This piece is part of a series by participants in the Winter 2026 Open Knowledge Fellowship, coordinated by the Mina Rees Library. Fellows will share insight into the process of converting a syllabus to openly-licensed and/or zero-cost resources, as well as their experiences teaching undergraduate courses at CUNY.

Marilyn Stotts is an educator and community organizer currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She teaches a course on School Communities and Children at Lehman College and researches how families protest for equitable schools.

In the fall semester, I assigned a textbook that cost $130. For students working at NY’s minimum wage, that’s a full day’s work for a textbook published 12 years ago! It bothered me deeply, but it was my first time teaching this course about community, schools, and families (and college moreover), and I needed the textbook to teach me what to focus the class on. As a longtime educator new to teaching college, I had dreamt of leading a classroom where I could nurture students’ critical thinking and knowledge building, and push them as nascent scholars, without positioning myself as “dominant.” Requiring them to purchase an expensive textbook did not match this vision. Some adjunct instructors experience tight controls on what they can teach, but I was on the opposite end of the spectrum with a wide berth to tailor the course to my expertise and the students’ needs.

I set the tone for our class in the first week by naming my beliefs about our roles in the classroom. My messages were simple and direct: “You are choosing to be here on a Tuesday night, so I assume you have big goals, and I believe it is my job to support your goals, not to stand in your way.” Students nodded politely, but I knew my actions would matter more than what I said. The first test came from a fictional scenario in the required textbook. The book told a short yarn about a fictional bus driver saying mean things about Black children and concluded with something along the lines of, “The bus driver’s language was harsh, but we can’t know what is in his heart.”  Some students quietly signaled discomfort in their small group discussions. I wanted to amplify and support their criticality from my position as the instructor, so I spoke plainly, “I didn’t like that story when I read it because it’s an example of anti-Black racism. I don’t think the authors should have included it. It is not important what is in his heart because what he said was very harmful to the Black children in the story.” If I wanted a classroom environment where students can explore and write their counter-stories, I can’t be silent when a textbook offers stories that forgive racism without atonement. 

I hated that students spent their money to read this. So I started looking for other alternative textbooks, but that didn’t feel like the right solution because, well first they all cost a lot of money, and  second, focusing on a textbook crowds out readings from education luminaries like Gloria Ladson-Billings, Lisa Delpit, and Luis Moll. When I saw the email about the Open Knowledge Fellowship offered through CUNY Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library….oh sweet relief! This program would enable and equip me to put together a syllabus that draws on the best readings in contemporary education research and aligns with my students’ interests at no cost to them. I was HONORED and RELIEVED a few weeks later when I was selected to participate. This semester, Spring 2026, I am better able to carry out my promise to support my students’ goals. In addition to reading Open Access resources, borrowing from the campus library, and digging into contemporary journalism about education policies and events, my students have read more rigorous and engaging texts than that $130 textbook and they’ve found Open Access resources on their own. To CUNY Graduate Students who feel the tensions inherent in leading classrooms as an adjunct, I highly recommend applying to future cohorts of the Open Knowledge Fellowship to find the community and the tools that will support your love of knowledge and your values for serving students.

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