Connecting through reflecting

“With only six of us, we created a tight-knit learning community where vulnerability felt safe."

A reading assignment about identity formation in K-12 schooling led to a beautiful bond between six doctoral students and their professor, Mikela Bjork, Ph.D.

“Because we were a small class, my students immediately started sharing very intimate memories about their own K-12 schooling experiences and how they were helpful/hurtful/ inspiring/disempowering, depending on the grade/mentorship/family support/teacher/counselor/access to community,” Bjork said.

She then gathered autoethnographic works for the class to read, and this type of research—analyzing personal experiences to better understand broader culture—resonated with the students. This collective interest resulted in Autoethnography as Resistance, a collaborative project exploring the research method and how it can be used for personal and political transformation.

“Working with Mikela and our classmates was powerful,” Breann Lindsey ’27 said. “With only six of us, we created a tight-knit learning community where vulnerability felt safe. Sharing personal stories of schooling experiences—especially ones tied to identity, upbringing, and intersectionality—requires a lot of trust, and the small class size helped us bond in ways that felt authentic and sustaining.”

For their final assignment, each student created their own autoethnography. Lindsey wrote a collection of poems and essays about her K-8 schooling, titled “Education as a Way OUT.” She reflected on “growing up queer in the foothills of Appalachia, where education was always pitched to me as a way out of poverty, an opportunity at a different life,” she said. During the writing process, she “saw more clearly how education was framed as my ‘way out,’ my golden ticket, yet also became the space where I learned to shrink, to mask, to manage the way I was received.

“I carried that double-bind–the promise of freedom tangled with the demand to fit in—into sports, into leadership, into my queerness, and into the ways I still navigate the world as an educator,” she continued. “Looking back through old report cards, teacher notes, and yearbook entries gave me a lens into how deeply education shaped both my sense of possibility and my sense of constraint.”

In her autoethnography, Iris Cordova ’12 ’19 ’26 recalled the struggles that came with the 1998 passing of California’s Proposition 227, which mandated English-only instruction for English language learners in public schools. A native Spanish speaker, she was given an IQ test in English but since she did not understand the language, “I scored low and was placed in special education,” Cordova said. “This was my first real experience in education where I can say, ‘This messed me up.’ My mom had to fight to get me removed.”

She also remembered a high school counselor telling her higher education was out of her grasp. “I focused on experiences like that where I could have given up and listened to them but decided to move forward,” Cordova said. She is now a Spanish dual language immersion teacher, and every day makes sure “nothing like that happens to these kids if I can help it.”

Leticia Contreras ’26 wrote a letter to her younger self, in Spanish, “going through the milestones of my life,” she said. “A lot of tears were shed.” She reflected on being an English language learner and not knowing how to read until third grade, what it was like being a first-generation college student, and how her pregnancy at 19 pushed her to not become a stereotype and graduate with her bachelor’s degree.

“It reminded me that every kid needs a champion supporting them,” Contreras, an English learning teacher on special assignment, said. “I remembered the feeling of wanting to speak with other kids but not being able to.” The experience reaffirmed her commitment to ensuring her students get the resources they need to meet their educational and language goals.

All six students presented their autoethnographies at the International Conference on Education and Justice at UCLA in September. “It was really nice having people come up and tell us we did an amazing job,” Cordova said. “They connected with our stories, which are so important to tell so people know how kids having similar experiences can be impacted both positively and negatively.”

An editor of a peer-reviewed journal approached the group and suggested they submit their work once it is complete, and they also have the opportunity to turn the project into a book. “They didn’t believe me when I suggested we publish their work, but the conference was affirming for them,” Bjork said. “They all work with students in some capacity, and I think this experience affirmed who they are as mentors and role models to the younger generation.”

Bjork centers her teaching around empowering students and being a “yes” in a world of “nos.” This was instilled in her by her late advisor Jean Anyon, a critical theorist and researcher in education. “Jean was so good at making seemingly overwhelming ideas and projects engaging, fun, and transformative,” Bjork said. “She was an incredible mentor to me and I carry her spirit with me when I work with doctoral students.”