Small Portals in a Big Year

As the calendar year starts winding itself down—and the Fall semester begins to settle into that hum of grading final papers—I’ve been thinking about what this season is actually asking of me. This is the beginning of my second year teaching at the institution I once drove past as a child, long before I imagined I’d return to Albany as a grown woman with a PhD, an office key, and a whole constellation of projects. I left this city at six years old, and somehow life threaded the needle and brought me home again. Returning isn’t just geographical, it’s spiritual, vocational, and ancestral work.

This was my first full term teaching Writing and Critical Inquiry through The Wiz, and let me tell you, the work took on a life of its own. I always say the ancestors will embarrass you into alignment, and they did not disappoint. They reminded me, again and again, that teaching is care work. It’s cultural work. It’s community work. And some days it’s also just: “Baby, rewrite that thesis. I know you don’t want to, but go on.”

If this semester taught me anything, it’s that students rarely need superheroes. They need consistency, clarity, and care. They need someone willing to slow down with them. They need someone who understands that real learning rarely moves in straight lines. And somewhere in there, I realized that I needed all those things too. I’ve been giving myself the same grace I give my students: resting when I’m tired, rethinking when something isn’t working, letting the work shift instead of trying to hold it still.

Alongside all of that, I found myself cooking more—not for show, but for grounding. And life handed me a moment that still feels like my spirit hasn’t caught up to it yet. One of my elders—the one whose potato salad is a whole institution—has been in the hospital. And if you know, you know: you can’t just eat anybody’s potato salad. Hers is the only one I trusted. Before I moved back and came home to visit, she’d make me my own bowl and send me home with it, like it was a little edible blessing.

She’s infirmed now, and during a visit, she looked at me and asked me to make her a sweet potato pie.

I blinked. I asked her to repeat herself. Because what do you mean me?

It felt like something cracked open—an initiation, a passing of something. A portal. A mathematical shift in the lineage. I’m still letting it settle. I’m still letting myself change in response.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, my department interviewed me for our first Faculty Spotlight. They asked about my teaching, my path, my philosophy, and it was strange and beautiful to hear myself reflected back. To see that the work I’ve been doing—quietly, steadily, imperfectly—is visible.

Here’s the video, if you’d like to watch:

And on the “what’s coming” side of things—I’m stepping into the new year with a full, grateful heart. I was awarded an experiential learning grant that allows me to hire my two peer mentors (former students) as research assistants. They’re each embedded in one of my WCI sections, and we’ve built this little lab that feels like the kind of learning space I always wanted when I was their age. Together we’re working on a project called The Yellow Brick Mixtape, a collective autoethnography about their roles as peer mentors—what it means to be mentored, what it means to mentor, and how that triangulation of care, guidance, responsibility, and reciprocity plays out both inside and outside the classroom. They’re documenting how relationships shift, how confidence grows, how leadership emerges, and what it means to support students who are walking a path they themselves just finished traveling. They’ll be presenting this work at our Showcase Day in the spring, and they’re being paid for their intellectual labor—which, if you know me, you know brings me deep joy.

And because the universe has a sense of humor, I was also awarded funding to bring the National Council of Teachers of English African American Read-In to campus on February 21, 2026. The theme: Black Speculative Literature. A full day, open to the public, students, educators—an immersive celebration of reading, writing, memory, imagination, and Black futures. It builds on what I once did as an English department chair at St. Joseph’s High School in Brooklyn, when I held a much smaller version of this event. Now it’s expanding in scale and vision, and I’m grateful—and a little awed—to be stewarding it here on such a large campus.

As I move into the last stretch of the year, I’m choosing slowness on purpose. I’m clearing space—externally and internally. Cooking things with meaning. Listening more. Resting more. Trusting the rhythm of my return home. There are more announcements coming, more projects unfolding, but I’m letting this moment land first.

If you’ve been following along with my teaching, my creative work, or just my general existence in these internet streets, thank you. Truly. Your presence matters.

I’ll be back with more soon. But for now, I’m letting the year close gently.