In today’s episode, Colin sits down with his a dear friend and Mentor that he met over a decade ago, in the University of San Francisco’s 'Teaching: Urban Education & Social Justice' Master’s Program. Whether schlepping him across the Bay Bridge to graduate seminars or connecting him with brilliant veteran Educators like Amy Crawford and Dana Moran at Berkeley High School’s Communication Arts & Sciences small school, where Colin cut his teeth student teaching, today’s guest is someone he lovingly refers to as “Uncle” and ”Sensei,” due to his profound wisdom, patience, support, perpetual reflection, and contagious courageous.   

Dr. Rick Ayers is an associate professor of education focusing on English language arts and secondary education, and a faculty member of the urban education and social justice cohort at the University of San Francisco. Professor Ayers received his MA from Mills College, his Ph.D from UC Berkeley, and focuses on language and literacy as well as curriculum and pedagogy, with particular emphasis on equity, social justice, and decolonial approaches to education. His writing, in blogs as well as publications, is on community-engaged scholarship and community organizing. Rick was an anti-war and anti-racist activist in the 1960s and 70s, and a cadre in the Weather Underground. 

Rick lives in Oakland, California with his wife Ilene. He spends time with his three children and three grandchildren as much as possible. He taught in the Communication Arts and Sciences small school at Berkeley High School, where he pioneered innovative and effective strategies for academic and social success for a diverse range of students. Rick was a core team member of the Berkeley High School Diversity Project. He is the co-author, with his brother Bill Ayers, of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom (now in its second edition); is co-author with Amy Crawford of Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher’s Guide to Books That Can Change Teens’ Lives; and is author of Studs Terkel’s Working: A Teaching Guide; as well as numerous chapters and journal articles. He has worked with Youth Radio, Youth Speaks, Voice of Witness, and other community and arts organizations and currently teaches a poetry seminar at San Quentin prison.

The Paper Plane is a podcast created and hosted by Colin Masashi Ehara, where he interviews people he is blessed and honored to share community with, and asks them about a book(s) that have had a transformational impact on their lives. In a society where literacy rates are steadily declining and a growing number of podcasts hosted by cishet men, un/consciously champion expressions of masculinity that come at the expense of women, femmes, and LGBTQIA2S+ (especially BIPOC) folx, this space aims to operate as a counter-narrative.

The Paper Plane is a space that intends to highlight the dire importance of relationships, community, dialogue, perpetual learning, honest expression as art, art as honest expression, and freedom for literacy and literacy for freedom. It speaks to planes of existence attached to the act of reading, but also as a metaphor for the “flights” we take as we sit in what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls “a one way interface” as readers, and how these “journeys” shape us…