After 40 years as African American Studies instructor at Fresno City College, Kehinde Solwazi was close to retirement.
At the same time, 20-year-old Karla Kirk was a returning student at FCC majoring in business. But Karla would soon take a class with Solwazi and her dream would be altered.
To this day, Kirk is not sure what exactly Solwazi saw in her, but he was convinced she was the best person to take up his position. Somehow he knew business was the wrong path for her.
Kirk accepted Solwazi’s advice. Now here she is, half way through her first semester of teaching at FCC.
But it was a path Kirk could have never imagined. Though her mother was a teacher, she fought the urge to go into teaching herself.  She worried that her impatient nature would not allow her to be a good teacher.
Now, Kirk says the most difficult thing she has learned as a teacher so far hasn’t been in the teaching itself.
“The challenge is fulfilling all the other duties. This school promotes a high level of involvement with the faculty, which I love because I really want to be involved. Time management has been the biggest challenge. I love teaching, that’s what I love to do,” said Kirk.
As an adjunct instructor at FCC, she had begun to hear about the challenge of looming budget cuts. “Because this is my first year teaching, I don’t really have anything to compare it to. But I hear how the changes have been affecting my fellow faculty members,” said Kirk. “The caps on our classes are a constant source of frustration for the faculty. We really want to fill up our classes but that’s just not an option right now.”
Apart from that, Kirk is fully aware of the struggles Kehinde Solwazi and Chicano Latino Studies professor Arturo Amaro faced in the early years of their disciplines. Both Amaro and Solwazi faced hostility from fellow faculty members who felt that Ethnic Studies were not valid academic fields.
In 1969, Trustee Lynn B. Ford was quoted in the Rampage in response to the creation of the first African-American studies class as saying, “I don’t feel this type of thing is educational. The few that want this course can get it some place other than this institution.”
“I really have no experience with that kind of hostility. I’ve had nothing but tremendous support, from the department, from the dean, from the faculty,” said Kirk. “I came into a 40-year program. I feel like education as a whole has advanced a lot. Even with the budget cuts I feel that the program is safe because it is so popular with students.”
And in a time where states such as Arizona want to eliminate the study of ethnic studies, Kirk believes she has a responsibility to carry the program into the future.
“It is disheartening, this push to go back to the exclusion of everyone’s historical and social education. It is a blatant display of white supremacy. What I mean by white supremacy is the belief that European ideals are set as the best and preferable. All of our histories are essential because we have all contributed to what really makes up America,” said Kirk.
Though California has made its reputation thanks to its diversity, Kirk says a lot of the issues that exist in Arizona exist in California because both states border Mexico.
“It is really an attack on the foundations of education. How can you be a proponent of education with this kind of legislation?” said Kirk. “It brings up the question of what is an immigrant and who is considered as having already been here. And maybe people forget that this used to be part of Mexico.”
Even with all these issues however, Kirk still has a burning desire to teach.
She loves watching people learn and seeing that click going on in their heads. She doesn’t teach students what to think, but how to think.
“Even if African American Studies isn’t every student’s area of interest, what’s important is their interest in the learning process. That they enjoy interacting with the material,” said Kirk. “I am excited to be doing something positive for the community. I am from Fresno. I grew up here. Now this is my adult effort to give back to my community. I’m happy to help educate.”