges us to look at policy and assess if it supports students or punishes students. I would agree her approach is a great place to start assessing policy and how you implement policy.

Reconciling loving students, equity, policy, and being poverty-informed isn't easy. I don't think it will ever be, but it is what is required if we want to add humanity to our organizations in the way I think we should. The folks at Amarillo College have a talent for finding a turn of phrase worth envying, and I do have some envy. "Love your students more than you love your policies" is just about a perfect summation. It acknowledges the need for norms to run a large complex organization, while challenging us to look at policy through an equity lens. I would say it pushes us to go even further. It not only gives us permission to make exceptions to policy, it challenges us to examine policies and see if they are helping us move where we want to go. Policy at a poverty-informed college might look very different than what we are used to, in fact I would expect it to, given our current results. Thinking about the work of building policies like these (and living with the exceptions) gives me excitement and anxiety at the same time. As I get comfortable being uncomfortable, I suspect those feelings mean I'm on the right track.

#MSCSoutheastCares: The Movement

Friday, December 20th marked four months since I made the move to Minnesota State College Southeast. Back in my first couple of weeks, I wrote about my excitement at finding a deep culture of caring on campus (read here), and I promised to tell the honest and authentic story of our growth. There were many reasons I was drawn to this unique college in the southeastern corner of Minnesota, but the primary one was a palpable sense of mission from the first day I explored campus. The college culture reminded me of the students I think we are here to serve: determined, optimistic, resilient, and maybe just a little under-resourced:). Although I'd been successful engaging people in pursuing poverty-informed solutions before, I knew a vice president received different opportunities to spread that message. So, I made a leap of faith and hoped I'd found a group of people to try to change the world with. Today I'd like to share some stories of the movement taking hold on our campus and the amazing people making it happen.

One of the pleasant surprises upon arriving at campus was finding the phrase "build a poverty-informed infrastructure" in our strategic plan. This had already led to the creation of student-led food pantries on both campuses as well as a committment to make public transportation free for students. So, I started with the first thing I could think of, my old friend "The Bowl." The big blue party bowl came with me from my last college, and I took it to our Learning Resource Center in Red Wing and asked the coordinator if I could put out some snacks for whoever wanted them. She immediately said yes, and we started with the granola bars pictured. Within days, others were diversifying to fruit, gluten free

snacks, and a variety of other items. I'm only able to be in Red Wing a couple of days a week, but the bowl has not been empty since I put it out. Our Winona Campus ran with the idea as well. I didn't have a lovely bowl for them, but they use the very nice baskets pictured here. Again, I do some personal shopping every week, but what goes in the bowl/basket goes way beyond what I provide. Grab and go food is a powerful place to begin in creating a poverty-informed culture.


Speaking of food, as I mentioned earlier, both our campuses have student-run pantries to battle food insecurity. It was wonderful to get to campus and see students (and staff) making time to care for each other, but it got even better. In speaking with our Winona Senate President the first week on campus, he told me our construction program was partnering with our machining program to upgrade their pantry. The solitary shelf pictured here was what they were using to start, but he wanted something that felt better and more respectful. I also love how he always refers to students "shopping" at the pantry and provides bags from a local grocery store to do so. The new and improved pantry is pictured right below the original one. They were still stocking it when I took the photo. It's pretty fantastic. The foundation of our poverty-informed triangle is meeting basic needs, and our efforts around food and transportation are a strong start to the movement I hope we are building.

One of the strongest signs of our movement is the grassroots nature it is taking on. When you combine a shared mission with a deep culture of caring amazing things start to happen. If you season those things with a dash of autonomy, you get events like our financial check-in a couple of weeks ago. This originated with a simple problem solving mentality from our excellent student services staff. They knew we had a large number of students with a variety of financial holds preventing them for registering for spring term. They also knew that historically we hadn't done much other than send students an email to notify them of their status. So our staff decided to be more proactive. They created the poster pictured to the left. I love this poster so much! Look at how they phrased things, it's an invitation, not a warning. I think there is a huge difference between being "welcome" on campus and being "wanted" and this poster says the people we are serving are wanted. Several students came in for the face to face event, and several more reached out by email. Our staff were able to solve a remarkable number of issues and keep students in school. Think about the poverty-informed message this event sent. Rather than making our college a place you are in trouble with, the staff made it a place of help, of caring. That is powerful stuff.

So our movement has begun and #MSCSoutheastCares isn't just words, it is

actions. #MSCSoutheastCares is staff on both campuses creating a Saturday study time in the Learning Resource Center before finals. #MSCSoutheastCares is creating a new emergency fund for students and raising nearly $5000 in less than a month just from internal donations. #MSCSoutheastCares is having a better than 80% participation in our internal fundraising campaign for the MSC Southeast Foundation. But more than anything, #MSCSoutheastCares is a poverty-informed way of changing economic reality for students, families, communities, and the 7 Rivers region. It has been a remarkable first semester, and we are just getting started!

A Leader Informed by Poverty

I've been writing for some time about the necessity of realizing our students bring the entirety of their lives to our doorstep, and it matters. We do not serve people in isolation, we serve complex individuals with rich full lives. As the world has shifted to requiring post-secondary education for all, it has challenged those of us in post-secondary education to think differently about how we serve these students. I've written about this issue before (The Poverty Informed Triangle), but today I'd like to look at another issue. Specifically, I'd like to talk about what it means to lead when you are someone with lived experience in poverty. Just like our students come to us with a different context and world view, I think the same is true for our staff with lived experience. And just like our students who sometimes feel mismatched with our schools' polices and procedures, I think the same thing happens to those of us who work at the colleges. So, I'm going to deviate this week and talk about something from a completely personal perspective. Although I often use my experience as an example, this is different because I just want to tell you my experience. I don't know if others share it, but my gut says they do.

Let's start by being honest. The type of poverty I experienced growing up and later in my 20's would be considered mild by a lot of folks. We always had a roof over our heads, and generally food was in solid supply (with some help). So, this isn't a story about proclaiming my poverty, which ranged somewhere between blue collar poverty and situational. All I'm saying is a persistent sense of having less, and possibly being viewed as being less, has influenced my world view and how I do my work. In fact, it informs everything about me. So, it must mean it impacts me as a leader, and I'm guessing it does for people like me as well. Now I'm Vice President of a college, so my financial difficulty is behind me (I hope, but doubting is an outcome of my history too), but just like the students, it still lives inside me. And as I changed jobs this fall, I started to wonder what it means to lead from this mental and emotional place. I think it has an impact. I think it has strengths and challenges, but I think most of all it means others don't always see me or the situation the way I do. Let me share a couple examples.

Folks in poverty tend to be relationship based and live in a more oral culture. This means we can see connections and we think a lot about people when leading. Middle class people tend to talk more about achievement and goals. I know this is true because I've picked up lots of middle-class norms over the years. A traditional path to leadership often begins with the ability to "get stuff done", which seems very middle class. I've read extensively on leadership, and the literature often discusses the transition from being an outstanding individual performer (read 'get a lot of stuff done') to having to get work done through influencing others and how hard the change can be. What if your skill set ran the opposite way? I can only speak for myself, but it has always been easier for me to influence people's hearts and minds than it has been to accomplish processes and tasks. In fact, I joke about it all the time (for my whole career) because it can make me feel outside the norm and deficient. But I wonder, maybe it's just a reflection of my skill set, and maybe that skill set is less common, but just as important. Am I rationalizing? I don't know. I just know I can often feel like I'm missing skills I'm supposed to have, yet I'm having some success. I often think our students need a sense of belonging to overcome impostor syndrome. I wonder what we do for our leaders with similar backgrounds. If I'm honest, every career transition I've made has had aspects of sheer terror as I work through feelings that pretty soon someone will figure out I don't really know how this works. But after two decades of mostly successful work and advancement, that can't be true, can it? Could it be the skill set my life gave me is enough? It never feels that way, which leads to the next issue.

If you can be bilingual between poverty and middle-class, I come close. However, it leads to my most vulnerable places. If you are always sure at some level you are faking it until you make it, the odds of feeling inadequate and defensive are pretty high. Again, after twenty years in education, I cover pretty well, but I'm sensitive to things others aren't. I remember being at an after work dinner at a fairly upscale place on a business trip a few years ago. I was with a colleague and friend who came from a much more affluent background than I did, although we had the same job and title at that time. And when they served the meal, I reached for the pepper immediately, like always. My friend casually said, "aren't you going to taste the food before you season it?" It was a throwaway line between friends, and I doubt he could sense my reaction. But on the inside, I was in a spiral, and the hamster wheel in my mind was spinning furiously. My lack of class had been exposed. I was being judged. I was outed, and would never fit in. None of those things were true of course, but that's where my mind was. I don't remember the rest of the dinner, but I remember my shame and feeling very angry at my friend and his "pretentiousness." "I'm just as good as you, damn it. In fact, I'm better" was the refrain in my head. It seems kind of crazy as I type it, but it's been years, and I can pull the memory and the feelings up easily. It's one of many times I was pretty sure a small behavior meant I was being judged as inadequate and a fraud. If my experience is not just limited to me, I wonder how many other leaders go there too, and maybe are limited by their response.

So, we often read about the crisis of leadership, and I wonder if it is because we define it on a particular set of norms. Even while I feel like an impostor as I try to figure out structure and process and generate products, I am taking daily time to connect with the people I work with and learn their stories. But my own internalized insecurity tell me this isn't "work." It's wasting time and makes me a procrastinator, at least in my head. Of course, I'm pretty sure everyone else sees it too, but what if there is an alternative version to the story I tell myself. I'm getting to do a fair amount of public speaking in recent years (feel free to invite me to your place of work, it's my favorite thing), and people often approach me to chat when I am done. On rare occasions they want to challenge something I've said or learn more, but fortunately they are usually pretty complimentary. However, without fail, someone will approach me to say they also grew up in tough circumstances, and they have connected with what I have said. It's the best part of those days, but today it is making me wonder if we are missing out on some potentially excellent leaders. The people who approach me usually share with me privately and quietly as if we just joined a club we aren't supposed to tell anyone about. What if, just like I'm asking us to do with students, we approached people with the skill set poverty develops from a strengths-based perspective and made them feel welcome and not like impostors. If we acknowledged and celebrated the rich complexity of our leaders, perhaps we would get better outcomes for the richly complex people we serve.

A Tale of Two Students

This is my son Cameron (it's a couple of years ago, but you get the idea). I asked his permission to use him in my article this week and much to my surprise, he said yes! So, let me tell you about Cameron. I remember going to his 4th grade teacher conference and his teacher telling me "Cameron is a genius you know." It was a very nice thing to say, but to be frank there wasn't much traditional evidence of that. Cam has never liked school very much and has pretty much no interest in homework (perhaps as a result of all the Alfie Kohn books I read while raising him). When I pointed it out to the 4th grade teacher she said, "oh not the kind of genius who does school stuff, but trust me he's a genius." Well my Midwestern modesty says the jury is out on the level of genius, but I can confidently say he has a gift for language, he's a good person, and he still hates playing the school game. He started high school this year, and it has actually gone pretty well. He has teachers he likes for the most part, and his gift for language put him in the freshman honors Humanities course, which is a combination of History and English and team taught. I've worked hard to let go of concern about grades and focus on learning, but Humanities has been the one course where his grades aren't good. It's a twist on the now familiar tale of my son and school; He actually likes this class (that's the twist), but still has no interest in worksheets and things like that which are givens in our school system. This means he has been neglecting to complete a number of assignments, and this in turn has led to some tough conversation with his teachers, and the possibility of being moved to a different track. Now, what does this have to do with poverty informed practice? Let me tell you.

Earlier this week, Cameron's teachers reached out with some concern for his performance and behavior. The teacher who wrote was obviously upset, and to be honest the note wasn't very kind. I was told he could "choose" to "earn" poor grades, but distracting behavior would not be tolerated. It was upsetting, but I'm an educator too, so I took a deep breath and sent an email. The email asked for further examples of their concerns. It also pushed back on some of the comments I thought were unfair and ended with an offer to talk by phone or in person. I got an immediate response and followed up with a relatively pleasant phone call. I was empathetic, but made it clear my son valued the class, and I was more worried about his learning than his GPA. When the teacher expressed concern because Cameron is a "college-bound" student, I shared I worked at a college and he could certainly go there, which I hope he will. It all ended well, and he remains in the class and is committed (he says) to trying to do more of what they want. If I'm honest, it's the type of conversation I've had annually with at least one teacher since my son started school. I don't make apologies for advocating for my son, but I've always had guilt around it because I am so keenly aware of people who don't have advocates like me. I know having college educated parents who feel like they are able to talk with school staff gets him the benefit of the doubt, and no one thinks it's unusual. It's just part of the built-in help middle class kids get, and no one thinks twice about it. The longer I work at this notion of being poverty informed, the more insidious it all seems. I'm afraid our systems (like schools) were built on unfair and inequitable principles to begin with, so they are designed to perpetuate those inequities. And that is only mitigated, if you have someone who can "work" the system, like I and other middle-class parents do for our children.

So, what about people who have all my son's gifts (and more), but don't have me? In my training with Dr. Donna Beegle, she often refers to using your title on behalf of others to navigate the system. I didn't disagree, but it always seemed like a small part of what we could do, but now I feel differently. I think it's actually huge, and if your organization is committing to serving people in poverty better, this is a great low-cost place to begin. There is a gulf of difference between giving people the phone number for a service that can help them and making the call with them. It's not right or just, but it matters a call that starts with "this is Vice President Chad Dull" gets a different response, it's just true. And you don't have to have a big title to make this strategy work. I've seen faculty get individuals into homeless shelters after the initial request was denied. I've seen financial aid staff get parents to share FAFSA information when a student couldn't convince them to. It bothers me how well this works, but it is reality. As I said earlier, the system is built on some faulty foundations, so sometimes we need to subvert the system to make it work for the people we advocate for. And we've been taught this is "cheating" when in fact, it's just another version of what I would do for Cameron, and no one ever questions that.

All of this made me think of another student I spoke with in the last two weeks. I don't have her permission, so I won't use her name. She is an adult who has none of the advantages Cameron has, and I think that makes her behavior suspect in situations no one would blink at for my son. She reached out to me after being removed from one of her courses due to a confrontation with an instructor. This student comes from generational poverty and her vocabulary and behavior do not indicate her intellectual ability (meaning she doesn't do middle class things). She also has a strongly developed sense of what she thinks is fair and what she thinks isn't fair. On this particular day, she believed her instructor was being unfair and would not back down on the topic. The instructor was pulled into an emotional reaction, and unfortunately the exchange ended with the instructor telling the student to "get the F#$% out of my class." I'm pretty connected to this student and started getting messages that night about what had happened. She had decided to drop out of school and had been ordered to stay off campus until the following Monday. And if she didn't tell me, the story ends there. I'm not the hero of the story, but I am someone with perceived power who could make phone calls and emails on her behalf to see what could be done. She could feel assured people would respond to my inquiries and the issue would be resolved. Sadly, she didn't believe her own self-advocacy would yield the same results, and she has a lifetime of evidence to support that belief. I spent 20 minutes on the phone and writing emails to key folks, and in the end, she returned to campus to try to finish the term. My title and status simply helped her navigate a situation like it would have for Cameron.

My heroes at Amarillo College tell us we have to love our students more than we love our policies. I think this is exactly what they are talking about. When people who know middle class norms violate policy, they (or their advocates) know how to negotiate and mitigate the response to those policy issues. But all too often for our students from poverty, it is just a confirmation of their powerlessness and a reminder they weren't supposed to be here in the first place, and therefore the end of the road. So, being poverty-informed changes the behavior of those of us in power in distinct ways. If we embrace this, it would remove the guilt of intervening on behalf of students who have nothing. For those of us who are parents, it would simply be the equivalent of what we would do for our children. I like to say that poverty-informed practice is an intentional choice to love the students we have. We do things differently for people we love, including using any tools in our toolbox to navigate a system which does not serve them. We should be on a dual track of navigating the flawed system and fixing it simultaneously, but in the meantime, I think everyone is entitled to the same privileges the handsome guy at the top of the article gets through an accident of birth.