This post is written by member 聽who will be the keynote speaker 聽for the at the .听
Our careers in the academy have different ways of getting off the ground. Mine started rather unexpectedly in January 1973 after I ran into Fred Stern, one of my former professors in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, during my lunch break. 鈥淲hat are you doing?鈥� he asked. 鈥淚鈥檓 working as a Clerk Typist III across the street in the Department of Criminal Justice where I used to be a work study student.鈥� 鈥淲hat?鈥� he replied with a guffaw. 鈥淵ou should be teaching!鈥� 鈥淭eaching what?鈥� I asked. 鈥淲riting, of course. Listen,鈥� he said as he pointed out the window to another building on campus, 鈥測ou see that building over there? Go to the 12th floor and tell them you want to apply for one of their teachings jobs.鈥� 鈥淥kay,鈥� I said, not sure how else to respond, 鈥淚 can do that.鈥�
A few minutes later I walked up to the receptionist鈥檚 desk at what I later learned was the Educational Assistance Program (EAP). After I informed the young woman behind the desk that I wanted to apply for one of the teaching jobs in writing, she asked me a few questions about my background, then excused herself to see if Paul Vega, EAP鈥檚 assistant director, was available to speak with me. Paul came and invited me into his office where we spoke for a few minutes. Excited by the idea that I had an undergraduate degree in English (there were almost no Latinos or Latinas at the time majoring in English), he excused himself and moments later walked back into his office with Chuck Anderson, EAP鈥檚 associate director. After the three of us chatted for a few more minutes, the two excused themselves and left Paul鈥檚 office. When they returned, Paul asked, 鈥淐an you start tomorrow?鈥� 鈥淒oing what?鈥� I asked. 鈥淭eaching writing. Here at the university.鈥� 鈥淥kay,鈥� I responded in disbelief.
For the next 16 years, I served as a lecturer in composition in EAP and taught three sections of first-year writing each quarter to some of the most underprepared students of color graduating from public schools in Chicago鈥檚 inner city neighborhoods and working-class suburbs. Because I had no prior training in the teaching of writing and none was offered by EAP at the time, I often found myself unsure about how best to proceed. My salvation came when Miguel Palacio, a fellow teacher in EAP and the only Latino or Latina I had ever met who was working on a Ph.D., introduced me to the work of . My excitement in discovering that I could move beyond the current traditional paradigm that governed the teaching everyone was doing in EAP alerted me to the possibility that the teaching of writing offered untold opportunities for engaging and using the lived experiences of students in the writing classroom. When I told a colleague I met at an institute on multicultural literature about how Freire鈥檚 work had affected the way I taught writing, she asked if I would be interested in presenting a paper on my pedagogy at a convention for which she was organizing a panel. I agreed to do so, and that is how I ended up giving my first ever conference presentation titled 鈥淎 Dialogical Approach to the Teaching of Writing鈥� at the 1976 起点传媒convention in Chicago.
In the keynote address that I have been invited to give as part of the College Celebration on Friday, November 18, at the convention in Atlanta, I will have the great honor of acknowledging and celebrating 40 years as a member of 起点传媒. In my presentation, I plan to talk about how I learned to navigate and negotiate the profession in a never-ending effort to resist the (re)colonizing processes that members of historically underrepresented communities in particular continually face as we struggle to gain the recognition and respect that I believe we are little by little finally gaining in the profession. During my presentation, I will also talk about what I feel compelled to teach and share with all students, but especially with students from disenfranchised communities, about how they can best navigate and negotiate the roadblocks they encounter in the writing classroom as they resist the (re)colonizing efforts of the social and ideological discourses that govern the work we do in what calls an increasingly 鈥渃hallenging and difficult world.鈥� I suspect that the colleagues who invited me to speak at the College Celebration were not aware that I would be celebrating my 40th anniversary in 起点传媒that evening, but I am grateful for the serendipity that will make it possible.
Juan C. Guerra is a professor of English and Chair of the Department of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington at Seattle. The author of a book co-published by 起点传媒and Routledge titled (2016), Guerra is currently serving as the Director of 鈥攁 16 year-old mentoring program sponsored by the聽