Growing up I had the good fortune to spend summers with my grandmother in the council estate. For six weeks at a time I’d run errands in exchange for an oral history of her life as one of nine siblings growing up in Manchester, England. She left school to start work in a mill at 14 years old and she would tell me how lucky I was. Throughout my education and my career, that has stuck with me. 

As a first generation college student, earning a Ph.D. was a big deal but I didn’t really aim for a life in academia on purpose. I got my first degree in Geography and I didn’t know what to do next. That’s how I came to pursue a Ph.D.. Geographers are pretty flexible and throughout the course of my academic career without a specific goal in mind, I taught for two decades on the subjects of race, geography and class which meant that by the time I hooked up with AOC, I’d been preparing to provide context - an important tenet of Anti-oppression - for most of my career. 

History can be a solitary pursuit. AOC keeps me focussed on the horizon but teaching? Teaching keeps me grounded in the present. To be recognized by my students is a big deal to me. Working with students and watching them develop their interests is affirming. In a classroom setting I’ve often felt like I’m an imposter, minutes away from being found out but ever so often I’ll get an award recognizing my work as a teacher and it is such a validating experience.

So much of what we want to accomplish with AOC relies on communicating knowledge and laying a pathway for lasting, systemic change. I think it is difficult to plan for the future without understanding and building upon the past, even if the past is full of mistakes and missteps. Highlighting, underlining and understanding that past is an important part of my role with AOC.