Nine months ago, I resigned from my teaching job. And nine months ago, I got my life back. I am part of a secret club now, whose members have been liberated from what I can only say is the most racist school district I've ever known of. We are the only people that know the peace that comes from leaving such a toxic environment.
I have had nine months to recover. I am a central office administrator now, someplace else, and essentially have my dream job. The skills I built as a result of fighting the white power structure in an affluent and racist school district have served me well. But the stories of the students continue to plague my thoughts. I am gone now, I am free of the sickness, but the stories stay with me. For the past few weeks one in particular has weighed heavily on my mind.
After ten years in the same school, a school I loved, I was transferred out as my punishment for reporting the principal when four little girls expressed their discomfort when he put his hands on them. It wasn't really up to me, it's the law. Teachers are mandatory reporters when things like this happen, but nevertheless, I was severely punished, and the principal, well...he wasn't. He is a member of the white power structure that protects the whiteness and power of its members, and has a stranglehold on a diverse school district that deserves so much better.
I went to my new school silently. I intended to remain silent, other than what I needed to do for my students. I was a fish out of water, and knew that the only things this new staff knew about me were the suburban legends they had heard about my hatefulness. I tried to just stay away form the fray, teach, and go home. Months into this new assignment, I was in the gym with the rest of the teachers and the entire student body. We were waiting for a diversity assembly to begin. The kids were waiting patiently, talking, giggling and laughing, as they should be. I kept my eyes on my students, as any teacher should. But the makeup of my class is worth telling you about.
This was the year that a social worker, with big aspirations of power and control, was put in charge of instruction. Her claim to fame was what we called W.I.N. - WHAT I NEED. It was a class that was supposed to provide students with support or enrichment, depending on what they need. I was assigned 15 Black males. Each one was an 8th grader, and I was told to teach a reading intervention for fluency. Fluency? For 8th graders? Are you sure? I had questions. How were these students identified for this intervention? They were identified based on one NWEA score. I said repeatedly, as I am a data person, "NWEA DOES NOT MEASURE FLUENCY." But they basically told me to do it anyways. I spent a little time making sure I was right, and I looked into each students academic history, only to discover that maybe 2-3 of them needed help with comprehension, but the rest were more "teacher-challenged" than they were reading challenged. I was happy to have each one of them with me, because it meant they were not subjected to some of the other teachers that have such disdain for students like them.
When we got to the gym, we were the first ones there and my kids went straight to the top of the bleachers where they waited for the assembly to begin. I stayed in the middle of the gym, checking on them, talking to other kids when this happened...
A white teacher made eye contact with me from across the gym, she had a look in her eyes like, "Watch this..." And I most certainly did. She climbed to the top of the bleachers, to the top row. She yelled at seven of my Black male students to stand up, she counted them off, and ordered them to walk down the bleachers and out of the gym. They complied. They didn't argue. They walked out, in a line, seven 8th grade Black males, in front of the entire student body and the teaching staff. I followed them. The teacher had taken a different route and met up with us out in the hallway. She was shocked to see me there talking to them. She immediately began to berate them. She was yelling. I don't like yelling. She called one of my students out by name, wondering where he was, and angry he wasn't standing there waiting for her. I cut her off and explained to her that I had given him permission to use the restroom. She yelled some more. At me. And then continued to berate my seven young students. You are probably wondering what they did, I think that is a fair question.
When the student she had identified by name returned, the yelling and berating continued, and their big offense? Giggling and laughing. I wondered if maybe she had seen something I didn't, and there was a reason they were being removed in such a disgusting and embarrassing way. This is where I stepped in and stopped her.
You cannot understand this feeling until you have done something similar. But I put myself between those seven Black boys, and that loud, racist white teacher and told her to stop. Then she amped up her rhetoric and yelled at me about how this was none of my business and she didn't understand why I was there. She had a genuine look of shock on her face that I would do this. How dare I stand up for these children? How dare me.
She turned really red and stomped away in anger. I turned to the kids. I asked them what they wanted to do. She told them the only way they could go back in was if they sit right up in front where she could humiliate them further. I was reminded by their responses to me that they were just kids. They were kids in Black bodies though, some of those bodies were that of a grown man. But they were kids. They said they didn't want to go back in and be embarrassed because everyone on our side of the gym had watched. But they really wanted to see the show. My heart broke. I had been here before. And now I was angry. I turned and looked at the dozen or so white teachers that stood silently through this entire scene.
I turned around, walked right past each one of them, walked across the entire gym in front of the entire student body, and asked my principal for help. I didn't know her well, and knew that most of what she knew about me was what a bunch of salty white people told the masses to convince everyone I was crazy. If expecting Black and Brown children to be treated with dignity makes me crazy, then yep. I am batshit crazy.
I don't remember the words I said, they were packed with emotion, and probably curse words, but she got right up and did exactly what the kids needed her to do. We went out the other side of the gym, walked around back to where the boys were waiting for me. The teacher was back out there yelling again, and when we walked up she started yelling at me in front of the principal. She was told to leave in no uncertain terms. The principal talked to the kids, asked them what they wanted and needed, and they told her. They wanted to watch the assembly. So we all walked to the other side of the gym, where they didn't really see everything, and she found a spot for them where they stayed for the duration of the assembly, the remainder of their dignity in tact.
After, I had to meet with the teacher since she was yelling at me too. I remember in the meeting when I mentioned race, she almost left. She was livid, and said "I am not going to sit here if you make this about race." I think what I said was, "You identified seven Black boys, marched them out of the gym in front of the school and berated them. This is about race." The meeting ended well, I assured all that I would not have an issue working with her, and I wouldn't, until she starts screaming at Black kids again.
She humiliated those boys that day. I will never forget their faces while she was yelling. They did not argue, they did not respond, they just took it. They took it, and then took it some more. They were used to this. They KNEW if they tried to ask why they were lined up and removed they would end up in trouble. They knew because this is their life. I watched all seven of those faces that day. They still haunt me, along with so many others.
Many of us wrote to the superintendent and the Board of Education. Letters from a small handful of teachers and parents went ignored. Not one of us received a response, and certainly no apology. That was the same year the white US History teacher told the three Black boys in his class they they were "sleeping through their own history" and that when Black people are killed, they deserve it. He doubled down the next day, and told the class that the Black kids were lucky to even be able to attend that school, since it wasn't long ago they would not have been welcome.
I don't know what happened behind the scenes of any of this. But I do know neither teacher was punished or disciplined. One was transferred, to a school where that kind of behavior would be far more acceptable, especially since I was transferred out of it. The other left on his own accord and is now teaching in a predominantly white district. But there was no outrage about the incident.
Correction, there WAS outrage. There was outrage that these teachers were called out for their racist and disgusting behavior. There is always outrage when the white adults feel attacked.
I woke up this morning at 4:00 am. Like normal. And I checked my Twitter feed to see what was happening in the world. A video popped up. It was a video of three white men chasing and murdering a Black male while he was out jogging.
This man was murdered over two months ago, and no charges had been filed. But the video, which the authorities have had the entire time, shows very clearly that he was murdered for jogging. If an anonymous person had not released this video to the public, this man's family would never see justice. They may STILL never see justice. Trevon Martin was gunned down too. His killer is free.
This may seem like a stretch when I tell stories of Black male students being screamed at, and humiliated, but it really isn't. When I watched the video this morning, which I will not share, I thought about all of the times I have put myself between Black or Brown children, and the white people that believed they had the right to destroy them. It wasn't necessarily the screaming teachers I thought about, and there had been many before this assembly incident, and more after. It was the faces of the silent white teachers, knowing that this was wrong, and doing nothing about it. It was the faces of every person that has stood silently, while people like me try like hell to protect our most vulnerable children.
Screaming in the face of a young Black male is a far cry from murder. But the sickness is the same. It starts with schools, and communities, that treat our Black and Brown children like they are not worthy of sitting in the same classrooms as their white privileged counterparts. And it ends with law enforcement covering up the murder of a Black man trying to take a jog, but instead being shot and killed for absolutely no reason at all. Every silent person is complicit in the death of this man. Every silent teacher is complicit when Black boys end up on the school-to-prison pipeline, having missed out on the education they deserve and have a right to, but do not receive because they walk around in Black or Brown bodies. Everyone who remains silent, because THEIR kids are ok, or because THEIR kids are getting what they need, is complicit in allowing a society that makes it unsafe to drive while black, or to sit in your backyard while black, or to sit in your own apartment while black, only to be gunned down by a stranger.
Schools are supposed to be a beacon of hope and safety. They are anything but.
