Sabbatical application #approved #doingtomuch #prayforme

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Dec 31

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Shared 12/31

So, because I believe in providing resources to others that might be of use to them professionally, below is my sabbatical application at Saint Mary's College. It was approved in early December for a year long sabbatical. This is essay #45of52 because there are some essays that are written but will not be posted until January 3 for personal reasons.

It is an honor to be a member of the Saint Mary’s College of California academic community, one that values the continued professional development of its faculty as is possible through the sabbatical. If granted the academic year long sabbatical requested, I intend to engage in a series of projects that work at the intersections of my professional and artistic lives. These projects are prioritized. My intention is to endeavor to complete all four, though emphasizing the first two as most powerful for my work in teaching, scholarship, and service and of most benefit to the college.

Project 1: Networking and Research with Department of Defense Education Activity teachers (3 months)

As proposed in my tenure documents, my work during sabbatical would be to connect with Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) schools and teachers 1) to develop partnerships for student teacher placements as part of the Single Subject Credential Program and 2) interview teachers to learn about the distinct joys and challenges that impact their lives as the teachers of military dependents. In the East District of DoDEA, there are 11 schools that serve military dependents. As a way of supporting former soldiers and officers transition into civilian careers and those families who have experienced military deployments alongside those who served in the armed forces, I would endeavor to identify and secure placements for Single Subject (secondary) teacher candidates who might best serve military families. I would hope to develop partnerships that would foster a deep and rigorous academic knowledge that is informed by criticality and an understanding of that complex trauma military dependents and military families face. While in country, I also intend to offer support of teachers in educational technology and curriculum development as a way of building reciprocal partnerships.

In addition, I would like to conduct a qualitative research study with DODEA teachers that inquires into: 1) their stories of working within DODEA; 2) what distinct joys and challenges they face in that work; 3) and what capacities they have had to develop to persist as DODEA teachers. Having been a teacher in this context, I know that many either stay for three years or less or have careers of over 20 years in service. I’m interested in what informs the choice to stay and what informs the choice to leave.

«Professional Growth of the Applicant

o This project will allow for the application of my skills in educational technology and the development of opportunities for leadership through a strand of placements in the Single Subject Credential Program.

«Benefit to the College

o This may lead to a strand within the Teacher Education Program as a whole that would draw in candidates who would like to have have a teacher abroad experience that leads to work as a teacher of military dependents.

«Contribution to the discipline

o The last substantive literature on DODEA schools [1]was produced in 2000 as a review of the health of the system. There has never, to my knowledge, been a study on the lives of DODEA teachers.

«Product from the sabbatical

o At last one Memorandum of Understanding with a school site to set up placements for Academic Year 2019-2020, which would allow time for advertising the program as a strand.

Project 2: Completion of The Acentos Review 10-year anthology and development of a book release and reading schedule (6 months)

In 2008, I started The Acentos Review, an online journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. In 2018, the review will have published well over 300 artists and writers who identify as Latin@ or Latinx. There are only 11 journals – and I point this at Poets & Writers, just one magazine that speaks to the market of literary magazines, there are over 1300 journals listed – that specifically support the work of Latinx artists and writers. The Acentos Review has published elders, those still in prison, youth writers, indigenous writers, academics, and those who had never been published in another space. It merits having a strong anthology representation. During sabbatical, I would be working on crafting a two-part anthology divided between poetry and fiction/nonfiction. The anthology would also be coupled with a series of lesson plans for elementary and secondary teachers geared at teaching the work represented in the anthology. I intend to complete the curating and editing of the project by December of 2018, complete the publishing by February of 2019, and then begin a national book tour to celebrate the project. I am currently also considering founding a press to control the imprint of the anthology.

«Professional Growth of the Applicant

o This project will allow for the application of my skills as an editor, community organizer, and curriculum specialist.

«Benefit to the College

o As a Hispanic Serving Institution, the College has committed to supporting Latinx students through numerous programs. One way that I contribute to that aim is through the celebration of Latinx voices, presence, and power through artistic and literary work.

«Contribution to the discipline

o As noted previously, there are only 11 journals that specifically address Latinx artists and writers. Few of them have made it to 10 years or have celebratory anthologies that can be used as teaching materials in elementary, secondary, and collegiate contexts.

«Product from the sabbatical

o The physical anthology, e-book, and list of book tour dates.

Project 3: Completion of poetry manuscript in process, only my eye did not grow back (year)

I have had three collections of poetry published (Canticle of Idols, 2008; Boogeyman Dawn, 2014; sombra : (dis)locate, 2016) and one chapbook, profeta without refuge (2016). The manuscript that I would like to complete extends from that chapbook.

Shaun King, recently at a presentation at Saint Mary's College of California, noted that most people think that, as time passes, humanity progresses. This is false, he noted. What progresses is technology. Each year technology increases in its efficiency and reach, but the humans wielding that technology do not, in each generation, become better and better, more sound in body and mind as individuals and as a society. Rather, we come to peace and connection in remembering our histories and using that to guide us in our present and future. We reach the heights of our humanity when we remember and act accordingly.

My current work as a poet is in that place of remembering. Over the last few years, with the inundation of image after image and story after story of black and brown peoples murdered by the police, I experienced a deep and traumatizing fear. It haunted every interaction. I suffered at the intersection of race and gender, on a personal level, countless microaggressions (and under just plain aggressive acts) while I mourned for my people and my country. As an act of survival, I began to write from a space of disassociation with reality. I created 12 characters, many of them of African descent and immortal, as a way of reaching into a history of survival and thriving that has persisted over thousands of years despite the greatest of obstacles. I was interested, too, in what the experience would be for a human woman, daughter of such immortals, to have inherited all of their memories and have access to them. What would it mean to take generational trauma from a level of manifestation through disease to psychological and spiritual turmoil because of a human being having vivid access to the memories of her mother? What would it mean to also rise into the joy that her mother and father experienced and to struggle to claim her own joy in this life, amidst times of great destruction, drought, and death?

Three of the voices were recently published in the chapbook, profeta without refuge (2016, Nomadic Press). The chapbook recently was named a finalist in the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Firecracker Award (June 2017).

This work comes from my way of exploring blackness as an identity in and out of time; generational trauma; ecopoetics that is connected to mythologies, spiritualities and communities; explorations of the lyric; and transnational and translanguaging work. The work explores all of this through the distinct lenses of 12 characters.

I am currently applying for artist residencies to complete the manuscript, which includes a visual arts and technological component. While I have the bulk of the writing for this project complete, I would like to spend time editing the project, writing into the holes of the narrative arc in the text, and, most intensively, crafting a virtual, visual and textual experience connected to the words. As trees and root connectedness are motifs in the text, I am interested in printing the poems on linens to be hung in ancient trees – a connection to “Strange Fruit”, the famous song that explores the topic of lynching – and to take those images and create a website where the reader can experience the character voices individually and across narratives as a plot develops. This would be done through visual maneuvers where the viewer goes from the shot of the distant tree with moving linens (similar to a “wish tree” in appearance). From there, the viewer would go into a close up of the printed linens to note that they are poems in particular voices. The viewer would be able to see voices literally unfolding, one by one. The viewer would then be guided through the voices, going from one voice to another, as the linens move. The viewer would be guided into a close up of the tree roots themselves, the blood and light in that place. Finally, the viewer would be guided into an even closer view of QR code that reveals a running list of videos and artifacts on brutality. Inside that QR code would be another that returns the viewer to the virtual film itself. The project, as you see, is textual, visual, and cinematic.

«Professional Growth of the Applicant

o This project would be my first truly interdisciplinary project, drawing on my work as a poet, and my previous work as a digital storyteller, playwright, website designer, and musician. In some respects, I have been preparing my entire life to do this project.

«Benefit to the College

o In the past few years, there has been an emphasis on interdisciplinary scholarship. Upon completion, this might provide one example of that practice at play.

«Contribution to the discipline

o The use of embedded technology within a literary work is still new in the field of creative writing. This work would be at the forefront of the field.

«Product from the sabbatical

o Poetic manuscript, website outline, digital story. Ideally, a publisher for the literary project would be identified by the end of the sabbatical, though generally, in my field, it takes over two years to find a publisher.

Project 4: Weekly essays as part of the #52essays Project (year)

In 2016, nonfiction writer and workshop leader, Vanessa Mártir engaged in a project: writing one essay for each week of the year. In 2017, she continued the project, but this time extended the challenge to others. Over 700 people have joined her Facebook group that supports those engaged in the project. In theory, over 36,000 essays could be written this year by that group. One woman’s personal journey set a course for so many literary contributions in the world, particularly notable since many of these essays would be written by women, queer folx, and people of color.

I joined the group early in the year, and though I have fallen behind at times, I always catch up to the goal, writing 52 essays in a year. I would like to continue this practice during my sabbatical. I am interested in writing more deeply into the relationship between poetry as a liberatory practice; technology as a support for and hindrance against liberation; restorative justice in higher education; and just writing essays of accountability for my ongoing projects.

«Professional Growth of the Applicant

o This will be a continuation of my development as a writer of creative nonfiction and the essay, which will have an impact on my work as a writer as well as my work as a teacher educator of future English teachers who themselves must learn to teach these forms of writing.

«Benefit to the College

o It is a contribution to academia to have scholars be transparent in their processes and project successes and failures.

«Contribution to the discipline

o This work is in connection with a large group of writers around the world and so puts my work in conversation with those of others across different fields who are all engaging in the work of the essay.

«Product from the sabbatical

o 52 essays over the span of the year published on my blog, some of which I might modify for future projects.

As always, I am ambitious in my work. I have identified the time that I think each project will take. This is acknowledging that there will be overlap of projects. My working style is such that I need multiple projects going to be productive. That said, I also have a track record of success:

1. As a faculty person in my program, I have worked alongside others in the program to develop solid partnerships for placements of our candidates.

2. As an editor, reading series founder, and community organizer, I have edited and promoted anthologies in the past. I have been successful in setting up book tours for my own work. I currently am teaching an online class on living as a writer, which focuses on developing capacities in self-promotion and application to grants, residencies, etc. I have been coaching other artists in these areas for years.

3. I have used the time at artist residencies in the past to conceptualize and write a book. My work at such artist residencies, which can be compared to the sabbatical in the gift of time and focus, has always been productive. I always come out of the experiences with work that can be published and, in some cases, work that has been accepted for publication.

4. I have also completed over 30 essays as part of the #52essays Project, and have written essays of accountability and development on my progress using technology in the past. This is a continuation and deepening of lines of inquiry that I have established previously.

I am most successful when I have time to fully develop an idea, time that the sabbatical of a year would provide. Still, I have prioritized the projects so that the emphasis in time would be upon those projects that most benefit the college and my continued development in the areas of teaching, scholarship, and service. Please let me know if there is any part of this proposal that I can clarify.
#45of52, #52essays2017, #approved, #doingtomuch, #prayforme, #twt,

[1] Wright, R. K., Anderson, L. B., Bracken, J., Bracken, M. C., & Byrd, S. A. (2000). Review of Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) Schools. Volume I: Main Report and Appendixes (No. IDA-P-3544). INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES ALEXANDRIA VA.

#45of52#52essays2017#approved#doingtomuch#prayforme#twt

Sabbatical application #approved #doingtomuch #prayforme

The Acentos Review: Nearly 500 distinct authors published.

Random quirky things about this writer and teacher educator