Here’s the scenario, dear educational colleagues: you are to meet with some newly empowered decision-makers, officials who are smart, curious and uninformed about community colleges. They want your guidance, particularly with all of the discussions at the federal level about enhanced funding for community colleges. They know about your interest in education and your expertise.…
Author: David Potash
Honoring Chandler Davidson, Social Justice Scholar and Teacher
Good teachers teach students a subject. Great teachers do that and more. They change how we think. Chandler Davidson was a great teacher. I was fortunate to learn from him in my undergraduate days at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Davidson, sadly, recently passed away. Reading his obituary brought back memories and a deeper appreciation…
A Fresh Look At A Visionary Leader – Ida B. Wells
If you’re looking for a hero in American history whose work and words have increasing relevance today, it would be difficult to find a better candidate than Ida B. Wells. Born in 1862 in slavery and living until 1931, Wells had an extraordinarily productive and courageous life, fighting for racial and social justice. She truly…
Not So Sporting: A Scandalous Reminder
All the way back in 1989, seemingly hundreds of years ago, David Whitford wrote A Payroll To Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU. I picked it up at a used book store, curious about a scandal I had heard about, but did not really follow. I’m glad that I read it.…
Leaders & Leadership: Revisiting Guidance
Leading effectively can be a life’s work. Inherently situational, leadership is defined and informed by context, people and circumstance, all of which constantly change. Recent experience hammers this home: figuring out how to lead in a pandemic, in the crucible of the recent crises, calls out for tools that can offer assistance and perspective. Recently…
Addressing Addresses
Deirdre Mask, I would wager, is an outstanding dinner companion, the kind of person you’d like to have sit next to you on a delayed airplane flight. I’ve never met her, so this may be idle conjecture. If you dip into her recent first book, though, I would be surprised if you thought otherwise. The…
Reality Pedagogy
Way back in 2016, before the pandemic and so much else, Columbia University Teachers College professor Christopher Emdin published For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y’all Too. Emdin is a successful academic and scholar, an innovative practitioner, and an important public voice. He also knows social…