Illustration by Elena Lacey
His Mission: Teaching Teachers to Transform Lives
Vincent Matthews is a quote collector. Talk to the three-time SF State alumnus about his nearly 40-year career in education, and he’s bound to share an inspirational quote about teaching, young people or remaining optimistic in the face of challenges. But Matthews doesn’t just hang these sayings on a wall or dispense them to people having a bad day. He lives by them.
Take his first teaching job as an example. The San Francisco native taught at Washington Carver Elementary School, an all-Black school in the Hunters Point neighborhood. He worked under Louise C. Jones, a mentor. She instilled in him three truths: “All kids can learn; all kids want to learn; and the adults in the system have the responsibility for making that happen.” He built his entire career around those words, first as a teacher, then as a principal and later as a superintendent for school districts across the state. And now as a professor training future school leaders, those words still undergird his teaching.
Matthews joined SF State’s Graduate College of Education faculty while he was still superintendent of San Francisco Unified School District, a role he retired from in 2022 after five years. He’s now an associate professor in the Equity, Leadership Studies, and Instructional Technologies Department preparing educators for roles in school administration.
With such a distinguished career, Matthews could have taught at any number of universities — including ones closer to his Hercules home. But that was out of the question for Matthews. He owes his entire teaching career to SF State, the place where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, teaching credential and doctoral degree. It’s the place that rebuilt him, he says.
After high school Matthews attended the University of California, Davis, but that was not a good fit. He was kicked out and returned home to San Francisco feeling like a broken person, he says. At the urging of his mother, he picked himself up off the couch and started taking classes at City College of San Francisco before transferring to SF State.
“It’s just the place that really made me,” says Matthews, a 2023 SF State Alumni Hall of Fame inductee. “There are banners all around SF State saying, ‘It’s the place where passion meets purpose,’ and that’s exactly what happened. … San Francisco State gave me my pride, my purpose, basically believed in me and said, ‘Vince, you can do it.’”
Coming back to teach at SF State is Matthews’ way of giving back to both the institution and the profession that gave him everything. “I saw this quote in a classroom and it said, ‘The whole world is changed by changing your corner of the world,’” he says. “What I’m trying to do every day is focus on these 45 students, making sure they’re right to change this corner of the world.”