Helena E.

Jankowski - 1

If there is one thing we did a lot of in this College, it sure was reading! Any given week,

we may have read pages upon pages of textbooks, newspapers, novels, blog posts, journal

articles, childrens books, poetry, and more and we are often reading along with or aloud to the

students in our classrooms. But what was the purpose of all the reading that we did (or in some

cases, didnt do sorry profs!) over the past several years? The answer is actually deceptively

simple to share a story.

Like many of you, I walked into my very first college class TE250 incredibly unsure

of myself. But that first class period, once we were past the syllabus, expectations for the Urban

Cohort, and the incredibly awkward icebreaker games, we watched a TED Talk Im sure many

of you are familiar with by now: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies Danger of a Single Story. This

talk had the class thinking about stories and how to empower students to share their own. This

talk has since been shown in our classes more times than I can count, which goes to show the

inherent need for humans to understand and share their own stories.

In her talk, Adichie warns how restricting and wrong it is to create a single story, to

show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again. As Adichie says, Stories

matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can

also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories

can also repair that broken dignity.

As educators, we are powerful storytellers, and we each have the skillset to empower

every student to become storytellers as well. Many of our students have stories to tell unlike

anything we have ever known, or in some cases, more like your own story than expected.

Students may tell stories of struggle or doubt or pain. They may tell stories of prejudice or

fighting against language barriers or disabilities or microagressions or even stories of activism to

 Helena E. Jankowski - 2

rewrite their own narratives. As educators, we empower students to tell these stories to the

world, while at the same time, helping students to overcome these stories of fear and pain and

instead begin writing stories of triumph.

The summer I spent studying abroad in South Africa laid the foundation for my own

story. While there, I learned about a beautiful and very old concept called Ubuntu, and the

message behind it has not only become a core part of my identity, but also my teaching

philosophy. Ubuntu simply means, I am, because of you or, I am what I am because of who

we all are.

If one word could unite our experiences as Spartans and as students in the College of

Education, it would be Ubuntu. We would not be the educators or people that we are today if it

werent for at least one person sitting in this room, be it a friend, relative, professor, or another

person who had an impact on your life, not unlike the impact we will soon have on our own

students.

Our individual stories connect us in fascinating ways. The connection is as simple as

knowing that I can count on you to loyally respond when I yell GO GREEN (GO WHITE!), yet

runs as deep as the shared experience of growing into an educator that values diversity,

compassion, and empowering the lives we touch. Being a member of the global Spartan family

and the concept of Ubuntu both embody the same thing: connection, community, and a mutual

caring for all people.

Soon, we will be going out into the world to tackle some of the worlds most pressing

problems, as we begin internships, graduate school, and careers. Nelson Mandela famously said,

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. As Spartan

teachers, we will be doing what Spartans do best, because Spartans WILL.

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To my fellow members of the Class of 2016, I wish for you to always remember that you

are a storyteller as are your students. Our lives are blank pages of a book, and we are the ones

who hold the pen, ready to write whatever we choose. We are starting a new chapter today

what story are you going to tell?