Amber Booth-McCoy had just one condition when Dr. Susan Hoffpauir, the Clinton School’s Academic Dean, asked her to teach an elective course known as “Power, Privilege, and Oppression.”
“I told her I would, but only if I could call it ‘Down with O.P.P,’” Booth-McCoy said. “She loved it, and then every time she called me she would be singing ‘Down with O.P.P.’ and that made it even better!”
There was just one problem. As the class began to meet, she quickly realized none of her students were old enough to know the song.
“They didn’t get the reference! It hurt really bad,” Booth-McCoy laughed. “I said, ‘You mean to tell me that none of you took this course because the name of this class is ‘Down with O.P.P.?’ They were like, ‘No. What is that?’”
Lost musical references aside, the course was an immediate hit.
The “Down with O.P.P.” elective is offered to second-year Clinton School students and emphasizes the philosophies of cultural humility and cultural responsiveness. Students explore the interconnection of power, privilege, and oppression and the different ways they affect their personal biases, values, and worldviews.
Booth-McCoy’s career experiences made her an ideal fit as its instructor. She serves as a Senior Diversity Specialist and Manager of Intercultural Education in the UAMS Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Additionally, she is the CEO and Founder of the Diversity Booth, Inc., which utilizes strategic and creative approaches to DEI training and workshops for businesses and organizations. She sits on a number of DEI-related boards, including Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Beautiful Feet, Beautiful Minds, Just Communities of Arkansas, and the NAACP, and is Vice Chair to the City of Little Rock Racial and Cultural Diversity Commission.
With her unique background in trainings and workshops, Booth-McCoy knew that she wanted to make her course’s experience interactive and fun. She welcomed guest lecturers like Donald Wood, previously the Executive Director for Just Communities of Arkansas; Dr. Joynicole Martinez, founder and CEO of the Alchemist Agency; and Dr. Sara Tariq, Associate Dean of Student Affairs at UAMS. Keeping with the theme of music, she designed the course’s syllabus to look like an album cover. She named each lesson after classic and thematic songs: “Power” by Kanye West, “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson, “I am Woman” by Helen Reddy, and “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday. She even built a playlist of the course’s songs for the students on Spotify.
“Because I am so used to facilitating workshops, both at UAMS and in my own personal business, it was an extremely interactive course,” Booth-McCoy explained. “In every session there were conversations, small group discussions, and large group discussions on the topic that we were discussing that day. They really got to unpack a lot of things.”
Booth-McCoy said that some of the early reflections she read from students provided her with one of her first eye-opening experiences as an instructor.
“When they turned in their papers for the first reflection assignment, I cried,” she said. “There was so much hurt. They were supposed to look at one of their salient identities and write about a time that they were either proud or ashamed and why. There was so much internalized oppression in these papers.”
But her optimism returned as the semester progressed. And Booth-McCoy discovered something else as she got more and more sessions under her belt – she really, really enjoyed teaching. She loved the authenticity of the students, looked forward to their group discussions, and appreciated how willing they were to be open about all of their different experiences.
Booth-McCoy grew up in a family of educators. Her father worked as a Principal in the Pulaski County School District and her uncle was the Principal at Little Rock’s Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School. And while she did have previous experience leading workshops and building academic programs – she created UAMS’s Junior and Senior STEM Academies – this was her first time to take charge of a college classroom.
Next, Booth-McCoy will teach “Down with O.P.P.” to a group of Clinton School Online students in the spring. Looking back at the fall semester, she said that she continues to be amazed by the growth she saw in her students from their first assignment to their last.
“When I read their last paper of the semester, I cried again,” Booth-McCoy said. “Because you could see how much of this that they had unpacked and where they were able to put labels to things. There are things that seem abstract right up until the point that you can label them. And bias, patriarchy, racism, discrimination, and bigotry are those things. I was excited to see how they were going to use that information to be public servants.”
“I called my mom after reading their final papers and I was like, ‘Is this what teaching feels like?’ And to my dad, who is my favorite educator, I said, ‘I can actually see what they’re taking away and what they’re learning.’ I called my dad and my sister, who are both educators, and I told them, ‘If this is what teaching feels like, I’m going to do this forever.’”
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