Paul Ortiz –Teaching Statement 2004-05
Assistant Professor of Community Studies

My students are inspiring and delightful to work with. They keep me on my toes. Last night a student called me at 11:20 PM to ask me how to acquire a copy of Wole Soyinka's 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech. In front of McHenry Library today a student asked me for ideas on a list of readings on the history of the US labor movement. Another group of students collared me on my way to a Committee for Faculty Welfare meeting: would I be willing, they asked, to give a workshop on my new book to a group of student activists? This is a day in the life of one UCSC professor.

I periodically gather with comrades from graduate school to compare notes. After taking six-to-ten year vows of poverty as history Ph.D. students, most of us now teach in good colleges and universities. Yet, we have very dissimilar teaching experiences. Friends who teach at Ivy League institutions complain that their students rarely if ever crack open their books. As for writing an essay, good luck. In contrast, when I tell friends about what my students routinely accomplish at UCSC I'm met with sighs of disbelief and envy. A reporter asked me last year how it was that I was able to place two of my students as interns on Michael Moore's blockbuster film, "Fahrenheit 911." "Our students at UCSC are the best in the nation and they should work with the best," I replied. Our students really are the best, as good as students in any other university in the nation. They are hungry for knowledge and they are all looking for a way to make their own unique contributions to this world.  It is important for all of us--students, instructors, staff, and administrators--to remember that among major research universities, UCSC has a unique commitment to undergraduate education that we must struggle to nurture and sustain. 

Why did I become a teacher? I grew up as a working-class person of color in a society that valued neither my heritage nor the people I grew up with. Like so many other Mexican American men of his generation my father had to drop out of school in the eighth grade for economic reasons. My mother worked a series of low-wage jobs before passing away just as I entered high school. In high school I took a pre-SAT exam and must have scored well because universities began sending me glossy brochures and encouraging me to apply for scholarships. (“Notre Dame,” thought I. “How cool!”) I brought some of these publications to my guidance counselor because I had no idea how to apply to college. The counselor gave me a sympathetic look and turned to a rack of pamphlets behind his desk. He returned with one that read: "Be All that You Can Be: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines." "I don't think you are ready for college, Paul," advised the man who held the key to my future. "You should join the Army or Navy. It's a great career." I have re-lived that moment many times. Ultimately, this encounter taught me what it means to be a good mentor versus a shoddy one. That moment has also taught me to treat my students as individuals, not cogs in an education factory.  

Herman Melville wrote, “A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." The United States Army was my whale ship. Serving as a paratrooper in the Reagan-era military forced me to confront great social and political injustices in the US South and in Latin America. After a four-year stint in the military I swore to get to the bottom of the reasons why the world was in such a terrible mess. I began with questions. Why was racism a persistent problem not just in the US but throughout the world? Why do some nations exploit others? Along the way, I read the works of a noted UCSC teacher by the name of Page Smith who observed, "America has been represented as the greatest success story in history, but in fact its story is full of anguish and desperation." How have ordinary people throughout history challenged desperate conditions and struggled for justice and freedom? 

Being a professor allows me to continue being a student of the human condition. Being a student frees me from the conceit of being the one with all of the answers and that makes me a better teacher. Edward W. Said taught me how to read a book, how to open myself to new and surprising interpretations of canonical texts and I try to pass this wisdom down to my students. In turn, my students have taught me that it is possible to craft new solutions to the old, persistent problems of human history. My basic teaching philosophy is that the greatest learning experiences unfold collaboratively whether this occurs in the classroom or in the broader world. UCSC was founded on this sacred principle: "learning in the company of friends."

I teach in one of the most remarkable academic departments in the United States. Community Studies is an interdisciplinary activist major in the sense that we encourage students not only to learn about the world around them but to think about ways to change that world. We teach that societal innovation is not the monopoly of generals, Silicon-Valley CEO's, and “the experts.” Each quarter I teach and learn with my students that social change is something that the people Melville called the "mariners, renegades, and castaways" of the global economy have engaged in from day one. I encourage my students to learn the tools they need to be able to think critically about the most urgent problems they will face in the global society they will live the rest of their lives in. I emphasize copious reading, research skills, analytical rigor, narrative writing, and public argumentation.

I teach courses primarily on the social and political history of social change from 1492 to the present. My favorite classes to teach include: African American and Latino Histories, Documentary and Social Change, Theory and Practice of Resistance and Social Movements, African American Political History, Black Liberation in the  African Diaspora, and C.L.R. James. In many of these courses I recruited former students who excelled academically to return and serve as teaching assistants primarily in order to work with students on writing and research skills. I am a firm believer in peer advising. Some students who perhaps would not visit a professor during office hours will spend time with a peer in order to get critical feedback on an essay or research paper. I insist now that all of my students take library research workshops (taught by our marvelous staff at McHenry Library) because I have learned that even in this “Age of the Internet” our students need to learn traditional as well as electronic research skills.

In my African American and Latino histories course this past term I tried something new. Instead of a conventional mid-term exam, I divided the students into groups and gave them a collaborative assignment to complete. Each group had three weeks to devise a solution to a real world problem--using class materials--and make a presentation of their findings to the rest of the class. Group number one's assignment was: "Your group is the brand new marketing/production/and DJ staff who is stepping in to take over failing Los Angeles radio station, ‘WAMM, 98.6 FM.’  You have three months to turn the station around before it has to file for bankruptcy. Your demographic market is approximately 50% Latino, 35% Black, 10% Korean-American and 5% ‘other.’"

The students in this group created a marvelous, rejuvenated FM station with play lists, a sample audio CD, marketing plan, public affairs programming, and community outreach strategy. The other groups followed suit. Each class presentation was entertaining from start to finish. Another group wrote and performed a play promoting the ideals of diversity and in their summary commented, “The most important aspect of this play that we would like you to remember in the future is that the power to unite is within all of us. When we put our misunderstandings aside and recognize that we are fighting the same battle, we can make social change that will help not only us, but generations to come.” The student groups met frequently to plan their presentations and much learning took place. Many students wrote in their self-evaluations that they spent more time thinking through the core intellectual issues of African American and Latino histories preparing these presentations than they would have spent “cramming” for a mid-term exam.

Major Teaching Accomplishments

In the past three years, twenty-three of my students completed senior theses and nine taught highly-rated student-directed seminars at UCSC. One of my advisees received the 2004 Steck Family Foundation Award for writing the Finest UCSC Senior Thesis. Another one of my students was awarded the 2004 Melkonian Prize for the most outstanding UCSC Humanities undergraduate research project. I also supervised a student's radio documentary project that appeared on National Public Radio's "Making Contact" program in September. As a first-generation college student it gives me special pleasure to be able to provide guidance to students who want to apply to graduate schools. My former students are now attending—or are on their way to—graduate and professional programs at the University of London, NYU, Duke, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and other top universities.

My teaching ranges outside of the boundaries of the classroom. I have mentored numerous university students in programs designed to provide academic support to non-traditional students including the Faculty Mentor Program, Services for Transfer and Re-Entry Students, and the Educational Opportunity Program. In addition, I am faculty advisor for the Page-Eloise Smith Scholastic Society at UCSC. This is a scholarship society composed of students who have been orphans, wards of the court, or homeless. Because I am an activist I am also able to help my students find learning internships with organizations I work with including the Reel Work Labor Film Festival, the Resource Center for Nonviolence, Student Action with Farm Workers and other initiatives.

The greatest award a teacher can receive is recognition from one’s students. Last year I was voted a "top twenty faculty member" by students at Merrill College. I also received formal recognition fromthe UCSC African Black Graduating Class of 2004, “For all of your support, friendship and encouragement.” The Student Environmental Center and the Education for Sustainable Living Program awarded me a certificate “for outstanding efforts as a Leader in Campus Sustainability.” The Faculty Mentor Program recognized my work advising students in that program. Finally, I received a certificate of achievement from our chancellor acknowledging my mentoring service at the university.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my students for nominating me for this wonderful award. Teaching has given me a life of dignity, and my students make it all worthwhile.