Forgive the third-person weirdness of the following brief biography. Bits of pieces of this have been used at conferences, on department websites, and alongside publications.
Writer, Techie, and Typophile Residing in Texas
Christopher Scott Wyatt writes with technology and he writes about technology. His passion for digital design dates back to high school and today he continues to study how technology shapes communication and learning.
Wyatt was born and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley, not far from Sequoia National Park. You might describe his roots as humble, especially the early years living in what are now the “Smoking Palm Tree Mobile Estates.” Mobile home parks should never be called “estates” — an oddly common practice.
By second grade, Wyatt knew he wanted to be a writer. A few years later, he was writing plays and staging puppet productions. He even made costumes for lead actor Enzio and other cast members. As an adolescent, Wyatt admired the works of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, though he was limited to reading them and watching film adaptations of great plays. Plays were meant to be seen on the stage, something Wyatt realized in college. He has been a supporter of and subscriber to several regional theatres.
In elementary school, a resource specialist introduced Wyatt to the Apple IIe and Atari 400/800 computers. His father purchased a Timex Sinclair 1000 during those early years of personal computing. By junior high, Wyatt was programming on a Commodore VIC-20. Computer programming is poetry, a specialized form of writing and storytelling. When the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh arrived, Wyatt was soon programming for those systems.
Always a news junkie, Wyatt joined the school newspaper in high school. Merging his writing and technical skills, Wyatt helped maintain the computers and early Apple LaserWriter. Wyatt even coded a text editor for classroom use. Wyatt was awarded a scholarship by the University of Southern California, where he earned undergraduate degrees in English education and print journalism.
After returning to his native Central Valley, Wyatt followed a meandering path through teaching, small business ownership, corporate life, and back to education. It was a long and winding road, with lots of potholes and detours. Rough roads might build character, but they also damage suspension systems.
In 2004, Wyatt returned to school for the fifth time since completing his undergraduate studies. This time, Wyatt completed a master of arts, with distinction, in English Composition Theory and Rhetoric at California State University, Fresno. His thesis explored the design on online writing courses, suggesting poor design choices create a barrier to learning.
Having endured Valley summer days above 110F, Wyatt and his wife traded hot summers for harsh winters while they each completed graduate degrees at the University of Minnesota. Wyatt earned a doctorate in Rhetoric, Scientific and Technical Communication, specializing in instructional technology and students with cognitive challenges. His dissertation research suggested typography, colors, and media content affect the learning of students with autism spectrum disorders.
After concluding -20F is worse than extreme heat, Wyatt and his wife relocated to Western Pennsylvania, where they lived for eight years. Attending Chatham University’s respected Master of Fine Arts program, Wyatt studied Film and Digital Technology. His research and thesis film focused on kinetic texts, animated works that emphasize words and typography while including other media elements.
Today, Wyatt and his family live in Central Texas, which is similar to Central California: hot, dry, and flat. Now, the couple has lived in the West, East, North Central, and South Central regions of the United States. Ideally, Texas is the last destination for the household.
Wyatt owes his success to his parents, his extended family, a handful of good mentors, and his wife. Most of all, his wife.
Now, back to a more natural first-person autobiographical sketch.
From Nothing and Nowhere
I was born in Visalia, California, in 1968. My arrival was not routine. I was a Franklin breech delivery, with both arms behind my head. The physician resorted to using forceps. Delivery resulted in brachial plexus injuries, spinal trauma, cranial fractures, left temporal lobe damage, a broken left arm, and right side paralysis, which lasted nine months. Doctors assumed brain trauma would limit my intellectual capacity and cautioned my parents that I might never be independent. I still have partial paralysis and atrophy of the right arm from Erb’s Palsy. I had to wear a back brace for scoliosis during middle school and high school, with physical therapy throughout my life.
Central California is a region the Brookings Institute describes as “disconnected islands of concentrated poverty.” As an elementary school student, I encountered economic and social biases. Ivanhoe Elementary and Elbow School, where I attended first through sixth grades, featured an all-Caucasian faculty teaching a predominantly Hispanic student body. The honors classrooms included a few Asian-American students and the children of local farmers, teachers, and other elites. Students were grouped by class and race.
My desire to teach and to reform educational practices represents a response to these experiences. In a 2005 Brookings study, Katrina’s Window: Confronting Concentrated Poverty Across America, Fresno and the Central Valley compared unfavorably to New Orleans. The Fresno region exhibited greater disparity and more extreme poverty than any U. S. metropolitan region. The student populations for which I advocate include large numbers of immigrants and children of immigrants, most from impoverished backgrounds.
Les than 4 percent of Ivanhoe residents possess a four-year college degree or better, compared to 27 percent of all Californians. In Ivanhoe, the number of college graduates remains “insignificant” according to state data. The only college graduates most school-aged residents in Ivanhoe interact with on a daily basis are their teachers.
I was the first member of my family to earn a bachelor’s degree. According to state data in 2010, a mere 3.2% of Ivanhoe residents held a college degree and “0.0%” had earned a graduate degree. When I was in elementary school, our teachers chose not to live in the community. If I were to return to the region, I would represent an anomaly. By comparison, many of my university classmates have been third- and fourth-generation college students.
Teaching Bias
How did I escape the emotional traps of Ivanhoe and the Central Valley? Which individuals and situations offered me a path out of an impoverished community? Without question, my parents and extended family helped me overcome the educational system and a culture of despair. One teacher and one school resource specialist also empowered me to challenge expectations. Though they were told I would be cognitively impaired for life, my parents don’t tolerate giving up or making excuses. You can always ask others for help, which isn’t the same as giving up.
Before we moved to Ivanhoe, we had lived in Bakersfield. Our homes were mobile homes. The second one was in a park next to Highway 99. When teachers called my parents “trailer park trash” and told them I had no future, in my presence, my parents reassured me that I could accomplish anything.
My parents taught me success comes from hard work and a desire to learn. Despite qualifying for free lunches and special programs, I either took a brown-bag lunch or worked in the school cafeteria for my meals. Cafeteria work included loading dishes into the commercial steam washer, in fifth grade. I learned the pride of hard work followed by an earned meal.
Teaching expresses my faith in the essential roles of knowledge, creativity, and earned confidence in overcoming poverty. Unlike too many of my childhood instructors, I believe that students from marginalized communities have the same potentials as their more fortunate peers. With opportunities to learn, with invitations to explore, and with permission to sometimes fail spectacularly, children from all backgrounds develop the confidence and skills necessary for personal success.
Students are sensitive to teacher attitudes, biases, and prejudices. Statistically, the majority of students from my community gave up, surrendering to the low expectations. Many of my friends and family members lost hope and remain trapped in the cycle of generational poverty. Teachers became obstacles, instead of mentors and agents of change. They viewed our community with pity, not understanding or hope. Social and political elites continue to offer tokens of their tolerance for Central Valley residents, instead of genuine tools for change.
Mentors Matter
During first grade, the school district tested students for placement. The resource teacher, Mr. McCarthy, determined that my placement for the previous two years in special education had been a mistake. Instead, I qualified for the Mentally Gifted Minor / Gifted and Talented Education (MGM/GATE) program. From second grade through sixth, Mr. McCarthy served as a steadfast advocate and mentor, often challenging the school administration and district officials.
Mr. McCarthy enjoyed computers and embraced their potential for personalized academic remediation. He used an early Atari computer to assist my reading and writing development, enabling me to reach and surpass state grade level expectations. By fourth grade, despite the objections of teachers, I was in the honors classrooms. Mr. McCarthy taught me chess, basic geometry, and discussed books with me for two to three hours each week. He changed my life by ignoring statistics and previous test results.
As I entered the fifth grade, a new teacher took over the classroom. Mr. B was a gifted artist, musician, storyteller, and more. Each week a student would sit for a caricature drawing, with Mr. B interviewing the student to illustrate a future career. When asked what I wanted to be, I told him, “I am a writer.” He assured me I could be a writer, someday. The next day, I brought him the books I had made at home, bound with staples and colored electrical tape. Mr. B agreed, I was a writer. He invited me to write a play that was produced by classmates.
These educators believed every student could learn. They looked beyond the economic realities of Ivanhoe and ignored or even challenged previous test results and teacher evaluations. These men taught me that great teachers help students discover personal passions. Both men went on to become school district officials, implementing badly needed reforms throughout the school district.
Later, three outstanding high school teachers who rejected conventional teaching methods and promoted experimentation gave me the skills for university success. Sometimes, my writing or computer projects ended in failure, but these teachers taught me how to learn from what didn’t work. Thanks to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. B, I understood that opportunities to succeed come with the risk of temporary failure.
Digital Literacy
My childhood experiences in Ivanhoe led to my conviction that digital literacy enhances learning and ultimately enables upward mobility. However, as an instructor and researcher I remain wary of adopting technologies without firm pedagogical foundations. First-generation university students often find technology and digital communities barriers to participation, not empowering tools for communication. Despite the increasing affordability of technology, students from different backgrounds enter our classes with distinct relationships to technology. Studies have shown that how we use computers and the Internet varies across ethnic and economic boundaries.
Digital media literacy grants access to middle-class culture and civic participation in the United States. Teaching students to compose texts with a computer is insufficient. Digital literacy explores the rhetorical affordances of audio and video, in addition to texts. I explore kinetic texts, spoken poetry, and digital filmmaking in my writing and communications courses because familiarity with those products leads to opportunities. I want students to recognize that technology empowers them to topple cultural obstacles.
Success is Personal
Mentors taught me that although success might be defined by society as rising out of poverty, real success is measured personally. We set our own goals and determine our own milestones. For me, becoming a university professor and researcher marks success. In many ways, my success is an act of social protest. Achieving that goal represents a refutation of the assumptions that trapped so many in my community.