As a teenager, Chris Stamm MAT 鈥�22 dropped out of high school in the San Francisco Bay area and describes his road to college as a rocky one.
He eventually earned a degree from UC Santa Cruz and worked in the film industry, but quickly gave that up, and moved onto freelance journalism.
Stamm bounced around the West Coast from Los Angles to Seattle before settling in Portland, where he is a writer for Willamette Week.
Fifteen years later, he went back to school to pursue a master of arts in teaching in special education at 91视频.
鈥淚 want to be a teacher because I want to do work that matters,鈥� said Stamm. 鈥淚 want to try as hard as I can to upend and subvert systems of oppression that have hurt far too many people and far too many communities.鈥�
Stamm shared those thoughts with 91视频 when he first entered the College of Education program. By his final year of studies, he says he has a little less bravado.
鈥淚t鈥檚 probably a lot harder to do that than I thought at first, working within a pretty entrenched system that鈥檚 rife with benchmarks and standards,鈥� he said.
鈥淯pending the system also means doing work with other teachers who care, and helping a family get the services they need from a system that might have historically ignored them.鈥�
The school-to-prison pipeline, Stamm鈥檚 struggles in high school, and his experience as an educational assistant at an alternative high school with the David Douglas School District led him to pursue a teaching degree.
鈥淪tudents with disabilities have more contact with law enforcement and tend to be disciplined more than they should,鈥� he said.
鈥淲orking as an EA and being with those teenagers felt right somehow, and as someone who had a really hard time in the public school system, there was a little bit of self-healing going on there too. As an anti-capitalist I鈥檓 interested in dismantling the system, but also it鈥檚 more emotional than that and more personal, that it just felt right.鈥�
Stamm advises future students to enter school with an open heart and be prepared to work at making connections with their peers.
Pacific鈥檚 social justice mission and evidence-informed pedagogy drew him to the university, but what really sold him on the teaching program was Assistant Professor Bryan Cichy-Parker.
鈥淗e said this cohort would become like my family for a bit and that鈥檚 what it鈥檚 been like actually,鈥� Stamm said.
鈥淚鈥檓 a little bit grumpy and a bit of a loner and I wasn鈥檛 expecting to bond with people emotionally or intellectually, but I have, and that was something that Dr. Cichy-Parker had promised. I was dubious to say the least, but it actually happened.鈥�
He hopes to teach at a school in the same school district that his daughter attends. Stamm believes people in service jobs like teachers and police officers should live in the communities they serve.