Crafton Professor Inspires Students to Trust Their Own Voices

Publish Date: June 24, 2026

Ryan Bartlett never planned on becoming anything other than a teacher.

In many ways, you could argue the path was always there. Teaching ran through his family. His maternal grandmother was a teacher. Both of his parents were teachers. His grandmother was even his second-grade teacher in Rialto, where Bartlett remembers her reading to the class in a way that kept students “on the edge of their seats.” 

“I don’t know, I think my grandmother is probably my life hero,” Bartlett said. “She took a genuine interest in every student.”

Her teaching ideology has stayed with him. She took it upon herself to make each student feel seen, especially the ones other people were quick to misunderstand or dismiss. 

“She took an individual interest in every one of their learning journeys and found something unique and special in all of them,” Bartlett said. “I think I internalized that.”

Today, after more than two decades of teaching, Bartlett brings that same approach to his own students at Crafton Hills College, where he has taught full-time since 2006 and part-time before that. As an English professor, he teaches writing, literature-based film studies, and courses that challenge students to think more deeply about themselves, their communities, and the world around them.

Crafton’s close community has kept Bartlett happy to return year after year. 

“The campus is really small, so we have a smaller student body, and it allows me to get to know the students as individuals,” Bartlett said. “It’s really supportive. The campus community is like a big old family. Warts and all, we love each other.”

The friendly community has been a constant factor. Bartlett’s best friend, Jonathan Anderson, is also an English professor, and their offices are right next to each other. The two have known each other for almost 30 years, since they attended college together. 

“It is delightful,” Bartlett said. “It’s just delightful.”

Bartlett’s students know him as someone who cares deeply not only about what happens in the classroom but also about what students carry with them when they leave it. He wants them to become stronger writers, but writing, to him, is never just about grammar or structure.

“I think they come into my class thinking that writing is about grammar and syntax,” Bartlett said. “When writing is about ideas. It’s about your individual, special, specific brand of ideas that are only yours.”

Over time, Bartlett said his approach has become more flexible, accessible, and responsive to the different ways students learn. He thinks carefully about learning styles, motivation, and barriers that may keep students from succeeding.

Speaking from his own experience, Bartlett said he grew up with ADHD and other challenges that made school difficult at times. As a child in the 1980s and early 1990s, he remembers often being in trouble without fully understanding why.

“I went through school with a lot of shame,” Bartlett said. “I felt intense shame and had a lack of self-worth.”

Having experienced this himself, Bartlett sees students differently today, especially those who may have been told, directly or indirectly, that they do not belong in academic spaces. He does not want students to feel like they have to navigate college alone. 

He checks in with students often, uses class time to help them begin assignments with support, requests computers for his classes when students need access to them, and works closely with embedded tutors when they are available. In recent semesters, he has worked with an embedded tutor named April, whom he described as “amazing.”

“I want students to feel supported,” Bartlett said. “I want them to know that they don’t have to navigate through everything alone.”

He also gives students multiple chances to revise their essays because he believes writing is a process. His feedback is personal, specific, and built around helping students recognize what they are already doing well.

“I give them tons of feedback on their essays,” Bartlett said. “It’s tailored specifically to their essay. It’s not just cut and paste.”

One student from this past semester stands out to him. She had returned to school in her 70s and began the semester feeling overwhelmed by the workload and unsure of her writing ability. Over time, Bartlett watched her confidence grow. By the end of the semester, she helped organize a campus event and gave what he called an “incredibly moving speech” about her life experiences.

“Her speech was powerful, vulnerable, and inspiring to everyone in the room,” Bartlett said. “Watching that transformation was so meaningful to me because she already had that strength and wisdom and power within herself. She just needed the opportunity to be recognized.”

Moments like that are why Bartlett sees teaching as a reciprocal relationship. He is there to guide students, but he believes they shape him, too.

“I tell them every semester, I learn as much from you as you learn from me,” Bartlett said. “You are my teachers as well.”

His film course, The Film Experience, gives students another way to practice his approach. The class looks at film through a literary lens, with students studying theme, style, craft, character, and meaning. Bartlett often starts with more popular films before moving into independent and international cinema.

The film class, he said, often resonates deeply with students because it helps them think about movies more intellectually without losing the joy of watching them. Some students have even gone on to pursue film after taking the class, including one who recently graduated from Chapman University and shared her film with him through a livestream.

“It’s like a gateway class,” Bartlett said.

Across all of his classes, Bartlett wants students to leave as thinkers and seekers of knowledge. He wants them to develop critical thinking skills that help them navigate a world that is “weird and confusing and constantly shifting and changing.” More than anything, he wants them to know they matter.

“Their voice, their story, the way they see the world may be exactly what sparks a meaningful and beautiful paradigm shift within their community and the world at large,” Bartlett said.

This is also why Bartlett is excited about interdisciplinary learning, multimodal teaching, and bringing a wider range of voices into writing and communication. He wants students to see themselves reflected in what they study while also learning to understand people whose experiences differ from their own. 

“I think my job more than anything is to get them to think outside of their own experiences, but also draw from their own experiences,” Bartlett said. “You’re doing both of those things simultaneously.”

Bartlett maintains that empathy is critical to his work not only as a teacher, but also as an individual.

“We are in an age right now where empathy is not valued,” Bartlett said. “I want to bring back empathy.”

This is part of the reason why Bartlett enjoys working at a community college as much as he does. He has the opportunity to see his students evolve on a personal level.

“People sometimes underestimate how transformative community colleges can be,” Bartlett said. “They’re places of discovery and deep learning, not only about different academic subjects, but also about oneself.”

When asked what advice he would give to alumni who are thinking about returning to school or starting something new, Bartlett said success does not have to follow one path. Instead, he encouraged them to stay open to new opportunities. 

“Be true to yourself and pursue the things that genuinely bring you fulfillment,” Bartlett said. “Success looks different on everybody. It’s important to define success on your own terms.”

And while growth matters, he said, so does learning to appreciate where you are.

“Try not to spend all your energy focusing only on the next step or destination,” Bartlett said. “There’s a lot of value in learning to appreciate where you are right now.”

After more than two decades in the classroom, Bartlett is happy to say that teaching is more than just a profession, but a way of life.

“This isn’t just a job for me,” Bartlett said. “This is a lifestyle. This is a way that I want to live my life, even if I wasn’t teaching.”