Authenticity: Honouring Self and Others in Practice

Abstract: This paper explores the connections between Storefront 101 students’ stories of hopeful re-engagement in the learning process and instructors ’ accounts of their teaching experiences through the conceptual framework of instructor authenticity. We examine dimensions of authenticity with particular respect to the context of radical humanities for marginalized students and consider implications for our understanding of transformational learning. Background and Theoretical Context The transformative potential – for students, instructors, and society – is what attracted us to the Clemente Program, a radical humanities course for the poor and marginalized that is spreading across the United States, Mexico and Canada. In 1995 journalist and social critic Earl Shorris (1997) launched his newly developed humanities course for the poor and disenfranchised in New York City: “If you want real power, legitimate power, the kind that comes from the people and belongs to the people, you must understand politics. The humanities will help ” (p. 6). Inspired by a belief in the power of education and intrigued by Shorris’s vision of radical social change through the humanities, we joined Storefront 101, our local iteration of th