Image of me looking down, lit from above, and inside a camera obscura, with both hands on a round table with a reflection of palm trees and beach projected on tabletop. Photo by my mother, Ellen Eisenman.

I teach teachers how to teach, students how to learn, and seekers how to find their way through the darkness.

Let’s collaborate.

For Teachers and Schools: I draw upon 20+ years as an educator, mentor, and advocate to help faculty increase confidence, use their own styles to be effective in the classroom and to feel satisfied in their careers. My main focus is customized curriculum and instructional design that centers anti-racist equity work and responds directly to the needs of your community.

I look for what’s working really well, and help you do more of that in your classroom and school.

For Students: Since 2007, I have taught a Student Success Seminar at Santa Monica College here in California. I have customized and designed tools, strategies, and resource lists over the years in collaboration with my fabulous colleagues. It is a dream realized to share them as Open Educational Resources (OER) with you. All Student Success Library materials are free for everyone, and others may adapt and replicate them any where they choose under either a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 or CC-BY-SA license, depending on the source material.

I start with questions students have been asking for years, and do my best to answer them, and help them learn to advocate for themselves going forward.

For Seekers: I use dreams and waking visions to help people, however I can. I call it “the work,” or “this work,” because I don’t do it alone. It is not mine, but for us all. I am a beginner. I am learning. Creator and my Helpers invited me and directly instructed me how to offer this work in a waking vision on April 7, 2011. My work is free of charge for Black, Indigenous and non-Black people of color.

I listen for the lies we tell ourselves that create chronic conflicts. We work together to find new ways to see, define, and address problems that keep us from feeling whole, delighted, and potent.

  • My purpose is to help my peers, students, and clients enjoy their craft, feel hope in the future, and see that the next steps might not be as terrifying as they think.

  • I commit to anti-racist work and standing side-by-side with you in the rough stuff. I will encourage you to rest, make art, see what has been hidden in plain sight.

  • I do not promise safety. I agree to sit with you in the dangerous work of exploring the unknown.

  • I agree to follow the path shown to me in my waking and resting dreams (literally) by Creator and my helpers.

  • I come from multiple generations of helpers, healers, and freedom fighters, and will try every day to make them proud and heal myself along the way.


Curriculum Design

I offer instructional critique and evaluations to help teachers feel confident in the classroom and bring their own style. I work with programs and institutions to bring student success tools into existing curriculum, and design curriculum and instruction that both meets institutional needs and increases retention and engagement so students can meet their own needs.

Past projects include individual and group teacher classroom skills trainings, customized student success curriculum, and instructional design evaluations.

You are:

  • Open, curious, innovative;

  • Have constructive and ongoing anti-racist practices and education established in your organization or school; and

  • Have a dedicated budget for professional development and/or curriculum/instructional design.

Student Success

Please use the these of tools, tips and new approaches to navigating school, and identifying your own style of learning.

This library is designed for first-year college students and adult learners returning to school. Other learning communities such as coaching and mentorship programs have also benefitted from the work.

I set these resources up as blog posts to be easy to access, share, and give feedback on. If there’s something you or your community needs that isn’t in the library, please reach out to me.

All resources are free, and users who have access to more resources (see Pay + Schedule page for more information) can give a gift to help keep these resources free for all.

You:

  • Are a student, care-giver, educator or advocate looking for resources to help you enjoy learning or helping others do the same;

Transition Talks

You have something calling you, but can’t quite find your way to what it is. You may self-identify as being in the throes of an existential or identity crisis. You are ready for innovative and collaborative ways of identifying and reframing persistent challenges that keep you from being YOU on the planet.

I draw upon my dreams, spiritual assignments, and my waking intuitive practices to look into your questions and help facilitate your process.

You:

  • Are available to invest time and energy and resources to your own healing;

  • Openly invite me to join your journey, and are committed to boundary and consent tending;

  • Lean toward being curious + celebrate unusual ways of solving problems; and

  • Are open to the possibility that failure is not fatal.

 

I talk about my work and recent breakthrough in this interview with Blaine Vanteamer, the host of the Afro Existential Podcast. Here is a transcript of the episode.


 

Ways You Can Help

Donate: Give what you can using the mutual aid/community links on my Pay+Schedule page, which go directly to organizations doing people-first work.

Invite: I love doing interviews, guest presenting, and dreaming for group gatherings. Please invite me.

Gift: Use the payment buttons on the Pay+Schedule page to help me continue to provide the free-of-charge and sliding-scale work to the community. Please leave a note with the payment so I know that you’re sending a gift.

Share: Share my work with others. Use the Student Success Library in your classroom. Refer clients. Suggest me as a guest to your favorite podcast. @Mention and/or follow me on Instagram.

Thank you. Mitakuye Oyasin.