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June 2009 > School
For additional, captioned photos, visit the GSE Network
Four Events Ensure that Commencement Not Just an Exercise
on Facebook: GSE Commencement Album.
Keynote speaker K. Wayne Yang inspired an audience of 105 graduates, plus faculty, families, students and friends at Zellerbach Hall on May 17, to fight for the underdog as they pursue their careers as teachers and scholars.
K. Wayne Yang Yang, an assistant professor in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, exhorted the graduates through Buddhist principles to: "Listen to the most marginalized of people, as they are our collective heart, and let us say together, it is not a burden, it is something sacred, it is the struggle."
Yang described three stories ?Äî from his rich experiences as a teacher and co-founder of the East Oakland Community High School and The Avenues Project before he earned his doctorate in Social and Cultural Studies in 2004 ?Äî to address the teachers, warriors and scholars in the audience. He said [pdf of address]:
to teachers: "The most marginalized part of yourself is the heart. The heart insists on love, it insists on the struggle. Listen to your heart, and it says, listen, love is struggle but it is not a burden."
to scholars: "Listen to the ancestors, and they tell you, scholarship is struggle but it is also sacred."
to warriors: "[Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote], I ask myself not whether it is worth winning, but whether it is worth losing."
In a gesture of support, Yang donated his honorarium to speak at Commencement to the fledgling Berkeley Review of Education.
Kim Jaxson Doctoral Program Speaker Kimberly Jaxon, a lecturer in the English Department at California State University, Chico, asked the GSE graduates to consider the phrase, "No hitting. Use your words.
"It really matters to me that the words or at least categories we use when we talk about students: 'gifted,' 'basic,' 'remedial,' 'fast,' 'slow,' 'ADHD'... and so on, stand in our way, instead of describing what they [our students] can do. Let's use our words to explain, tell the story, advocate and complicate how others view our students and how we view our students.
Jaxon also joked about the Berkeley mystique. "When graduates tell someone else that they earned their degrees at Berkeley there's this expectation, hope or fear that we might actually do something about what's going on in education through our teaching, through our research, through those backyard conversations we have with friends. And you know the scary thing is that people may even listen to us."
Daniel Guerrero
Daniel Guerrero was the Master's/Credential Program Speaker and Linda Platas received the Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Other university officials marking the commencement exercises included P. David Pearson, Dean of the School of Education; Sarah Freedman, Head Graduate Advisor of the School of Education; Susan Muller, Associate Dean, Graduate Division; and Patricia Irvine, Associate Dean of the College of Education, San Francisco State University.
The School of Education Chorus performed two songs before the recessional and reception.
On the afternoon before graduation ceremonies, Dr. Yang spoke at the GSE's seventh annual Commencement Research Seminar. His talk, entitled "The Postcolonial Ghetto," was followed by an engaging 45 minute question-and-answer session and a reception.
Yang, Jaxon, Pearson and Freedman as well as GSE professors Marcia Linn, Norton Grubb and Bruce Fuller were also on hand for the GSE's first Dissertation Symposium in a jammed 2515 Tolman Hall later that day.
Four GSE doctoral graduates presented highlights of their research on a wide range of dissertation topics:
Thomas Green (Ed Leadership): "District Coordination of Educational Support Services for Students below Grade Level: Problems and Opportunities"
Kimberly Jaxon (LLSC): "Constructing a Stance Toward Inquiry: Lessons From the National Writing Project"
Laurie Mireles (POME): "Upward Bound Examined"
Erika Tate (CD): "Asthma in the Community: Designing Instruction to Help Students Explore Scientific Dilemmas that Impact Their Lives."
Paula Argentieri, lead graduate student instructor and coordinator for Education 190, is surrounded by some her students at the Education Minor ceremony. In addition to these Commencement activities, 46 students participated in the first Education Minor Completion Ceremony, held May 20th in the Barrows Hall Lipman Room. The event, organized by Education Undergraduates (EdU) student organization, was emceed by its two co-presidents, Mary Candace Full and Brian Ikkanda. Emeritus Professor John Hurst talked about the history of the education minor; Sara Emily Neff was student speaker; Paula Argentieri, graduate student speaker; Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, professor speaker; Erin Conner, community speaker; and Anne Songdej spoke on behalf of Education for Change.
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