Prior to this talk, our host, Dr. Monica Barron, asked us to write in response to questions that she thought would be relevant to the topic. Below, I am posting some of my responses because I believe that they are relevant to the social justice theme of this blog. I hope you can find something that will help you as you examine your story and the impact that you can make because of what you learned from your experiences.
Part 1: How does race/ethnicity exert shaping power over student experience? How do differences in literary interests shape one’s BA-English experience? Describe your experiences. What had the highest impact? How intentional were you about what you were doing?
I came to Truman State University (Northeast Missouri State at the time) simply because I received a full Presidential Scholarship that covered my room, board and tuition. While a senior at St. Charles West High School in St. Charles, MO, I met with the college recruiter at the suggestion of the school counselor. The recruiter encouraged me to complete an application while he was still in the building, which he then carried back to the admissions office. Several weeks later, I received my acceptance and award letters.
When I stepped onto the campus for the first time, it was the first day of freshmen week and my education began immediately. It did not take me long to realize that I had lived a very sheltered life pre-college, and that I lacked a true understanding of cultural and social mores, as well as an awareness of who I was as an individual.
In W. E. B. DuBois’ book The Souls of Black Folk, he states “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” These beautiful words are probably the most accurate way to describe my undergraduate experience. I was brought to a keen awareness of my two-ness as I realized that my life at Truman would be split between 2 worlds: one African-American and the other white. The difficult part was that each world had different rules; my background had somewhat prepared me for the white world, but not for the African-American world. My desire for erudition became secondary to my real education: a new sense of self-awareness and an examination of this idea of double-consciousness. It operated in everything I did. I had 2 peer groups, one black and one white; each weekend, I would choose which friend group I was going to be with and therefore, which world I would exist within from night to night.
Classes were mostly part of my white world. I had wonderful professors who were very passionate about the subjects they taught. I read Dickens and Shakespeare, Achebe and Avi. I read Beowulf in old English and The Canterbury Tales “Prologue” in middle English. I did labs, essays, analyses, and countless personal reflections; yet none is as memorable as the education I received outside of the classroom. From the three white people in a pickup truck who tried to hit me as I crossed the street to my dorm, yelling “n*gger” and “black b*tch” as they missed me, I learned that my race shapes others’ perceptions more than any other aspect of me. From my good friend who hanged himself despite all he seemed to have going for him, I learned to not make assumptions about others’ happiness. When I became pregnant with my son, I learned that strength comes from learning to navigate through moments of weakness.
Whenever I think about the woman I became at Truman, two experiences define it. The first was directly connected with a class. In Exploring Religions, we read from several religious texts and related materials. One of these pieces was a novel titled Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. Through this memoir/reflection, Norris learns the importance of listening to the voice of God that we each have within ourselves. It takes us through her process of learning how to quiet the noise around her so that she can feel the divinity and light within herself. No matter one’s religion or belief system, we each need to take this lesson and use it to make ourselves more comfortable with our inner selves. In this way, we can become more comfortable showing this inner part of ourselves to the world and developing the vulnerability necessary to connect with others.
The second experience happened as I walked across campus with my white friend group which included my best friend Barb. We encountered a group of my black friends, and I briefly spoke to them. As we walked away, Barb asked a question that has continued to resonate with me: “Why do you sound different when you talk to your black friends?” Mother Maya Angelou discussed this phenomena in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings when she talked about the fact that she could move so fluidly from one to the next that she would be unaware that she was doing it. As years went on, I discovered that this was called code-switching, but at that moment, when Barb presented the question, I had no answer for her because I was unaware that I was doing this. This moment helped to bring a subconscious awareness of my “two-ness” to the forefront and further fueled my need for self-discovery.
So literature, classes, and professors did not shape my journey as much as my burgeoning awareness of race, culture, and class did. I got through classes; I wrote lots of papers; I read (or skimmed) a multitude of books; and I learned how to operate within the norms of the white world of Truman. However, I simultaneously became more aware of who I was as an African-American, a woman, and an intellectual (although this learning continues to this day).
Part 2: Why can we not agree on what constitutes “best practices” in teacher training? When we try to actualize these “best practices” in the context of the past year in Ferguson, are they adequate? Is adequate enough?"
Teaching is actually my second career. While at Truman, my major was English with minors in social justice and psychology. However, once I had my son, I felt the need to graduate and begin working as soon as possible. I took one semester off after his birth and then returned to Truman when he was six months old. Thanks to social service programs such as day care reimbursement, food stamps, and subsidized housing, I was able to take Jordan back to school with me while I finished my last 3 semesters. I graduated in May 1998 and landed a job with the Division of Personnel in Jefferson City, MO. I lived there for 6 months before getting a job in St. Louis at the Division of Child Support Enforcement so that I could be closer to my mother, father, and future husband. In August of 2000, I found out that the employees of the state of Missouri would not receive a raise, so I decided to try to make more money by moving over on the pay scale through education. I took two courses: an online social studies course and an Intro to Education course. Through observations, study, and discussion, I found my calling. Crazy that I would do so after leaving one of the best schools for education in the entire state.
It took me 4 years of going to school part time at University of Missouri--St. Louis to get my teacher certification. Throughout this time frame, I worked for the Department of Social Services, Division of Child Support Enforcement as an enforcement technician and eventually a supervisor. During my time with DCSE, I learned about people, including the variety of obstacles that prevent some people from being successful, as well as the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideals that motivate people. We are a complicated species, and very few people fit the societal molds assigned to them.
Throughout my training, I learned to discuss and analyze and write lesson plans and diagram sentences. Some of my education prepared me for teaching, but much of it did not. I think the classes that best prepared me to be a good teacher were those that taught me about the “other” from a social justice lens. Sometimes, that “other” included me and my people. It’s very difficult to know what exactly should be taught in teacher education courses because the thought processes differ. Some feel that the focus should be upon the pedagogy. We should teach only the latest educational movements like RTI and UbD. However, I come from the other school of training that believes that education goes beyond the process into the practice. My day-to-day decisions include more than what I will do for my lesson. I need to know how to sensitively handle the student that is cutting, the young man who is failing because of family trauma, the young lady who is homeless. I spend countless hours learning new technologies, signs of drug usage, how to teach students with autism, and what new rules are in place for IEP students. If we are to give education students a thorough education, we must also focus upon these aspects of being a teacher, and support our students development in these areas.
The bigger problem is the political aspect of all of this. Some do not support including social justice training because it goes against their political and religious leanings. The sad part is that in not exposing students to these alternative viewpoints and experiences, we not only damage our teaching candidates, but also the generations of students of “other” experience that they will teach throughout their career.
Part 3: Now we will focus on how they would have described their pedagogical challenges pre-Ferguson and post-Ferguson.
Before Ferguson, I understood the plight of the African-American student in a predominantly white school district because of my own time in St. Charles Public Schools. So, I had already begun the process of supporting African-American students by co-sponsoring Sister 2 Sister and Boys 2 Men, organizations for our A-A students that give them a voice and safe space for addressing issues relevant to minority students. I had also participated in social justice training for administrators (because not enough minorities were in admin positions to make it viable). Upon returning from this training, I had organized a teacher social justice cohort so that educators could work together to examine social justice issues. I was also working to address minority student concerns with specific teachers in order to mend classroom relationships.
The summer before Ferguson, the entire staff underwent social justice training. I was resentful because I had already been through this training twice, and I knew that my presence was needed only to educate my white colleagues. Yet, I still showed up and exposed my inner self to the colleagues present during my session. We were scheduled for 4 follow-up sessions throughout the school year, the first being held in September. When Michael Brown was killed and Ferguson erupted, I experienced a range of emotions that were personalized: this could have been my son or one of my beloved students. I understood what happened from the perspective of my personal experiences with police officers, those who had disrespected me and told me that they were “not my buddy or friend” (actual quote). I had to attempt to understand why others did not accept that my experience and those of my loved ones and peers were real and relevant. Through some very painful occurrences, I learned that proximity did not equate to empathy. Some colleagues who had worked with me for 10 years or worked with students of colors for any number of years did not necessarily empathize with our experience as people of color at all. In fact, some didn’t even want to hear our stories, or discounted them as irrelevant. I cannot tell you how many tears I’ve shed over that realization.
Ferguson taught me that I needed to not just share my personal experiences, but to also try to understand the other side. Why do some white people have the visceral, often negative, reaction to events such as this? Why does the conversation often turn to white people’s feeling about these events instead of the victims of the event? Why do I have to work so hard to legitimize my daily experience? What are my students experiencing and how does this impact their ability to learn? Since Michael Brown’s death, teaching has become a bit more complicated because of awareness (I think Dr. Angelou has quote about that, too). When the verdict came down, I took the time to process with my students, and I discovered the cultural and economic divide that makes conversations so difficult. Students that I had one perception of showed me a different side when they voiced their opinions of the situations. I was forced to teach students that lacked the cultural and historic understanding to value children who looked like mine while professionally being asked to remain neutral. How does one do that successfully? I’ll admit that sometimes, I was unable to hide my tears and grief from my students.
So, from a pedagogical perspective, the challenge became how to determine what information was important to impart to students and in what way? Based upon the research that I completed for my social justice work, I knew about Robin D’Angelo’s “White Fragility” paper and theory, as well as the work on shame, blame and empathy from Brene’ Brown. I also knew of Claude M. Steele’s work on stereotype threat and our own district’s achievement gap information. I now had new lenses from which to examine every aspect of my teaching: curriculum and content, lesson planning, methodology, techniques, skills, etc. When I viewed what I’d done in the past from these new lenses, some material made the cut, while others were deleted...IMMEDIATELY. I’m still in the process of finding new material to add that gives a more complete vision of literary genres and perspectives. Our canon is filled with mostly Caucasian authors; our history is filled with a plethora of individuals of different races, religions, and backgrounds.
I think the true challenge of all educators is how to fit it all within the specified time frame that we have available to us while meeting the expectations of the stakeholders, state, and students. We also have to do this while not promoting a personal agenda. As an African-American educator, this becomes very difficult in a top district because often my expectations don’t necessarily match those of the stakeholders. I come from a culture whose history is often separated from the majority’s (although they are so intricately intertwined that one has to negate one in order to examine the other). My school is progressive with a one-semester class titled African-American History and Literature. My co-teacher (a white Social Studies teacher) and I proposed to have this class expanded to a full year, and since then, teachers in other school schools have become interested in picking it up, giving students across the district the opportunity to learn more about their history/the history of African-American classmates. Yet, the reality is that all students need to learn all of our history if we are to dismantle white supremacy; however, not everyone is interested in this goal. Teaching becomes as political as it does educational. We each need to remember that the purpose of education (as originally created) is to guarantee the viability of the republic, not to create equality within our society. For those teaching for the counter-purpose, education provides a number of obstacles and frustrations. However, I believe that education can do both, and that teachers have a responsibility to remember that our republic will only become MORE viable when our educational system shows us how to value ALL of its members,
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