Edupreneur Spotlight: Tim'm T. West

 
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Check out our interview with Tim'm T. West, the Senior Managing Director of LGBTQ Community Initiative at Teach For America.

How and why did you become an educator? Narrate your path for us.

“I knew I always wanted to be an educator. In undergrad at both Duke and Howard, my mentors were the late Dr. Ed Hill who ran the Mary Lou Williams Center at Duke and the late Dr. Miller who was a dance instructor in Fine Arts at Howard. They both inspired me to become a professor because these were two people that I greatly admired. They were mentors, they were people who pushed me very hard. So with that in mind, I thought I wanted to be a professor. When I went to graduate school I started doing theory and philosophy, but I had to write like the Western canon demands, which is a very particular voice. I felt a little alienated, because I was good at writing it but I couldn't share it with my family and friends back home. I always wanted to write in such a way that was translatable and where the people that I was writing about could actually digest it. That was one of the beautiful things about the poem that we got to hear at our inauguration (by Amanda Gorman), the accessibility of it all. 

Those mentors made me want to educate and teach, because I felt if I could be so inspired by them, how can I be that kind of gift to other people?

Fast forward to grad school at Stanford to get my Ph.D, to be that professor, it demanded more rigor and more western writing, and during that time something godsend happened, I found out at 26 years of age that I had AIDS. The mid-90s were still uncertain in terms of medication. One doctor told me I had a year left. So I needed to figure out life. I decided to take a few quarters off for medical leave, and I started writing in a way that I wanted to.  During that time I started a rap group, and I wrote my first book. It also gave me courage to write about things that I wouldn't have written about previously. When I got back to Stanford it just wasn't the same. I did well, but I was having more fun in this other space, so I thought how do I make those two realms meet. After I decided to leave the Ph.D program at Stanford with a second master's degree, a teaching opportunity came about when then-mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland was starting Oakland Schools for The Arts. He and the director were looking for people to guide their creative writing, literary arts program and English departments. I believed I could do that, as it met the intersection between the arts and academics. This was a space that I could choose not to just be an artist or an intellectual. There was something about 9th and 10th graders. If you were honest with them, they would respect you. The trust and accountability that they had with me was special. Those kinds of things made me fall in love with teaching at the high school level”. 

How did you get involved in TFA’s LGBTQ+ Community Initiative?

“That was a long journey. While in Oakland I was volunteering and working part-time at the SMAAC Youth Center (Sexual Minority Alliance Of Alameda County) which was a Black LGBT youth center.

One of the first times I shared my HIV status was in a discussion group with a group of young black gay men, and someone posed the question what would you do if you found out you were HIV positive. Somebody said I'd find the nearest gun, someone said I'd go find a rope, and another one said I would go to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump off. And I'm sitting there in that moment knowing I was diagnosed a month before that. I questioned what I was going to say, keeping in mind that the rate of HIV among Black gay men at that point was 50% or 1 of 2. I couldn't let them leave there thinking that that's what they would do if they found out they were HIV-positive. And that was the day I decided to fight. That day I told them that I was HIV positive, and I wasn't going to do any of the things they were saying. 

The thing about covid-19 is that it forced a long overdue conversation about public health and education. Comprehensive sexual health education isn't a public health issue, it's an educational issue. These conversations need to happen more. Sharing these stories alongside my teaching was just a part of what I brought to the table. My kids did not give up on me, they took care of me, and they took care of each other. One thing I'm proud of is that 10% or 15% of students that I taught became teachers. 

How I got involved with Teach For America is that I was doing youth leadership work, and was an educator. I taught at colleges and community colleges. In 2014,  I was working at the Center of Halsted in Chicago, which is an LGBTQ center that had a youth program. I had been there about three years, and I felt that I was constantly putting band-aids on the wounds of individual students within a system that was not serving them. I can help an individual kid, but the system is messed up. That kid is either going to come back, or there's going to be another kid with the same issue. So I started to see this more overarching systems analysis when it comes to particular LGBTQ students of color. We don't often truly see them in our schools. We don't often have the capacity and the competency to support them effectively.

I'm not an alum of TFA, so when they made the announcement that they were launching an initiative three people sent me the job announcement that day. So I stayed after work, and did the application. I had my first interview in April, and by July 9th I had gotten the position. I took the leap of faith, and moved to Washington D.C, because the job needed me there. This work is not about putting on band-aids, I also talk to systems leaders, school leaders, and policy makers who can actually make decisions that impact the system and help us take better care of our kids”. 


What do you envision for The Brave Educator in five years? 

“I consider myself The Brave Educator, but what if there were 100 or 200 brave educators? What if some of the students being taught by Brave Educators want to become one themselves? Creating a safe and inclusive space for students where they see themselves reflected is what I ultimately want. It’s bigger than just me, it’s a movement of people that lean into their bravery, the bravery to finish the sentence, and then work to see it happen”.


If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing about education immediately what would you fix.  

“I would like the same kind of accountability as with other forms of discrimination. There is accountability if someone feels like they have been discriminated against in terms of their race or ability. I would like for the same for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s not okay to call people names or slurs just because they're different. Policies create an accountability factor. It creates a system where educators can learn and have some humility”.


What advice would you give to educators who have a passion & talent that could become profitable and want to act on it, but are fearful? 

“Identify your passion independent of its potential profit. Get into a place that centers you. It came to me that I want my next season of impact to be centered by the prospect of joy. It made life so much easier. Find a way to monetize your joy. Also, find accountability partners and community to keep you grounded in your passion and purpose,  people that will help you and educate you along the way. Remember that you can always edit your sentence before it's complete. The sentence is your passion, it's your life. All of it needs to be edited. You don’t need to add a period to your life”.


Anything else? 

“I’d like to Shoutout Nicole Young-Turner. She is one of my gladiators. A TFA alum, and founder of Kaleidoscope Village. She’s creating a real culturally responsive community centered on BIPOC kids in Atlanta. I can’t wait to see all the things she's going to do with Kaleidoscope Village, and how it will impact the city.”

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