Conversation with Joanne Lafortune, MA Candidate, African American Studies Program
Interview with Joanne Lafortune
What was life like for you prior to March 2020?
I teach upper and middle school English literature at the Wheeler school in Providence, Rhode Island. As well as teaching English, I am also involved in attempting to diversify and decolonize all aspects of our school curriculum. One of the ways I do this work is to partner with colleagues teaching different subjects, helping them bring wider and different perspectives to their classrooms. In March 2020, I partnered with a history teacher. Because Wheeler is a predominantly white school, I thought it worthwhile to support my colleague in better integrating into her syllabus Black history beyond what is usually taught: oppression and slavery. I believe that in addition to highlighting the horrors and struggles Blacks have suffered and endured over time, it is important to emphasize the positive contributions of Africans and African Americans to history and society.
How did you adapt to the new circumstances of Covid and Lockdown?
Like everybody else, life dramatically changed for me and my students. In addition to teaching—delivering content—I also had to care for my students’ physical and mental welfare. The shock of Covid was made worse by the horror of the events of summer 2020—the notorious murders of African Americans including George Floyd by police—that rekindled the Black Lives Matter movement. I struggled to skill myself up to the level where I was able to competently teach online and be sensitive to the needs of my students while also monitoring my own two little children as they faced their own challenges taking virtual classes from home.
How did you manage to transition to graduate work at BU’s African American Studies Program?
Even as an English teacher I always gravitated towards history. My passion has always been integrating African history and African American history in my classroom. Given the nature of the subject, it has not always been easy broaching complicated topics like systemic racism and white privilege with my students. And yet something must have worked. I had a particular student who was especially animated and engaged in class. I was surprised—and overjoyed—to find him at a BLM rally I attended later in the summer. Placard in hand, he came up to me and said that our class discussions had inspired him to become an activist! He was one of the leaders and organizers of the march!
I was so excited that I resolved to do what I had long been contemplating: pursue graduate work in African American history so that I could be better equipped to reach youngsters such as this student. My own teaching in the classroom has benefited immensely from the work of Professor Ibram Kendi. I considered the announcement that he was coming to BU a sign that I ought to apply to BU’s African American Studies program. From my initial contact, through the application process, and now as a graduate student, the faculty and staff have been wonderfully encouraging and supportive. What is special about the program is its boutique structure. I have been able to tailor my classes to the needs and circumstances of a nontraditional student such as myself, pursuing graduate work while at the same time maintaining one foot in the world of K-12 education. I could not be happier at another program.
Tell us about your role at the BUCH-run The One and the Many at BU over Summer 2021.
This is an excellent program intended to engender interest in the humanities among local high school students. I will be a graduate tutor in the program’s pilot session over the summer of 2021. I am a product of Rhode Island public schools myself. In part because I currently work in a majority white school, I understand the strangeness and hesitancy that students from underserved communities feel when they find themselves in spaces unfamiliar to them. One of the roles I value most at Wheeler is being, to the extent that I can, a role model, facilitator, and booster for the minority students from underprivileged backgrounds who attend Wheeler School. I always work to reassure these students that they have a right to be at Wheeler, that they belong there, and that they can excel and prosper there as well as students from any other background. I see myself playing a similar role for the high school students at The One and the Many at BU over the Summer 2021. No child asks to be born rich, poor, accepted, or marginalized. All children have the right to a good education, especially immersion in the humanities.
How can you inspire students to love literature and history in a world obsessed with STEM?
Coming from a Haitian background, I understand the pressure that parents put on students from backgrounds such as my own to aspire to become doctors and lawyers. Parents rightly want their children to succeed, to leave behind lives of privation. Wanting better lives for their children, they see STEM as a more assured path to these goals. I have two responses to these legitimate concerns. First, a solid foundation and knowledge of humanities will make you a better lawyer or doctor or scientist. There is no downside to the good habits of thinking, communication, and empathy engendered by studying literature or history or classics. Second, people tend to succeed in what they are passionate about. We should not write off whole swathes of our population, making the humanities unavailable to them. Rather, we ought to actively search for those whose bulbs can be lit by reading good literature and history. They, and all of us, will be the better for it.
Joanne was interviewed by Arthur George Kamya, April 2021