When speaking about his efforts to challenge the educational status quo in ways that address systemic inequities, Dr. Stanley L. Johnson Jr. M.A. ’02 cites the late writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin.
“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t,” Baldwin once said, before adding: “The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
That Johnson draws inspiration in his work as an educational researcher and leader from one of his favorite authors comes as no surprise. After receiving his B.A. in American Literature and Culture from UCLA and then spending two years playing professional tennis, he enrolled in the LMU School of Education/Teach For America Partnership program in the fall of 2000. “My intention was to fulfill the two-year teaching commitment, then get a Ph.D. in literature and become an English professor in higher ed,” Johnson says. “But the LMU/TFA program changed my life.”