The Professor is Still Learning, by CLS Sandoval

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

CLS Sandoval’s The Professor is Still Learning is a self-reflexive work that turns the expectation of learning from student to the professor. Sandoval’s poetry places the professor in a number of contexts where she is vulnerable, and able to see her deficiencies while still hoping for better.

She begins with memories from her PhD program and in an American Sign Language class. She reflects on moments when she interacted with other professors, students, and colleagues, accepting her shortcomings and regrets. While left somewhat discouraged in some moments, it is her students and her hope for a better future for them that she leaves us with, understanding that she will always keep learning.

"CLS Sandoval’s The Professor is Still Learning digs into the chaos and toxicity of the academic world. This is a world I have been inside all my life, and her insights and descriptions go so far beyond the banality of most cliche ridden discussions of teaching and learning. This is full of the emotion and turmoil every professor has to face when they come face to face with the reality of ableism, racism, sexism and ambition. Her work is exceptional and complex. It is beautiful in the way it witnesses."

—John Brantingham, Professor and author of Life: Orange to Pear and other works

CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She’s presented at communication conferences, served as a poetry and flash editor, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, three chapbooks, and both flash and poetry pieces in literary journals, recently including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Radical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own. She is raising her daughter, son, and dog with her husband in Walnut, CA.