Michele Johnson wins York University Teaching Award
June 8, 2021
The mark of an outstanding teacher is the high esteem in which their pupils hold them.
Since arriving at York University 19 years ago, Michele Johnson has taught many graduate students, some of whom felt compelled to nominate the History professor for the Faculty of Graduate Studies Teaching Award that recognizes excellence in teaching & supervisory brilliance, initiatives in graduate program & curricula development and professional, scholarly and teaching development of graduate students.
The Associate Dean, Students in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, was the recipient of the prestigious honour on May 6.
University of Toronto Assistant Professor Funke Aladejebi and York University History Professor Molly Ladd-Taylor initiated the nomination process.
Aladejebi met Johnson in 2008 while she was pursuing her Master’s.
In the nomination letter, she and Ladd-Taylor said Johnson is an outstanding teacher and mentor who has shaped the study of race, gender and Black Studies at York University and beyond.
“She encouraged me to go on to my PhD. and was my thesis supervisor,” Aladejebi, a Black Canadian history specialist, said. “She single-handedly changed the course and trajectory of my life and instilled in me a level of confidence and self-assurance I didn’t know I had. She continuously poured into me, as she does with so many of her students, critical engagement, endless support and unwavering empathy. She never let me give up, held me to a rigorous standard of academic excellence and let me know that she believed in me. I am here because of her and hope to honour her by being the kind of incredible supervisor, mentor and friend she is.”
Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert was among 25 former and current students and colleagues who wrote letters supporting the nomination.
“Professor Johnson supervised my academic work as both a Master’s and PhD. student and, at every stage, she took tremendous care to mentor and support me, encourage my intellectual growth, instill confidence and give me all the tools I needed to see my projects through to completion,” said the Hip Hop historian and producer/researcher of the ‘Colouring Book’ that’s a production company aiming to promote the visibility of creative and moving fiction and non-fiction stories that represent the full spectrum of societal diversity.
“I have had the opportunity to be her student, teach with her in university classrooms and work alongside her as the Director of the Tubman Institute. In this time, I have realized that I have never known a professor who cares so deeply about the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being of their students and who encourages her students to practice the same kind of mentorship as they become educators themselves. She touches and transforms the lives of everyone she encounters. Her influence exceeds measurement.”
History professor Denise Challenger has known Johnson since she arrived at York University.
“What I find most remarkable is the seemingly effortless way she simultaneously produces rigorous scholarship and remains available to students and to the community,” she said. “I witnessed these multiple facets of Michele while working at the Harriet Tubman Institute as the Project Co-ordinator. At all times, she puts the needs of others before herself. She’s truly inspirational.”
Over the years, Johnson has taught more than 100 students in four graduate classes, ‘Doing History: An Introduction’, ‘Issues in Comparative Women’s & Gender History: Late 18th and 19 Centuries & 20th Century’ and ‘History of Enslavement of the Americas’, and graduate courses at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
She has also directly supervised eight PhDs (complete and ongoing at York University and UWI), 15 Master’s (complete) at both universities, three Master’s (ongoing) at York and served on the Supervisory Committee for six completed PhDs at York and Examiner for 11 doctoral dissertations.
“These numbers do not tell the whole story, however, as Professor Johnson frequently takes on the important but largely invisible work of supporting and sustaining students who are not officially her advisees,” said her nominators.
Dr. Michele Johnson with her prestigious award (Photo contributed)
In York University Department of History since July 2002, Johnson goes above and beyond for her students.
“Once you become my student, I will constantly ask, ‘Are you OK’? she said. “It’s what you do for students that aren’t doing well. If someone is having serious problems, they can’t concentrate. If I see something that’s not right, I am going to try my utmost to make things better.”
Raised in Wait-A-Bit in the northwest Jamaican parish of Trelawny, Johnson was turned on to teaching by her late mother – Mildred Guy-Johnson -- who graduated from Bethlehem Teacher Training College (now Bethlehem Moravian College) in the early 1960s and taught throughout the island. After migrating to the United States, she switched to early childhood education in New York and Baltimore.
Completing high school at Knox College, Johnson did her undergraduate degree and Master’s in History at UWI.
“My history is very literary and I like the language of the 19th century and the storytelling about Jamaican people,” said the 2016 Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University. “That is what really arouses me. I have been very fortunate to teach about our people.”
Finishing another Master’s and a PhD. in History at Johns Hopkins in Maryland, she returned to teaching at UWI for eight years before coming to Canada in 2001.
Jamaican-born historian Franklyn Knight — who in 1978 was the first Black faculty member at Johns Hopkins to secure academic tenure — alerted Johnson, who he mentored, to a job opening at York University.
“I put in the application not thinking much would come out of it,” she said. “I was shortlisted and I decided to come and check it out. Though I was offered the job, I wasn’t sure I would stay, so I took unpaid leave from UWI. Also, my daughter had just graduated from St. Andrew High School for Girls and we were trying to figure out what to do next. She liked Canada, so I resigned from UWI and stayed here.”
Asked why she has spent her entire teaching career at York University, the answer is swift and simple.
“The students,” said Johnson whose role models are Knight and retired UWI lecturers Barry Higman and Swithin Wilmot. “When you walk onto the university campus, sometimes you forget you are in Canada because of the diverse student body. I also know that there’s a possibility that students will get the help and mentorship they need at this institution. There’s a group of us who are passionate about helping students, many of whom are wonderful and bright.”
She has served the York community in a variety of capacities, including Co-ordinator of the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program, York’s Affirmative Action Officer and Director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diasporas from 2013 to 2018 and was instrumental in the creation of Jamaican Creole courses.
Handpicked by retired UWI Linguistics professor Hubert Devonish, Dr. Clive Forrester taught those courses for eight years before joining the University of Waterloo Faculty of Arts in 2016.
“Michele is one of those professors who strives to be both innovative and accommodating in the way that she approaches the practice of teaching,” he said. “This was aptly demonstrated when, in 2008, she facilitated the process for Jamaican Creole courses to come to York as a response to student queries about having Indigenous Caribbean languages at the university. Her teaching enriches the lives of her students as well as communities from which they come from.”
Johnson, whose research interests and publications reflect Jamaican cultural history and the histories of gender relations, race/racialization, labour, domestic slavery and domestic service in Jamaica and Canada, was recognized with the Dean’s Award for Teaching in the Faculty of Arts in 2004-5.
