Description of the video:
For that, welcome everyone. So happy to be sharing this space with you this morning. This is a just have a couple of slides that sort of helped me to document the work that I do. Not only the work but the approach to the work. And of course, this first slide deals with my educational philosophy and my pedagogy. Essentially illustrating the fact that they stem from and are informed by a genealogy that we call in the culture we call it the African black intellectual tradition. Which is why it's at the center of this graphic. And that is a deep well-spring of Information. Stories, history, culture, tradition, heritage, all of those things and what I call a usable past on actionable pass. And these are things that they represent mythology and philosophy and history. And essentially the cultural assets that's sort of brain and hold people together and keep them bound. So what I do, the corpus or the wellspring of what I do sort of us comes from my interrogation of that space. The black intellectual tradition, introducing students to this as a genealogy. And I referred to it as a genealogy because it is a living thing with the Great West African philosopher hmm Patek Bach called a living tradition. So it is something that is very much alive. And we try to interrogate this in my work, in my research to have a relationship with these ideas and with these IBM makers. That is as, as, as immediate as the context of right now. So, and so I try to introduce and my work introduce students to this genealogy. Just the genealogy, but also the possibilities of that genealogy. I'm from Chicago, born and raised, been in Indianapolis now for about for just over four years. And so my work across the last 28 years has taken place in schools, communities, so-called juvenile detention centers in prisons. In working with these particular knowledge communities in these populations. Not just to unseat and disrupt deficit narratives about how they are perceived. Lacking resources, having subaltern, historical experiences, lacking assets and culture. But instead I take a different approach, a different tack. That is to honor and value of the folks in community spaces wherever their community happens to be. And actually for as a default position, seeing the value and seeing that cultural knowledge and the heritage knowledge that they bring to any learning opportunity, to any learning situation. So right off the bat, that's a different approach than is taken by a lot of people who would go into communities. And working with so-called marginalized populations is seeing them as blank slates or empty vessels in need of fixing. So that right there is a master narrative or racist narrative that I never really bought into at all. But it is something that I will have to work actively to unsee and disrupt the pre-service teachers that I encounter. I'm an assistant professor working teaching, researching, writing and the School of Education, Urban Teacher Ed Department and also in Africana studies. So that work summed up or described, we call it in the culture, a jagged. And jagged is a master teacher that comes out of the Amharic tradition. We can go to the next slide. And so did enter it. Interrelated zones of my work have to do with these three whirls, this pan African black intellectual tradition. Of course, these. And the thrust fuels this education for liberation. And the interrogation research writing that I do in the world of arts learning and arts pedagogy. So it's within those three spaces. And the interstitial spaces between those spaces that I do. The work that I do in schools and communities in different populations across the city and throughout the Midwest. Next slide, please. And of course you have to have a value system. As African people, everything that we've ever touched, we'd had a value system and a tradition set to away you talking about the hip hop movement or you're talking about any other global arts movement. It was always a system of values that fed it. And so this work around, along these culturally informed principals comes out of the research of the grandmaster Doctor Joyce came. And she's given us these wonderful values that we can use and utilize in order to build on the content and pedagogy. So these values are sort of threaded through all aspects of my work, my thinking, the theorizing that I do, the teaching, scholarship and these values are also deeply interwoven into my community engaged, community focused practices. So hopefully we'll get a chance, maybe during the breakout session to talk a little bit more about these in right there. Thank you. Thank you.
Description of the video:
Good morning everyone. Does. Lin and I am excited to be your first moderators today. And I would like to begin by tell them my public purpose story, my Publius story is quite interesting. When I began this work, I initially had just graduated from undergraduate. I went to knock it on an ansi and but I graduated. I had all the instances to be a news anchor. And as a young African-American, dark-skinned male, opportunity was not available for me at that time because I look every bit 16 and I did not match the ideal phase for the news demographics. Therefore, during that time I was, I will go to r this then different things and to just to try to get my exposure and opportunity. But I was an executive mainly because of how young I look and how my scandal was at the time and just, it just wasn't a market for me. And I found what about the AmeriCorps vista program? And as an AmeriCorps member, they taught me so much about public work and what it meant to be a transformational leader. And in this process, I gain a tremendous amount of experience that allow me to work with public groups, nonprofits, and S bill with was education and sees an end those educational entities, I was afforded the opportunity to create tutoring programs for the University of Chicago charter schools. Donahue and in his will, the opportunity to help Donahue charter school build their library. And his process. What really happened is I allowed myself to be immersed and the whole experience and again, opportunity to create community partners within this four to school and in as will I learned, the skill to be able to develop programs around and, and to collaborate with many people. And that's one reason why I say that my values are collaboration, fairness, accuracy, trustworthiness, and, and that all came from my early experiences and in public engagement. Now, over the last few years, I will say that I've been an educator and I taught in Chicago for five years. And my go in as a teacher is to always create a safe learning community for my students and buy that mostly always has what exactly is a safe learning community. And this is a place where students are actually allow to develop. And this is a place where students are allowed to have the opportunity to ask questions. No question is a question. We made Bill. So as teachers sometimes, but definitely it is dead. A place where students can feel safe to ask questions just so that they are gaining knowledge and an SDK participating in this process, as a community partner, always seek to promote equity and to support disadvantaged populations. By that, outbound is out had opportunity to live in five different states and different cities. And it is time. I've really see, but disadvantage looks like across to different areas and is really bad in many different places. So I always aim to kind of promote equity. And what brought me here to IU PUI was the fact that the American Studies program provide an opportunity for me to do research and an implement practice in in public work. And by doing so, since I've been here, I've xi1 programs such as crisp and John, also pronouns and currently now P of a P. But I was afforded the opportunity to host the equity and public work panel for graduate students here, IUP UI. And this conversation was lay it by a panel of black professionals that work in institutions in a city. And if you don't know an anchor news, an anchor institution is a city, is a organization in when they see that places like the values and so is our public service. You have IEP is anger Institute, IP you as anchor institutions, the hospital as an anchor institution, Eskenazi hill. These operations all focuses on public services for people in the city. And what these leaders there, they they all for their candid opinions and, and, and a provide a detail of their experiences in the field of diversity, inclusion and equity. Their jobs and they're letting, they were letting the scholars know what it looks like to be an African-American in this work. And what, what is the process of being an ally? What does it look like to be a partner in this practice? And in the process? It gave insight to those of us that want to do work in on our local levels and in just to facilitate some way and building a common ground. And also, I had the opportunity to create a youth awareness campaign in Chicago called tunnel for life. Tunnel for life serve as a platform for you, especially black males ages eight to 18, and is platform created opportunities for students to speak out against violence. And in this process, we were able to engage over 500 families to create safe environments for their children. And to also create a format for you to say they are against what's happening in their communities. So overall, as a student, I would offer opportunities for any of my peers to sit down and have a conversation with me or, and, or just think about the, what it means to really put a purpose toward your work and know that we want to now follow up. We've got the Kasim Bay and he can talk about his experiences with public service and public engagement.