***This was originally intended for friends and family on my personal Facebook page, but I have had a number of requests to make it shareable and to publish it. I pray part of my story will bring healing, understanding, and healing to those who need it.*****
I've struggled with posting this because I'm not sure it will be taken the way it is intended. It is going to be long. Some things are too important to not say though. I don't talk about my first teaching job often. It was not a pleasant experience and 19 years later, I'm still not sure that I would ever willingly go back to a classroom as a result. I taught in an inner city black community. I went to NYC middle schools and high schools where the schools were very diverse, so I thought I knew what I was in for. I was very, very wrong. I was one of 4 white teachers - we were their diversity. My first day interacting with parents and students was an open house. My first family walked in, looked at me, curtly said, "I thought this was a BLACK school" and walked out. They never came back. While I heard other teachers talking about how warm their parents had been, I spent a day with cold shoulders, guarded faces, and blatant disappointment. Several weeks into the school year, one of my colleagues, who had grown up in the community, walked into my classroom after students were dismissed, shut the door, and said she needed to talk to me before something happened. As kindly as she could, she told me that my presence in the school was not welcomed by many parents and being a young white woman meant I was not safe outside the school walls. She asked me to please make sure I always left the neighborhood before dark, always went directly home and never stopped at a local store, and to please make sure I had someone with me walking from the school to my car in the parking lot right outside the building. For the rest of the school year, she did not leave until I did. I didn't understand. Even in the middle of it all, I didn't understand what was going on.
I've struggled with posting this because I'm not sure it will be taken the way it is intended. It is going to be long. Some things are too important to not say though. I don't talk about my first teaching job often. It was not a pleasant experience and 19 years later, I'm still not sure that I would ever willingly go back to a classroom as a result. I taught in an inner city black community. I went to NYC middle schools and high schools where the schools were very diverse, so I thought I knew what I was in for. I was very, very wrong. I was one of 4 white teachers - we were their diversity. My first day interacting with parents and students was an open house. My first family walked in, looked at me, curtly said, "I thought this was a BLACK school" and walked out. They never came back. While I heard other teachers talking about how warm their parents had been, I spent a day with cold shoulders, guarded faces, and blatant disappointment. Several weeks into the school year, one of my colleagues, who had grown up in the community, walked into my classroom after students were dismissed, shut the door, and said she needed to talk to me before something happened. As kindly as she could, she told me that my presence in the school was not welcomed by many parents and being a young white woman meant I was not safe outside the school walls. She asked me to please make sure I always left the neighborhood before dark, always went directly home and never stopped at a local store, and to please make sure I had someone with me walking from the school to my car in the parking lot right outside the building. For the rest of the school year, she did not leave until I did. I didn't understand. Even in the middle of it all, I didn't understand what was going on.
There were 2 encounters during my time there that began to open my eyes. The first was one of my students - Brandon. He was a very intelligent, highly verbal kid. He was a joy, and a terror, to teach! One day in the middle of math, he got out of his seat and gave me a hug. Looking up at me he said, "I am so glad Mama is going to let me stay in your class. She didn't want me having a white teacher, but said she would give you a chance. She says you are the only white lady who has ever been nice to us and you care about us, so I can stay. I like you. I don't want to leave." My heart broke. I was the ONLY white women that Mom had ever felt cared about her. The next was a father. Both he and his wife held Masters degrees. They had come back to the community they grew up in to help it change. They were strong Christians. They walked in for a parent-teacher conference after a string of very difficult meetings with parents. It must have shown. They took one look at me. Mom gave me a hug. Dad said, "Ignore how you are being treated. They don't get it. They don't get you. They never see white people who have good intentions and their culture tells them all white people are out for them. I know that isn't true. You know it isn't true. But they do not. Please, do not leave our school. Our community needs you. Our children need to see a white person who loves them. I know this has to be very hard, but you may be the only light they see." I couldn't believe he sincerely thought I may be the ONLY white person those kids would interact with whom they could trust.
I lasted 2 years in that school. I was offered another job, but I pushed through an additional semester because I was pregnant and knew I was leaving anyway. The stress of being hated for my color, for what I represented to them, for the sins of people who looked like me, not feeling safe, hearing my history washed out of books and treated with contempt was too much. But, I got to go home every night to my safe community, where my husband and I could walk the dog without fear. I could drive to the grocery store and never think about the cop on the corner - except for hoping he'd have some compassion if my stick-shift rolled back that steep hill as I tried to shift into first. After my maternity leave, we moved to a rural white community in PA. I have never had to live or work in those conditions again.
I lasted 2 years. Now imagine living that your entire life, with no place to escape, no one to protect you. At some point, you are going to break. In no way am I saying I fully understand. As a white middle class American I can't understand, but I've had a small taste, and that pain runs deeper than any of us can imagine. As long as we shut down peaceful protests, as long as we make excuses, as long as we hearken back to the "good old days" which weren't so good for entire communities in our nation, as long as we fail to speak out, the pain will continue, the wounds will fester, and the violence will escalate. I don't know what happened with any of my students. But I do know that especially if that father's prediction was correct, some of them are protesters and rioters - and I don't blame them.
