beau (joan) basil beaudoin · beau (joan) basil beaudoin okay, it is june 14, 2001 and this is an...

A n O r a l H i s t o r y O f C o l u m b i a C o l l e g e C h i c a g o

B e a u ( J o a n ) B a s i l B e a u d o i n

Okay, it is June 14, 2001 and thisis an interview with Beau BasilBeaudoun.

Great.

Over the f i rs t hurd le . Okay, cou ld

you te l l us when d id you come to

Columbia and what were the

c i r cumstances that b rought you

to the co l lege?

Okay. I came to Columbia in 1986,as a part time instructor in theTelevision Department. And what Itell my students is that I came herebecause of a fight I had with thethen chairman, Ed Morris. Andwhat this boils back to is that I washere as a student the year previous.I already had a master’s degree andI was teaching in the Chicagopublic schools and I wanted to geta few extra courses in televisionproduction.

I was a chairman of a TV produc-tion facility in Chicago. AndThaine Lyman was the old chair ofthe TV Department, was still thechair here when I started. And Ihad taken some cour—done somecourse work here and then whenThaine passed and Ed Morris cameon as chair I believe it was his firstsemester. At that time I, I took twocourses. I signed up for two coursesand those were the last two that Iwas going to take. And one of themgot cancelled and another one had ateacher that I felt was really a poorteacher.

And I’m usually not someone whocomplains much but I made anappointment to see Ed Morris. AndI told him that I was unhappy withthe teacher, that didn’t seem to

know much more than I did, andalso I was unhappy that I was toldthat a course I expected to take wascancelled because of lack of enroll-ment. I guess because it was anadvanced course. And we had aconversation and he looked at myrecord and he said, “why are youeven here?”

“You have more credentials than,than the teacher that was teachingyou. That’s why, and it’s not hisfault.” And he—and I continued tosort of put my case out in front ofhim, and he said, “well if you’re sosmart why aren’t you teachinghere?” And I said, “you know what,I’ll take the challenge because I’llteach here as a part-timer, just untilI make enough money to pay fortuition that I’ve put into thisplace.” And it was sort of like wellwe’ll see this. Well I’ll see this.

And it was funny because Ed isknown to be just the curmudgeon,that he likes to be known as that.And I just wasn’t going to backdown to him. And it was, it was afriendly argument but he said,“okay, well why don’t you teachthese classes?” Then I said, “okay.”You know it was sort of a funnysituation the way it happened.Then I started teaching here part-time and continued to work in, inanother full time job as many of usdo for a while.

And then he finally asked me tocome on full-time. And I left myother jobs. I was a—I had aproduction company, a corporateproduction company and I was stillworking at the schools. And hepersuaded me to come on full time.I’m really happy about that. But it,it—it did start out with a—withactually an argument.

What—do you know what year

that was that you became fu l l

t ime?

You know, I think it was ’90.

What brought you to Co lumbia as

a student? How d id you, you

know, hear about i t and what was

i ts r eputat ion?

Oh, actually I heard about it fromsome of my students. I was teach-ing at a place called Hirsh HighSchool, on 77th and Cottage Grove.It had the dubious distinction ofbeing one of the worst high schoolsin the City of Chicago in a schooldistrict that was known to be oneof the worst school districts in thenation. So it’s really nice to havethat reputation. And it was an allBlack inner city high school. And Ireally—I’m an old hippie.

I volunteered to work there becauseI always thought we could changethe world with having, givingstudents who didn’t have all theadvantages a new way to learn. AndI, I’m—I have an education degreefrom DePaul from way back in, in

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the early 70s. But I always believedthat traditional methods of teach-ing didn’t work for everybody, andI thought that the students thatwere given this bad rap, were givenit, because maybe they couldn’tread exactly.

And I had proposed using morevideo and using other ways, televi-sions to teach the students that Iwas lucky enough that the peopleat the board listened to me, and Ideveloped a, a television program atHirsh High School from theground up. I mean there was noneand I was able to get the rightgrants, get money, and get support.And the school was falling apart. Ithad a lot of gang problems. It had alot of typical inner city problems.The typical student at that timewhich was in the—I think it wasthe late 70s.

It’s all kind of a blur, as old as Iam. They read 3.9. I do know thatbecause my master’s degree is inpsychology and counseling and Iworked partly as a counselor withthem in those days. And thatmeans third grade, kids that are 17and 18 and their level is thirdgrade reading. And the school hadan opportunity to change it to aschool that would have an emphasison media. And I knew about suchthings, but didn’t have any paperwork that proved that I did. Andso, um, I started teaching thisvideo program over there and usingvideo to teach other things.

And the powers that be said, “youknow it would really better if wecould just prove, you know, whatyou’re doing because technically it’ssort of illegal for a person who hasa music education degree to beteaching video.” And so, a coupleof my students said that theyunderstood that Columbia was acool place because you didn’t need

entrance exams to get in. And a fewof the kids who did make it tocollege did come here and they’reAfrican American kids who scoredreally poorly on typical ACT’s and Ireally found out about it from thestudents, which I think is cool.

Yeah.

And I came over here and talked toa couple of people and I said, “Ialready have an advanced degreebut can I get a masters in televi-sion.” They said, “no, there’s nosuch thing. But you can take coursework in television and we’ll helpset you up.” And the people whowere here at the time asked mereally a lot of questions about whatI wanted to do. And they—every-body was helpful. The people thatwere there—there were very fewfull time teachers at the time.

Right .

So I’m mostly talking about parttimers who aren’t even hereanymore really.

Do you r emember some o f the i r

names just so they ’ r e on r ecord

at some o f those—

Well of course Thaine Lyman wasthe first one.

Right .

There was a person here namedRob Bernard, who left shortly afterI came and actually Al Parker wasan interim chain of radio and tele-vision for a while and he didn’tknow a lot about television. But hedid give me some other names ofpeople in the business that couldtell me who to study with. Wellone of the people who’s still here isRich Barnel. He’s still a part timeinstructor about 20 years later. Butthey were very helpful to me, andthen of course we just sort of navi-gated through what I knew andwhat I needed to know.

And I wound up having—I, Ididn’t go for that reason but I actu-ally have a second BA in televisionproduction. Some of it I of courseachieved through life experiencecredit and things like that. But itwas great up until the last twocourses when I had that fight withEd Mannig.

Could you e laborate a b i t more on

that par t o f your ph i losophy wi th

the new ways o f learn ing fo r

students that—disadvantaged

that don’ t—didn’ t have access to

i t?

Yes.

And rea l ly i f you cou ld ta lk about

the or ig ins o f i t and how i t has

deve loped and evo lved.

I’m really glad you asked that. Ireally feel that, I feel I had a lot ofbad teachers in my life and I was agood student. And I think thisapproach of the teacher being theholder of all knowledge is justgarbage. And I think that’s howcome we reward the quotes “goodstudents,” you know, the ones whodo what they’re supposed to do.

And I think when I was at HirshHigh school and we had 80 and90% failure rates in so many of thecourses that I was in. It doesn’tmake sense to me that we blamethe students. If you have that manyfailures and that was really anunpopular thing to say. I still havefriends who are working in theboard of education and we stillhave arguments about that.

I do understand that the problemswith the Chicago schools are notbecause we have bad teachers. It’s asocial problem. It’s that kids—when I become queen of theuniverse I am going to insist thatpregnant women are in some kindof parenting classes. It should befree and open to everyone. Weshould be doing something like

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head start from six months-old. Iwould just observe driving to HirshHigh School the difference betweenthe way I would have my son, whowas an infant, in the car next to meand how I would be chatting andtalking to him about nothingbecause I so much believed in justhaving conversations, even thoughI’m using four syllable wordsinstead of goo-goo.

And I’d see parents next to me,who would because they were tired,because they don’t know any better,because of a lot of circumstances,just were not saying a word to theirkids. Their kids were not talkingand it’s probably a personal thingabout language and brainworkcoming together. And maybe,because I’m so talkative or gregari-ous myself, but I just really feelthat we should be having some wayto help parents to learn how to gettheir kids into caring aboutlanguage and carrying about think-ing and being confident to read andtalk to anybody at a really earlyage.

And the kids that were failing somuch were really failing becausepeople were standing in front of aclassroom hollering at them abouthow stupid they were and remind-ing them how they couldn’t read.And the things that the kids caredabout, like singing songs—this wasbefore rap or reciting words ofsongs or doing things like that, orknowing sport scores and all ofthat. I mean I read about it, but Ijust—I wasn’t reinventing thewheel, but I just noticed that if youget to where they’re at they’regoing to be a lot more interested.And so, I just began showingvideos in my classes.

I began putting my kids in a circlebefore I read who does that. I backyou out of the circle and say thatyou guys got to run to class. I

began doing peer evaluations foreverything. I came up with an ideathat my principal disallowed. But Irefused to ever give grades. I saidthis—“if our country is based on ademocracy for people, vote forwho’s smart and who’s presidentand everything else. Why don’t westart right now with you all have tograde each other in the class.”

And I get one vote—maybe I, Ithink I saw—I get two votes. Butif there was a class of 30 kids you’dall have to rate each other and howdo you know what they’re doingunless we read each other’s papers,or unless we do some kind ofrecitations where we hear eachother? And it was amazing how,after a while, they were harder oneach other—they were failing eachother when I was giving them C’s.They were like, “he didn’t talk atall in class today or she didn’t dothis or that.” And I just tried tofind ways where they would takeownership.

And it was kind of liberal thinkingin the 70s, I guess. And part of it isbecause I just have a hard timeprobably failing students myself. Ijust didn’t understand why I shouldbe an outsider coming makingjudgments about who’s smart,who’s—how do you determinewhat’s ability? And when you givekids other ways to express them-selves rather than traditional—Imean I’m not saying that readingand writing and arithmetic isn’tnecessary.

I’m just saying there are ways todemonstrate how smart you are inother ways. And once you have theconfidence to show that you’rereally good with a video camera orreally good at dancing or reallygood at rapping or something, thenyou have the confidence that maybeyou can do the more traditional

things. And like I said, I think itcomes from being some kind of anold hippie mentality. I reallywanted to work in the inner city. Ivolunteered to work at the schoolbecause I just, I just heard so manypeople that were putting downwhat was going on with those kids.

And then when you were a

student at Co lumbia and then

u l t imate ly a teacher, you must

have found that that was an

atmosphere more than most that

accepted that ph i losophy or at

least cons idered i t .

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I was—it was great. Imean I put my—I put my—thefirst class I ever taught was a televi-sion production class. And I sat mykids in a circle, because that’s whatI was used to doing. And after, Ithink it was, maybe three or fourweeks the assistant chair at thetime came in to observe and heasked why they were in a circle andI told him. And he thought it wasgreat. And I thought, good, I’mgoing to like this place. I may stayhere beyond what’s going to pay offmy tuition. You know and EdMorris he was—he always encour-aged anything that—even some ofthe students came to complainabout. Sometimes, you know,people are expecting more tradi-tional methods. And he alwayssupported anything I tried.

Could you ta lk a l i t t le b i t more

then about , about that too, once

you got here and were teach ing?

I don’ t know i f there ’s a d i f fe r -

ence between par t t ime and fu l l

t ime but what d id you br ing to

the Te lev is ion Depar tment that

maybe changed d i r ect ion or —

Yeah, sure. Barb Renowski was theone who got me my job here really,when I was a part-timer and she


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was—she’s the one that I thinkmay be the first three of the full-timers in the department. And shestill comes back three times year toteach a one Saturday—threeSaturdays of semester class. Shelives in Florida. She teaches a classcalled career strategies. She’s anauthor and she was originally Ms.Barbara the science teacher on livetelevision. I watched her as astudent. I see her still on kinescope.I have some kinescope of her. Andyou know how in Chicago whereyou know like Romper Room orsomething?

Right .

She was the first of the live scienceteaching people on television andshe was wonderful and, and she wasjust so full of, of just life and spirit.And she, she asked me—I wasrunning a video productioncompany while I was teaching inthe Board of Ed.

Yeah.

It’s a long story but she had seenone of the videos I had done. Itwas—I, I was working for theBoard of Ed, putting togethersummer videos called—it was asummer drug free program where,where we draft kids in the summertime. I did this for three years. Wedrafted kids in the summer time,taught them how to use a videocamera, and they made up videosagainst drugs. So, we went to 10different schools in the City ofChicago.

We would do things in the parkand the kids would come up with arap song against drugs, or theywould do a little mini documen-taries about drugs and all that. Andone of my drug videos ran on someshow or I don’t know how it is, butshe saw it. And she said “could youcome speak to one of my classes?”And I came in as a guest speaker.

And she said, “you’ve got to teachhere full time because we reallywant to bring in this whole idea oftelevision and diversity eventhough the school is, you know, avery diverse school.”

And she’s the one who really talkedto Ed Morris about bringing me in.Now I was hired to teach televisionand I taught regular televisionclasses like TV production and, andediting and things like that. ButEd knew that I came from an innercity environment and he knew thatmy big thrust was opportunities forstudents in television that were notnecessarily traditional ways ofworking with them.

And when I came to him and saidthat I wanted to infuse more diver-sity subjects and into the classesand I wanted to do that, I even—and I told him I wanted to work onmy documentary about mixed racepeople. He, he encouraged me somuch. He actually found a placethat was looking for speakers onmix raced subjects and it was this,it was—I have now for seven yearspresented it at this conferencecalled and the Core NationalConference On Race and Ethnicityand Higher Education.

And it has about 5,000 people whowork in—they don’t work in televi-sion. They work in cultural studiesacross the country. And Ed foundthis booklet about it. And he said,“look into this.” And I called himup and I sent them my documen-tary and I, and I presented a paperover there. And every year afterthat, I started coming back as afeatured speaker. And back in—I’mvery bad at years. Oh, man, I guessit was maybe eight or nine yearsago now, the school got a LillyGant for Diversity Issues.

Avis Moeller, was the one whospearheaded this. And we had acouple million dollars Lilly Grant,and they wanted to put together adiversity team to send to WilliamsCollege who was a sponsor by theAACU. And they wanted to get sixmember teams from 20 collegesacross the country that would spon-sor a diversity initiative that wouldgrow exponentially every year. AndAvis Moeller and ChrisineSommerville wrote somethingabout our school that we weredifferent because we are arts andcommunication and our teacherswould be an unusual mix to bringin with traditional schools.

And we won. And so six of us wentdown there and I was one of theteam. Avis Moeller and I andGlenn Graham and Gustavo Leoneand some people who aren’t here,again names escape me—she was inthe Radio Department. Butanyway, we went down and we hadwhat was called a diversity bootcamp. We spent a couple of weeksin classes actually—literally 16hours a day from 8:00 in the morn-ing until midnight. And we had toread about 50 books that summerand we had to learn different thingsabout—across the board, from raceto religions, sexual orientation,ethnic issues, women’s issues.

And the job was to bring themback to the school and infuse thisinto the curriculum. And thenwhen I became curriculum chairperson and Avis was the moderatoror, you know, she was the associatedean for that, we really began toput some of the diversity initiativestogether. And I cared so muchabout it. And because it was mylife already—because I had beenworking with that—I told Ed thatI just was having a hard timecontinuing to teach televisioncourses. I wanted to talk aboutdiversity in the media.


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And I, I created a course calledculture, race and media. And it’sreally about media literacy andmedia influence and why peoplebelieved the way—you know,events—so many of our prejudicescome from the media. And he gaveme—he supported me every year ingoing to conferences. He paid formost of the kinds of training that Ihad asked to go to. He paid for Idon’t know how many, probablyseven or eight different conferencesthat I went to as a learner.

And I started to go to two or threea year and then it developed intothis social justice course that Iteach. And so now I’m sort of ananomaly. I’m still in the TelevisionDepartment but I only teach socialscience courses that are related toculture and race. And that’s wheremy passion is. And so, I’ve been solucky, and the whole departmenthas, has supported it. I’ve been ableto hire part time teachers who co-teach with me. Two of my full timepeople in my department, TimDensmore and Sara Livingston, whoare full timers are now co-teachingthese courses with me so we canexponentially get them to haveco-teachers.

So, I think the biggest change wehad is that our department is reallyin the forefront of, of doing thesekinds of things. Because unfortu-nately, school-wise, everyone in theadministration hasn’t felt that weneeded this diversity initiativequite as much because we appear tobe a very diverse school already. Wehave almost a 40% minority popu-lation. And my thesis basis hasbeen that throwing in a mixedgroup of people doesn’t necessarilymean that we’re all talking andjust, I have that conversation youcould all be sitting in the samerestaurant—

Right .

—and not have the conversations orwe could still have, you know, whyare all the black kids sitting in theone part of the cafeteria book that’syou know, so famous from Oprah’sfriend. And in our classes wediscussed the difference betweenjust throwing everybody togetherin the proverbial melting pot,which is crap and bull and theworst metaphor that anybody everthought of in the world, or are wereally working together and do weunderstand each other and are weadopting each other’s ideas about(inaudible)?

Are we really infusing in ourcurriculum cultural modes fromeveryone or are we still just puttinga lot of white patriarchal ideasabout art and media out andhoping that the kids all sort of buyinto it? I think we do both here. Ijust don’t think that, I don’t thinkthat everyone that I have tried totalk to about this in the school atlarge has been supportive of theneed. It, it looks like this. We havenot had a lot of—we have a smalladministration as we all know.That’s why we’re going to throughrestructuring right now.

And so, we’re very much aboutputting out fires. And because wehaven’t had racial clashes and riotson a large scale we appeared thatwe looked really healthy over here.And I’m not saying we aren’t. It’s aplace I’d like to be because I lovethe mix. But, the TV Departmenthas been really great as far asletting us having meetings andclasses and things where we actu-ally bring some of these issues tothe front. And I recently had a five-year reunion of past students.

And so, I’ve taken the culture raceand media courses and they’re allover in the industry now. I mean, I

have a young lady out in New Yorkwho’s working for ABC and I have,I have a young man who’s work—he’s just a cameraman on a truck atWLS. And people that are—all thestations and every station inChicago, a whole bunch of CNN,and they came back to say that theyshoot television differently. Yeah,and it’s not because of what I saidto them, it’s because they haveheard from each other and becausethey use so many media examplesthat we have. We have a lot ofwork to do, especially in the mediaclasses about helping people tounderstand that we’ve been influ-enced by the media and we aregoing to be the new producers of it.And we better have a little bitmore knowledge about medialiteracy.

Before we leave th is spec i f ic

top ic , when you ta lk about that

appearance d ivers i ty and what

your de f in i t ion , i t sounds l ike

d ivers i ty isn ’ t just that appear -

ance or that percentage o f that

p ie broken up. I t ’s a lso under -

stand ing, f r om each group under -

stand ing each other group. What

are some o f the th ings that you’d

l ike to see at Co lumbia and other

depar tments? Or how would you

l ike to change the minds o f the

peop le that , that th ink that

that ’s enough, that i f i t says , you

know, that 40% minor i ty popu la -

t ion and we’ re , you know, t r y ing

to keep that at o r increase i t ,

but that ’s not enough? What

would you l ike to see happen

beyond that?

That’s, that’s an easy one becauseAvis Moeller and I worked a lot totry to continue what we got out ofthe diversity initiative from theLilly Grant several years ago andthat is, you can say to someone it’simportant that you have a couple of


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courses on computer literacy andtechnology. And people will say,well maybe I’m not terrificallycomputer literate, but I knowenough. But I’ll take those coursesbecause it’ll be a good job.

It’ll be good on my resume that Ihad extra—I know how to, I knowhow to work on dream weaver andput together a web page. That’scool. That’s hip. That shows thatyou’re looking for more knowledge.If you say to students, you knowyou really need to take a couple ofcourses in cultural diversity andunderstanding how you thinkabout people who are different fromyou, people feel I don’t need that.I’m not a racist. See, how I start myfirst class on the first day of each ofmy three classes each semester is, Iteach cultural diversity classesbecause I’m a racist because we’reall racists and sexists.

And if, if I could name the two orthree people in the world I don’twant to talk to it’s people who tellme I don’t see color because thenyou’re missing 90% of who some-body is, or I don’t, you know I’m—I don’t see homosexuals, you know,they don’t bother me or you knowall those catch phrases that peopleuse because they want to be politi-cally correct. And students willthink that a course like that isabout political correctness, whichit’s not.

So we try to get the school to—onthe curriculum committee, we tryto push through a requirement thatstudents would have to take acrossthe board in any department, arequirement of a course that wouldhave a cultural diversity attachmentto it. You know like we have a Wfor writing intensive, have some-thing that would say like culturallydiverse and the courses would haveto go through a clearing house to

show that they truly were coursesthat dealt with issues of under-standing difference and understand-ing power.

And that’s what we’re really talkingabout. And we worked really hardat that, but because it’s difficult toget requirements and we don’twant to add more courses tostudents. This is where the answerthat I talked about before camefrom, where people say we reallydon’t have a problem here. And so,unless I believe, unless students arerequired to take a course that helpsthem to understand who they areand how they think. People don’tvoluntarily do this unless they havea lot of background about it.

When students come into theculture race and media class forexample, the first few weeks it’s allabout denial. It’s about, well no,you know, I—and how could yousay you’re a racist. And I say, wecan’t help it. We, we—culture isabout our parents said, you knowwe eat this food and we do thesethings and this is when you’re agood girl or boy if you do this. Andif you go to this church and if you,you know—and probably yourmom didn’t ever say or the peoplewho raised you, those people overthere who eat that other food arebad or who go to that church arebad, but we do have—we haveinternal feelings that our way isright.

So it’s not about discussing do I, doI accept or I hate the word tolerateother people, you know, tolerate iswhat you feel like I tolerate thiscold until I can get rid of it. Butit’s about really celebrating that Iam so glad I’m sitting in a class-room next to this artist person whohas a whole different perspectiveabout the news. So when we sit in a

circle and my seven or eightAfrican-American students bring innews clippings and say you see theway this particular tease forChannel 5 said Chicago schoolsreading scores are down again.

And the background picture areAfrican-American students, andnone of the White studentsthought that was racist. It justhappened to be the B-Roll, as wecall it, that they put in. And allseven of the African-Americanstudents said, don’t you see thesubliminal subtle message thatthose are black kids who aren’treading, or you know things likethat. Or commercials that will onlyshow skinny beautiful girls and I’llhave girls—I mean difference does-n’t have to be the normal racialethnic things. I mean, I have girlswho say who brought—I have agirl who brought in 25 commer-cials and said find me somebodyoverweight. You know, and so wehave subtle messages about what’sokay. You have to be thin. You haveto be blond. You have to bestraight.

You have to be, you know, Waspand, and I’ve had several Muslimsin my class. I’ve had several—I’vegot two girls who are covered, andjust to have someone who’scovered explain how hard it is thatthe people in the JournalismDepartment say you’ll never be ableto get on the air unless you, youknow, don’t look like an Arabterrorist. And they come to me andtell me that.

And especially, when I hear fromthe students about part-timers whodon’t mean to say anything, butbecause most of our part-timers areexcellent in their art or communi-cations skills really haven’t hadmethods courses or whatever you


7

call teaching courses nowadays,they inadvertently say a lot ofthings that students then in classeslike ours are able to come to and,and talk about.

So, many of the students don’t feelit’s as welcoming a place when youget below the surface. And so, Ireally feel that we think that weneed to have a core of courses thatstudents can chose from that itbecomes required. You will not—very few students, unless they hearfrom world of mouth, you know,like for my class they get filled atearly registration, because I get alot of support from the Journalismand, and Marketing Department,other departments who know thekids have come up and talkedabout it and said wow, I—now Iknow I’m a sexist or whatever, too.But it needs to be required. Youcan see, I’m very passionate aboutit, because I’m talking so longabout it, because I really have apassion about it.

No, abso lute ly. Maybe we can

par ley th is into i f you cou ld ta lk

a b i t about how you descr ibe the

miss ion o f the co l lege and how

that r e lates—how i t r e lates to ,

to your ph i losophy or teach ing

ph i losophy and the va lues that

you, you know, car r y th rough to

the c lassroom?

Well obviously, even though I’vebeen sounding critical when I saythat the school didn’t see to agreethat we need a cultural diversityrequirement, I’m here because Ithink it’s the best place to possiblyteach in the City of Chicago. Atleast because of the mission,because of our open enrollment,because we are very accepting ofstudents, because we try to workespecially in the last couple of years

in helping these students withcomposite tests and everything.Early intervention to help them tofeel like they can make it throughcollege and we really have a lot ofwork to do as far as keeping—theretention effort needs to be broughtup certainly.

So, I think everybody’s heart is inthe right place about trying towork with getting the school to betruly accepting and, also not justaccepting in the beginning, buthelping you to succeed so you getout of here. So, you know thewhole, you know, it gets to be ahalf (inaudible) phrase by now, of aculture of their times and every-thing like that.

Right .

It’s important, and so I believe,that the best thing about ColumbiaCollege is that we give students aplace where they can have an indi-vidual voice. I love seeing the, thelook of Columbia College, the waystudents are dressed or in trying sohard at that age to be individualsand, and what else they’re doing todo that. I love to hear elevatorconversations when they’re verypassionate. I think anything withpassion is the, the kids can getanything from me if they say itwith passion. So, I love the ideathat this is a place where you don’thave to fit a mold in a lot of ways.But, we still have work to do and Ithink, I think years ago, when thefaculty was younger and when weweren’t quite as I guess corporate,it really reflected that mission.

And, now I think, we have to workvery hard especially as a lot of usare getting older, not me, but therest of the faculty, I have to workreally hard at embracing change,embracing a lot of new things thatare going on because we need to

keep listening to the studentsmore. And, we have to be verycareful when we come to corporate.

Relat ing to that , do you wor r y

about as Co lumbia grows and

becomes more popu lar and known

that that ’s go ing to impact nega -

t ive ly the d ivers i ty? Is that go ing

to be harder to mainta in that

d ivers i ty?

I don’t think the growing is goingto do it. I think we have to be care-ful that teachers don’t—I think wehave to be careful what we think ofas success. Does success mean thatwe now have X number of studentsthat were larger in that way tosuccess? You don’t mean that we’reattracting the quotes of rightstudents? I’m a little worried aboutsome of the BFA’s and things thatthere will now be requirements toget into the school. Who do, whodo we keep out? I’m against it. I’magainst (inaudible), because I thinkit’s happening a little bit here. But,it’s not an inevitable that’s going tohurt our diversity.

I just—I think what’s going to—what’s, what’s our biggest—thething we have to be most carefulabout is this wishing things werethe way they used to be. I’m notsaying that I’m—I don’t even—Idon’t—it doesn’t matter whether Iagree or don’t agree with therestructuring going on in the newfour schools and the new present—it doesn’t matter. But what mattersto me a lot are hearing elevatorconversations again about the goodold days when Alexandroff washere. Because those good old dayswere, were okay for them.

But let’s, let’s bring on the changenow. Let’s stop being afraid ofchange. I mean, I just think wehave to be very careful about not


8

getting old and stodgy in ourthinking. And for, everyone of thepeople that I heard complainingabout these changes, I want to say,are you complaining because you’rejust becoming old and afraid ofchange? Change has got—I mean,we’ve got to change. We, we—it’sjust the nature of something that’salive and dynamic. And, we are notthe school of 70s and we don’tmake decisions based on two orthree people.

I think it’s very—I think we needto bring—I’m happy we’re goingto bring a pro (inaudible) from theoutside. I think we need to bebringing in a lot more outsidepeople. I think we should be verycareful that we, we work on bring-ing a diversity in—that we’re notthe little incestuous school thateverybody loves so much. We’redifferent. We’ve got to changeevery year. That’s what it’s about.Just like you can’t teach like youused to teach.

If you’re teaching the same classyou taught 10 years ago, I thinkyou should leave Columbia College.That was too, that was too—oh,after that you would say I shouldn’tdo that. I’ll get that thrown in myface. No, I should—I just really—I’m sorry, I just, I just feel likechanging—you know, change isjust something that I’m alwaysasking myself when I hear peoplecomplaining about changes—areyou just afraid that you are—youlike, to stay in your comfort zone.

You know one of the things again, Isay in my, in my class, “why you’regoing to be upset in this, in thissocial change class, is because wehave levels when we’re learningsomething, and if you’re in acomfort zone you’re not learning.

You’re learning, when you learn ona learning edge. And so if you’re, ifyou’re at a learning edge, you’re,you’re anxious. You’re um, you’redefensive. You’re a lot of—you’renervous. And when you get theperson in the right place that’s onthe learning edge, then you’re ableto get honest.” Then you will sayyeah, maybe I pretended that I’mliberal, but you know it’s okay ifMichael Jordan moves next to me,but not that streetwise guy.

And you know, you begin to askyourself those questions. And Ithink the same thing goes on withteachers here. Are you against thisnew restructuring, because you’rejust so used to being in yourcomfort zone? It’s scary to me too.It should be scary to us, but scaryshould be good. Giving up author-ity in a classroom is always scary.

I’m tense for three hours sitting inthat circle because I don’t knowwho’s in charge from moment tomoment sometimes. But thatdynamic is also so exciting for, forlearning. And I wouldn’t go backto wanting to stand in front of thegroup of kids and lecture eventhough I—it’s a lot easier, becauseyou know what’s going to happen.You pretty much know what’sgoing to happen.

Just ver y qu ick ly, when you just

brought fo r that image o f be ing in

a c lass fo r th ree hours and not

necessar i l y knowing who’s lead -

ing i t o r who’s go ing to step up.

Do you, do you not step in? Do

you wai t to see who’s go ing to

come out—I mean as the inst ruc -

to r o r the teacher at the head o f

the c lass supposed ly, do you wai t

and let that happen or do you

jump in?

Oh, no. Let me put it like this. I’malways responsible for what’s goingon for that whole three hours. And

I always know in my heart ofhearts, that I have to be in controland that it’s just, and it’s justgiving a lot of—it’s, it’s setting theclass up very early in the firstmoments of the class, setting theclass up so that they begin to havea shared responsibility where eventhough I’m in control, someone elsemay be the one that’s acting incontrol.

I’ll give you and example. Like, I’mreally—I’m very strict on time.You have to be on time. You can’tmiss classes because they’recommunity. It’s about community.So, if you’re going to miss a class Idon’t want a phone call. I want youto call three or four people in theclass, explain why you’re missingit, and ask how you can speak withthem after the class to get thework. It’s a community. If you’renot there, you are hurting 19 otherpeoples’ learning for that day.

If there’s going to be an argumentbetween a couple people who aremonopolizing the class, I can standup and, and say this is not produc-tive behavior, or because I givethem three or four peer remediationtechniques in class one, somebodywill shout out inevitably fishbowl,which means that four chairs gointo the center of the circle and theonly people who could talk are thepeople in the center. And then wedo a mediation. So, if somebodydoesn’t say fishbowl or somebodydoesn’t say this person’s monopoliz-ing my community situation overhere, then of course, I’m going tostep in. And I have to step in at thebeginning. It’s a learning process.

Yeah.

I, I don’t feel I, I never lose controlof the responsibility of the class,but it’s a class about community.And so some people don’t like that


9

class. They don’t like that. I knowstudents, I get one semester whowill say—usually it’ll be somethingthat goes to the chairs. I said aboutmy chair being very supportive. I’mpaying my money to learn andBeau is saying to me that if fivepeople are late, we can’t start thecommunity until they get there.

And so, why should I wait for thesepeople because I’m paying mymoney? And I’m saying you’re notunderstanding community and soI’m expecting that if this person’scontinually late you’re going to callher up and say, I can’t have acommunity without you. And sothis is a very different concept forsome students—that they’re incharge. They’re responsible forgetting the people who haven’tlearned the rules, to learn the rulesby them—by any means necessaryand not oppose me.

And so I mean, I mean I—we go—every person has a different person-ality, or aspects of a differentpersonality. Sometimes, I begin totake charge more if they’re not agroup that understands this level ofcommunity. But, but very seldomhave I not had where the peoplewho are the, the leaders, who willbe the future leaders step up anddecide how it’s going to happen.But it’s not that happens—it’s, it’snot at all an unplanned amorphousbody there. I mean these are—theyjust are sort of—this is too strong aword.

They’re almost manipulated intolearning how to run the class. I’m,I’m behind them. And that’s why Isaid, I’m, I am, I am tense in a verycovered way for the whole threehours. I never relax. I never thinkthat I’m not in charge. I just don’tshow it. And that’s the—I thinkthat’s the, that’s the greatest differ-

ence between how I taught 15 yearsago. Because I think when you’re anew teacher and you’re a youngteacher, you have to prove you’re incharge.

And I think the less you can showyou’re in charge, you’ll be in chargeunderneath. I, I feel very confidentthat, that I’m really good at doingthat. And I, I enjoy it. As a matterof fact. I enjoy when in the pastyears I did in-services with parttime fac—do you think it’s impor-tant to learn, I, I mean and I’ll getbetter next year. I’ll you know—

Yeah.

—or we’ll keep on getting better.It’s a group thing. But, I thinkthat’s why, I mean, I’m very—Iprobably am more proud of myteacher of the year award that I gotin the year that I got it, becausethose were the days when thestudents would nominate. I’m notsaying it’s not good if you self-nominate like you do now.

Right .

But the students mostly in, in theirnominations it had to do with thepart that they felt they, they werein charge and they liked that feel-ing. And that’s, that’s probably mybiggest, what I’m very proud of tothe point of probably being arro-gant.

Do you r emember what year that

was?

Sure, it was ’97, yeah.

I want to st ick wi th th is one

more t ime and maybe ta lk about

the in -ser v ice because that

seems impor tant . How d i f f icu l t i s

i t to—now you’ve i l lust rated an

example o f , o f what you do in the

c lassroom. How d i f f icu l t i s i t to—

and you sa id there ’s some res ist -

ance at t imes between students

more or less or whatever. How

does i t—is i t to p resent that and

yet teachers to embrace that?

Well, I guess in all fairness I don’tknow if this—I would like tospend time doing this with moreteachers, but I was called upon todo diversity work with the teachers.I wasn’t called upon to—

Oh, okay.

—teach them how to do this neces-sarily. So, in the in-services of thetraining sessions that I have donehere, there about a diversity. ButI—the title of my main, um, work-shop that I do and I do these work-shops probably 10 times a yearwith different school districts. AndI—the title says it all. It’s notabout me. And I think that thedifference between a beginningteacher and someone who reallyloves teaching is getting themselvesout of the picture.

It doesn’t sound like it because I’musing a lot of I’s, as I talk to younow. But it’s not about—it’s notabout showing off that you knowthe material. It’s not about showingoff that I’m in charge of the classand I am the font of all knowledgeand I am here to save you. If you, ifyou are thinking about yourself,then you’re not getting to wherethe students are. The importantthing is where is, where is thatyoung lady in the class right now.

Where is her, where is her focusand how can you bring that focusback to the class? How can you getstudents to care about each other ascommunity? And I think that thediversity and the act of learningapproaches go hand in handbecause that’s—I don’t, I don’tknow that. I haven’t had any resist-ance because I didn’t spend verymuch time on that part. I spendmore of my time trying to getthere. And see, because that goes


1 0

together. You could teach anybodyif you’re about yourself.

But if you’re going to really payattention to each student, thenyou’ll have different kinds of reac-tions. If you understand that, thatthe young Korean student, interna-tional student in your class is notgoing to speak up because youunderstand enough about thatculture’s relationship to a teacheryou’ll know when to call on him orher or not. Then you’ll—I meanyou need to—teachers need somebasic training in cultural modelsand, and codes and things like that.And once you learn that, then byopening the class up this way, youcan incorporate all of that togetherat different times.

I mean there’s some students—youknow so we—the student again—I’m back to my diversity. Thestudent that’s raising her hands isnot one that’s paying more atten-tion than the student who neverspeaks out. That’s why you have togive them paired assignments of,you know, writing things. I meanthat’s why you have to have allthose different methods, because it’snot about you.

It’s about what—how can each oneof these and I’m lucky enough,because I only have a top of 20 inmy class—is how do each of these20 take in information. You’realways looking at that. And so if, ifa student of a different culture toget the point across to some—formtheir culture that is I can, whyshould I be the one teaching it? Wewill all read the same articles andthen let’s take turns on trying tobest get everybody else to come onboard and understand that there’s alevel that we’re understanding it. Itjust seems to make so much moresense.

I f I cou ld ask you a persona l

quest ion before we star ted to

inter v iew you, you ment ioned that

you were mar r ied to an Af r ican -

Amer ican. Your ch i ld ren are b i -

rac ia l . Would you encourage—or

how would you fee l about your

ch i ld ren say ing I want to go to

Columbia and a lso how has maybe

your own persona l exper ience led

you, you know, to your interest in

that i f i t has , i f i t has? I guess

by the quest ion I ’m assuming i t

has .

My husband is French-Creole,which means he’s a mixed raceperson.

Okay.

But in our society you’re notallowed.

So he—would he r e fer to h imsel f

as Af r ican -Amer ican?

He refers to himself as African-American. He was hired as aminority person on his job becauseyou can’t be in between. But thatwas many years ago. I never check arace box. I refuse to check a racebox. Race is a social construct. It’sabout power. It’s not real. It’s silly.My son doesn’t check a race box.My son will not tell you he’s Black.

My son will not tell you he’s Whitebecause it’s—I mean, I have awhole philosophy that would bethree hours on that. But it doesn’tmean, you know, notice race butwe—I’m, I’m so against labelingthat it’s, it’s just awful. As a matterof fact right now in our departmentone of the minors were trying topush through is a minor in mediaactivism. And I guess what it boilsdown to is if there was some waythat we could get more people tobecome activists about celebrationsand acceptance of who they are andthis is not popular with everybody.But I mean like Zora NealHurston, was one of my idols and

you know when she says, “I see noreason to be proud to be Black.”

And I don’t see any reason whyeverybody’s proud to be White, youknow, I’m proud for the writer thanI am. And I’m proud—and, and Imean that’s again there’s very manyAfro-Centric organizations that areagainst this. And so I go againstthe grain with that. I’m here atColumbia College because, becauseI like the philosophy and every-thing else. Like my son didn’tshow—didn’t chose to come herebecause his interest was in engi-neering and he went to, he went toChampaign.

But he would come here if he wasinterested in the arts. He likes thephilosophy of the school verymuch. My husband and I both sortof feel, that how you live your lifeis—I can’t ever talk about—howcan I talk about teaching if I didn’t,if I didn’t—I, I couldn’t teachteachers how to teach in a circle if Istood up in front of the class andwas lecturing, lecturing person.And I know that my, my liberalismI guess that, that had me marrysomeone over 20 years ago when itwas very unpopular.

Sure that brought me to the place.Of course they’re connected. I meanthat, that’s who I am. My husbandhas taught me more about what itfeels like to have people be racistand—I mean I—then my degreesand my books—I’m a Ph.D. candi-date in cultural studies and, and I,I love reading books and hearingprofessors who will speak aboutthings. But you know, I know howit feels because we’ve experienced iton a daily basis.

We’ve been refused, you know,motel rooms together. We’ve been,we’ve been—people have—a lot of,


1 1

a lot of people have been very cruelto us, because of that. I mean, I’vehad Black women who have comeup to me and, and cursed at me,saying I’ve stolen one of the last ofthe good ones. I mean there’s sillythings that could go on that way,sure. You know so I know I can’t—I don’t pretend to be a sister. Idon’t pretend to understand what itfeels like to be Black.

But, I know what it feels like to behurt, and all of us do on some level.I, I tell my students that I under-stand about a lot of things being ablue-collared person. I have fourcollege degrees but I’ll always feellike a working class person becausethat’s where I come from. Andthat’s what we need to do. We needto understand our identities. Andso I think, we don’t have to be outthere activists. We need to under-stand who we are to work here, tobe here.

Where d id that come f rom? Did i t

come f rom your, your—I hate to

use the word substant iv i ty, i t ’s

been overused, but where d id

your understand ing o f want ing to

understand outs ide o f your own

exper ience or comfor t leve l? D id

i t come f rom the—when you f i rs t

taught at H i rsh or d id i t come

ear l ie r o r d id i t—do you know

what I ’m say ing?

No, it had to come earlier thanHirsh because I, I asked to beplaced in our inner city schools.

Right . So when you’ r e , l ike and I ,

I can take th is to my last semes -

ter I had a Korean student and i t

took me a long t ime, and i t came

f rom h im, h im ta lk ing about an

inter v iew he d id wi th a Korean

war veteran, and that the Korean

war veteran wanted the student

to use the fo rmal te rm. And the

Korean student was taken aback

by that . He thought he cou ld use

the fami l ia r in the inter v iew. So I

k ind o f c lued into because and

the student ’s work was just so

rea l ly you cou ld tou—his work

d isp layed a greater interest and

enthus iasm about the course than

h is cont r ibut ion verba l . So where

d id that come f rom—of your

understand ing o f the need to

understand those k inds o f d i f fe r -

ences and that that cou ld he lp

community, that cou ld he lp a

teacher -student r e lat ionsh ip , a l l

the th ings that you’ve touched on

today?

I don’t know. That’s pretty funny. Igo back, I go back to—I think I goback to the blue-collar backgroundthat I have again. I have twoparents, who not only didn’t gradu-ate—well my father’s deceased.But, not only didn’t graduate fromhigh school—from college, theydidn’t graduate from high school.And I think, that being a voraciousreader and wanting to be a teacheror something at a very young age,I, I think I sometimes just felt thatI wasn’t a part of the people aroundme.

I think I was just kind of a kid whodidn’t feel like I belonged where Iwas, where I was. And I live inPilsen. I live in a very mixed neigh-borhood. My friends were verymixed, because it was more aboutpoverty and class than it was aboutrace. And so, um, as I said I, I don’tbelieve people who say they don’tsee color. But when, when you’re akid it doesn't matter, everybody isyour friend and all of that. I wasjust—I mostly went with—I thinkI felt color and ethnicity wasn’timportant. Just, we all had to besort of like from working-class poorpeople together.

And my, my prejudice at the timebecause I was growing up with richpeople, people who lived inWinnetka. Yeah, the idea. And, Iwas really surprised when myparents were against my marriagetoo, and they were. And theyforbade it. So you know, I mean,then I realized how people couldhave different ideas about things.And yeah I, I got married before Itaught in the inner city.

So my husband, I guess, would beunderstanding of my thinkingabout things, I guess. I guess beinghurt helps you to maybe feel likeyou don’t want other kids to gethurt the way you were. But yeah,the same way that it hurts. Theysaid that people who think thatthey don’t need counseling, need itmost. You know heal myself and allof that, yeah.

With your parents were you

because o f the way you were

ra ised and the va lues that you

grew up wi th , you assumed that

they would be open to th is?

Yeah, my parents didn’t teach,didn’t teach racism. But they didn’taccept it for their own daughter.

(Inaudible).

Yeah, one of the, one of the funnyconferences on that—and I use it inmy class is the biggest barometer.And you kind of draw this longline and you know put—about like,you know, you know—other peopleof other races are okay, or you knowI don’t like the, like your Ku KluxKlan at one end and then you’ll—but it’s okay if they—

Michael Jo rdan.

—City, you know, if they marry mydaughter, if my child is of anotherrace.


1 2

Yeah.

And you know, so I’m the biggestbarometer. I didn’t realize wherethey were, you know. And at that’sthe way it came out, yeah. That’ssort of where it came out. And thenagain I mean, I mean I had a lot ofracism. In a school of 2400 African-American students the majority ofteachers were, were Black. I thinkthere may be 10 of us White teach-ers at some time. And, and we wereprejudiced against.

And a lot of people felt, that aWhite teacher shouldn’t be teach-ing, you know, cultural studieswith African-Americans. Howcould you know anything aboutthat? And so, like I said, “I don’tpretend I’m a sister, but you knowI did learn what I did over thereand we won, we won national docu-mentaries about racial issuesbecause”—see because again Ididn’t have to be the voice of it. Allyou do is—you have to learn howto be the, the one who directsother—the other voices and thenyou don’t have to be the authority.So I feel, I think if I had to bereally honest I feel the leastcomfortable in all White situationsbecause it’s sort of been where I’vebeen. So yeah, I would, I would notbe very comfortable teaching insome place that didn’t look likethis.

I want to thank you ver y much fo r

a ver y interest ing inter v iew.

We’ re coming to the end. Do you

have anyth ing that we d idn ’ t

touch on that we cou ld end wi th?

Well of course I want to give.Because this is 2001 and it hasn’tmaterialized yet, I will be passion-ately imploring everyone that I

come in contact, especially admin-istrators the next couple of yearsthat the Center for Cultural Racismin Media, that I have been writingproposal after proposal afterproposal for the last several years,comes to fruition. I think we needto have a place here at Columbiabecause we are a media school.

Where students can get a minorand get a place where they couldlearn about media literacy and theinfluences of the media on their, ontheir ideas about race representa-tion, gender, things like that. Theclasses are nice, but a small numberof students go there and I’ve beenworking on the Center for CultureRacism for several years. I’m work-ing on a—we’re working on adepartment—on a minor in mediaactivism. And I think that if we’regoing to be one of the premiermedia schools, we need to have acomponent where students learnabout media literacy.

That’s not the sexiest charm wherethey get to learn about the influ-ence and there are just hundredsand hundreds of sources that willtell you that we get more of ourideas about who we are racially,ethnically, sexual orientation class,family values from the media thanwe do from church or parents nowbecause that television is on 7.5hours a day at least in every home.And if we don’t begin to reallyvalue that here at Columbia, we’llbe teaching too much about tech-nology and not enough about criti-cal thinking. So that’s what Ireally—I’m working on it andsome people are listening, and I’mcontinuing to work on it.

Are there other centers s imi la r to

that e lsewhere?

Yeah.

There are?

There are. Well my, my favoriteone is at NYU. They have a majorthat’s called Media Ecology. Andit’s the ecology because it’s, youknow, it’s pervasive. It’s the atmos-phere, and what we’re doing, we’repolluting our planet and we’repolluting our, our minds of ourpeople through that. And so yes,and, and UC Davis. You know allover the country there are, there areversions of this. There’s none herein Chicago area and I just thinkthat—

Yeah.

—it belongs here. So that’s whatmy big portion is.

And are you hopefu l?

Yes. It’s going to happen. It maynot happen under my watch butthat’s okay. It doesn’t have to be thecultural diversity center, but Iknow I’m pushing enough peopleto do it. Yeah, I think it’s reallyimportant. I am hopeful. I’m—more than that, I’m passionate. Imean if you have passion, it’s goingto happen. That’s what I—that’smy one, that’s my one mantra outof life. If you have passion, it’sgoing to happen and I can’t bemore passionate than this, youknow.

Okay, g reat . Thank you ver y

much.

beau (joan) basil beaudoin · beau (joan) basil beaudoin okay, it is june 14, 2001 and this is an...

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