Donna Thompson (she/her/hers/ella/suya) is a Yale Class of ’88 alum originally from Flint, Michigan and now living in Tempe, Arizona. While at Yale, Donna majored in English/British Studies and was in Timothy Dwight College.
Donna had no idea that she wanted to be a teacher when she started at Yale in 1984. In fact, she planned to major in chemistry and go to graduate school to study nuclear chemistry. “There was no way I was going to purposefully enter into the professional shadow of half the women I knew,” she wrote to me. After finding her passion in reading Milton’s poetry, though, Donna decided to switch her major from Chemistry to British Studies. After graduating, she attended Duke University on a Patricia Roberts Harris Graduate Fellowship, earning her Master’s degree in English Literature with a certificate in Women’s Studies. “I found that one of the experiences I most enjoyed in graduate school was teaching,” Donna reflected.
Donna went on to teach American Literature and American History in North Carolina and English in Illinois. In 2000, she was hired as a founding faculty member at the newest community and technical college in Washington state, Cascadia College. Since then, she has served as the lead faculty for Women’s and Gender Studies at Chandler-Gilbert Community College (CGCC) and the Program Coordinator for Faculty of Color Recruitment and Retention for the Maricopa Community College District. Nowadays, Donna is the president of the CGCC Faculty Senate and the Academic Affairs Faculty Coordinator of CGCC’s Multicultural and Co-Curricular Programs. Additionally, she chairs the district-wide instructional council on Ethnic Studies and leads statewide task forces in Women’s and Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies.
Though Donna didn’t directly study education at Yale, she fondly remembers the ways some of her favorite professors “made [her] think critically and reflectively and how they created a safe space where the experience of learning was engaging, challenging, and thought provoking.” She credits these professors with showing her good practices in education and teaching before she ever began her own career.
When asked what she loves about teaching now, Donna replied, “Being able to discuss and engage with material you love for a living can’t be beat.” She also emphasized that “the role that education plays in the lives of individuals and their communities cannot be underestimated.” There are plenty of challenges too, though, as Donna explains: “I live in a state where funding for my college district was written out of the state budget for a number of years, where the teaching of ethnic studies in high schools has been challenged and demonized, legislation has been proposed that would fine public school teachers $5,000 for teaching controversial topics like racism if they don’t present the topics in a balanced way, and where college retention/graduation rates for students of color lag far behind their white counterparts.”
Donna has lots of advice for current Yale students interested in education. “Take every opportunity available to teach/facilitate learning, [and] notice all experience you gain from the informal and outside of the classroom learning facilitation you do or take part in,” she says. “If you decide to become a teacher at any level, I strongly recommend that you continue taking classes. Not courses in education but in things you love or have always wanted to learn…Being able to reconnect with your life as a student will provide insights that can’t be gleaned from books, workshops, classes, or degrees.”
Donna graciously wrote a longer message to students interested in education, which you can read here.