Creative alumni return to teach at New College

Miles Iton ’14 has made his creative mark all over the world—as a filmmaker, an activist, a Fulbright scholar, a community leader and a teacher. During the spring semester, he brought his educational vision back to his alma mater, and began a partnership with New College that will continue to inspire and expand.

Along with three other alumni (teaching assistants Naimul Chowdhury ’14 and Eileen Calub ’18, and communications/content manager Donovan Brown ’13), Iton launched the pilot for his 2019-founded Lo-Fi Language Learning Arts ‘n EFL Training Program at New College.

This three-month virtual initiative was designed for​ “artists, educators and arts educators” (emcees, songwriters, music producers, DJs, storytellers, spoken word artists, etc.) who are interested in pursuing careers as English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructors. The program wrapped in early July, and Iton and his team are currently finishing the edits on the student videos from the first cohort.

“We’re grateful to New College for hosting Lo-Fi’s pilot, as we’ve now been able to start expanding into grander education program design projects thanks to this endeavor,” Iton said. “I’m also personally grateful for the opportunity to lead a classroom at my alma mater, and to bring other students the opportunity to use New College’s existing resources to explore careers in education even without an available concentration.”

Offering the program at New College was an opportunity made possible by the “New College and the Cross College Alliance in the Community” program—funded by a five-year $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Ten participants—some from New College and others from the local (and even international) community—earned up to six transferable college credit hours; followed a guided curriculum toward completing both a 120-hour Master TEFL certification course through BridgeTEFL; and attended a twice-a-week series of creative curriculum design workshops including a “Floetry” and “Freestyle Course.”

“It was an experience the Lo-Fi team was very pleased to oversee. Much like when I used to lead a ‘Freestyle Tutorial’ at New College when I was an undergraduate, it allowed me as the teacher/facilitator to share a ground with students through a mutual exchange of our aesthetic sensibilities,” Iton said. “Our ‘History of Hip-Hop’ class touched the internet kid in all of us, and the two guest sessions we had—aided by longtime New College performer (and the homie!) Sekajipo—were notable successes. Our panel series was one of my personal favorites, where we broke from a traditional class day to have a panel of artists, educators and arts educators chime in from around the world (panelists from as far as Mexico and St. Vincent, thanks to Zoom life).”

Building on these successes, Iton and his fellow instructors are now developing a curriculum centered around “the entrepreneurship skills necessary for teaching artistry,” which they presented at Harvard Graduate School of Education’s 2021 Can’t Stop Hip Hop education conference. Iton and Chowdhury (both U.S. Department of State program exchange alumni) also received a grant from the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund to further support the Lo-Fi course.

“As the program evolves past this pilot at New College, we will thankfully be able to invest in the longevity of our digital crafting activities and capabilities thanks to Partners of the Americas and the U.S. Department of State,” Iton said. “We believe it’s important to have tools on hand for participants to engage not just in the theories around cross-cultural media literacy but also to have some practice. You’ve got to step up to the mic yourself every now and again.”

As for the future of Lo-Fi at New College?

“We’re hoping to offer another virtual (hybrid?) iteration this spring that will be accessible to other Sarasota schools that are part of the Cross College Alliance,” Iton said.

This course is among many contributions Iton has made to New College—both before and after graduating. A current member of the New College Alumni Association Board of Directors, Iton came to New College from Homestead, Florida. He was the first Black co-president of the New College Student Alliance (NCSA) and a co-founder of the Black Student Union (BSU).

In 2018, he created and directed a film called Sincerely, The Black Kids, which chronicled the challenges young Black student government leaders face in academia and premiered at Sainer Pavilion. Iton created a “Freestyle + Floetry Tutorial” at New College, and his philosophy senior thesis was entitled Cultural Gentrification: Hip-Hop & Racial Epistemologies in the United States.

While at New College, Iton founded the live music and media marketing imprint, n.e.Bodied Entertainment. He departed as a Fulbright award grantee to National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan, where he graduated from the Institute of Creative Industries Design. He is also currently producing commercial content in the K-12 education industry as part of effct.org.

About the alumni on the Lo-Fi team:

Chowdhury is an educator and language acquisition enthusiast who has taken the lead on keeping Lo-Fi trainees caught up on their BridgeTEFL coursework. As an alumni ambassador for the Critical Language Scholarship Program, Chowdhury sees enormous potential for Lo-Fi trainees to become a source of cultural exchange and competency for global youth. By learning about the diversity of peoples and dialects in the United States, children will be better equipped for engagement with people from all walks of life, Chowdhury believes. He will apply his Mandarin language proficiency to tailor arts education lessons to Taiwanese youth.

Calub is a TEFL-certified English teacher and lifelong language lover who is eager to assist Lo-Fi trainees in completing BridgeTEFL coursework. As a recipient of four United States Department of State/Defense scholarships for study abroad: the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (Mandarin Chinese), the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (German), the Critical Language Scholarship Program (Turkish) and the David L. Boren Scholarship (Turkish), Calub strongly believes in the mission of Lo-Fi Language Learning to empower artists and creatives with intercultural competence. During the pilot program, Calub assisted in preparing trainees to present teaching materials that highlighted the diversity of American society and fostered an inclusive classroom environment.

Brown has dedicated his career to serving others. He was an English volunteer in the Peace Corps, serving in Sierra Leone, West Africa, from 2017 to 2019. After returning, Brown served as a community organizer in Jacksonville with the Interfaith Coalition for Action, Reconciliation and Empowerment (ICARE). He led a mental health campaign that resulted in the police department committing to train infield officers in the nationally recognized Crisis Intervention Team program. Brown joined Lo-Fi Language Learning because he believes in its mission to empower educators and creatives to pursue their passions (while using their skills to provide a stable means of income for themselves).

Click here to learn more about the Lo-Fi Language Learning’s Arts ‘n EFL Training program. For more information, visit instagram.com/lofilanguage or email [email protected].

Abby Weingarten is the senior editor in the Office of Communications & Marketing.