“Finding out who you are is a lifelong process, I’m still finding out about myself,” says Dr. Wendy White, a humanities instructor with a passion not just for her work and students, but life all around.

Over the last 11 years, White has taught poetry and philosophy at California State University Dominguez Hills, UCSC, San Francisco State University and California State University East Bay. She decided become a college professor after teaching workshops for Pacifica radio in Los Angeles, and receiving praise from colleagues and friends.

“I always believed that if my heart is not into it, I’m not passionate about it, then I can’t do it. There’s no point in doing it. I believe in living a life of passion.” White received her doctorate from the University of California Santa Cruz in the History of Consciousness program. She has been teaching Humanities 9, Humanities 10 and Humanities 18 at De Anza College since 2004.

One of the best things about teaching is “when the light goes on. When I see that look in the eye that says excitement or interest, or some type of affirmation … when students share what they honestly think or feel, that makes me feel real good.”

In her classes, White teaches controversial topics like religion and the critique of the western perspective. Not everyone is comfortable taking in this information, especially coming from, as she puts it, a “black woman with dreads.” White strives to open the minds of her students by stepping on the toes of their beliefs and “calling out the elephant in the room.” White says working at “De Anza has been most challenging,” due to its mixture of students, who are here for a number of reasons. She realizes not everyone is here because they want to be.

Nonetheless, former students say they appreciated her class.

“I liked it a lot. It was very challenging. She gets you to think,” said one former student who adds that the class left him with the ability to “align what my beliefs are compared to the material she teaches and to see if there was a correlation or not.”

“As a colleague, she is so incredibly generous and open and very helpful, funny, and supportive. I think Wendy White is a very important asset to this campus,” said Maristella Huerta, a sociology instructor whose office is near White’s

Among her other passions are hiking, camping, kayaking, listening to “good music,” watching independent films, and writing poetry and essays. White also plays music and sings on occasion, as well as dancing salsa and sometimes drawing.

“She has a passion that I find you can’t find from most teachers. It makes me have a passion for what she’s teaching,” said Mayra Miranda, a former Humanities 18 student.

“It’s really really important for young people to find out who they are, and express it. To not be hung up on getting a degree just for the sake of getting a good job,” White says. “This is not the world I want young people to inherit. A world where we live at the expense of the rest of the world. Where we have more than what we can use, and a good portion of the rest of the world goes with nothing at all.” She wants us to ask ourselves, “What kind of world do you want to live in?”