While we’re on the topic of teacher disrespect: https://forward.com/life/162899/what-s-with-all-the-teacher-hate/?gamp “Teachers had opted out of the capitalist game; they weren’t in this world for money. There could be only one reason for that: they were losers. They were dimwitted, unambitious, complacent, unimaginative, and risk-averse. They were middle class.”
Bowl Leader
Just curious after reading that, I wonder why some of us became teachers, and Antiracist Educators.
Here’s my (short version) story: I wanted to be helpful and thought I should be a social worker. I found out the pay was low and the workload high. I decided to work in finance to make money and satisfy my urge to be helpful through volunteer work. I decided to go into teaching after falling in love with the hard-headed, rambunctious kids on the playground as I volunteered at my kids school.
I became committed to being an Antiracist Educator because my home (Black) school was so poor we had to share books, but when I participated in a program, the white school I was sent to had computer lab and was just two miles away from my neighborhood. I’m passing the mic 🎤🎙.
It’s true that one of the primary reasons I got in to teaching was to get out of the capitalism game. I don’t teach for the money. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I had my first kid at the age of 18 ( and my second at the age of 22) and I had to get a full-time job with health insurance. I didn’t have the time or the discipline to finish college at that time, and I was doing so well at work that I eventually gave up on school.
But I was never a loser. Nor was I dimwitted, complacent, or unimaginative. I was good at capitalism. My wife was even better. She doesn’t just work FOR a mortgage company, she and her dad started their own mortgage company in the 1990s. (I have to admit I’m risk-averse, but they have never been!)
I was doing fine as a manager of a multi-million dollar manufacturing company, but there’s just nothing satisfying about manufacturing, or capitalism in general. Big paychecks never excited me, nor did working with the big-wigs and decision makers. I did, however, really enjoy talking to the entry-level workers- many of whom were ex-felons.
When my oldest daughter got her drivers license, I suddenly found myself with a lot more time on my hands, so I went back to school and got my degree and my teaching certificate. I never looked back.
I’m white, but my wife is half Pakistani and half Filipino. I’m 47 years old. I’ve been around the block enough times to know what a terrible world this can be- especially for Americans of color. I became interested in being an anti-racist teacher as soon as I heard the term for the first time. I wanted to be a teacher so I could make a difference for someone. I became an anti-racist teacher so that the difference might actually help the world, too.
Strap in. This is a long ride. I’m a white, Gen X male. My father was NYPD for a spell before becoming a firefighter (very pro-union, yet conservative. I still don’t understand how that happens), my mother was a Woodstock era hippie who took us to yoga classes way, WAY before it was trendy. How those two hooked up I’ll never know. I mention this to show the wide scope of crazy messages I’d received growing up. But being the first person in my family to finish college meant I had to navigate my way on my own… the simple instruction of “you’re going to college” was the only guidance given to me by my father. No financial assistance, no “let’s go look at these colleges.” It was me, 18, figuring it out.
I got a job as a para-professional during my 10 years of pursuing my undergrad and fell in love again with school. I tell my students, “I love school so much, I got a job here.”
I received my undergrad and applied for the New York City Teaching Fellows. https://nycteachingfellows.org A GREAT program where they give you a teaching job and subsidize your grad degree. A HORRIBLE program because you are thrown into a teaching situation being unbelievably underprepared. What really clicked for me… I was started teaching at the high school that served the neighborhood I grew up in. Even though I’m white, I still saw myself in these black and brown students… because what I did have in common with them: we were both broke growing up. I also realized my color gave me privileges these young people didn’t have.
One day in maybe 2006/2007, I went into my local market and a woman handed me a flyer to support the building of a new high school in an area of the Bronx that is still predominantly white. I absentmindedly took the flyer but after thinking about it while cruising the produce aisle, I realized what was encoded within the flyer. These white parents wanted a public school FOR their white kids.
Not many people know but NYC is STILL one of the most segregated school systems, but not because of the law.
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/2021-press-releases/report-shows-school-segregation-in-new-york-remains-worst-in-nation
So the fact that these parents wanted their own public high school for their kids… and If I were to turn around and accuse this woman of being racist, without a doubt, she would be shocked! Appalled! Because to HER I absolutely know for sure… this was about the kids! This wasn’t racism!
THAT’S the moment I realized I needed to become an anti-racist educator, even though I wasn’t aware of the term yet. I realized my mission as an English teacher wasn’t just to teach literature, but the codes embedded in language. The verbal and linguistic twists and turns oppressors use within language to encode their message in plain sight. Sometimes the people in power don’t even realize they’re being racist.
So ever since then, whenever possible, I try to interpret and analyze any message coming down from above… and I try to get my students to do the same. I try to get them to treat it as if their lives depend on it. Because these days, it might.