My students

It’s crazy looking back at my years of teaching. From 2015 until now, how the world has changed. How the students have changed. And how my attitude has changed toward teaching. 

Clinton Middle School - West Tulsa, Oklahoma

My first year we were still in the ignorant bliss of a black president and everybody felt good. Having a black president was a major topic for schools who wanted to inspire and empower their black kids. Back then, I was a City Year Corps member in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was my first time living out of state, and unlike the familiar faces and demographic of Georgia, it was a place like I had never seen. I had never been around SO many white people, who were from a much different background and who had different types of problems than I did. I didn’t know any white people really until college, and so my only experience was with the folks in sport management and my first roommate. So I felt like a token blacky out there sometimes, BUT all in all, it was a good experience. I made the best of it and when I needed to distance myself from others I did. Anyway, my students were a load full of energy. 7th Grade at Clinton Middle School, where Living above the Line was the motto, and Tulsa was all they knew. Those kids were like sponges. 7th grade, soaking up everything they could. Becoming themselves. It was fun, but stressful. I was more in tuned with the social emotional work than the classwork, so that was actually good for me. Being able to have conversations with kids and try to steer them on the right track. Those kids appreciated me. Black, white, Hispanic, they all knew they came from a place that chewed people up and just kept chewing, and that  in order to get out of their circumstances, they had to go to school. One smoked weed almost every day, one wanted to be a police officer, I had the future athlete, the cool white kid, the autistic crew, the depressed socially unstable children, the comic book nerds, and the kids with no parents present. It was a boiling pot of personalities and emotions, but we made it through that year. Looking back, City Year was a good program. I support it to the fullest. It's not for everybody, but it definitely carries benefit and could stand to be introduced in more cities than its in now. 

Trinidad Garza Early College High School - Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas

My next school year, I moved to Dallas, Texas and started teaching at Garza Early College High School in Oak Cliff. This was a good experience. I was in school for my masters in teaching, and could essentially do what I did the previous year, but also learn how to lead a classroom. This was the next step. I loved what I did, but I needed to be in charge of the learning and be able to do it effectively. Dallas Teacher Residency taught me a lot and introduced me to some great people who really cared and still care about real education in the classroom. I learned a lot from them, not only about teaching but about life. Dallas is a slower, more lax city than Atlanta. Their priorities are different than here in the A. Anyway, my students at Garza were, again, very appreciative of me being there. Black, Hispanic, that was pretty much it. I taught 11th and 12th Grade American Lit and British Lit. I liked the kids, and they liked me back. They felt I was relatable, because at that time I was only a few years ahead of them. The seniors damn near coulda be freshmen when I was a freshmen in college. Wild. But I knew a lot of their music and they were generally inspired by me being young black and seeming like I had my shit together. And they knew that I was there to help and I did my best to make an impact. They were really open to me and looked to me for advice. It was validating to have students seek me out and try to get my opinion on something or run something by me that they’d been thinking about doing. It empowered me to feel like I could empower them. I had some of the youngest great kids in that room and I admired them for the way they moved. They were on top of their shit, well my Juniors were. My Seniors were great minds too, but they checked out early. But they were always open to me trying new ways of teaching, when they were there. We had a lot of deep conversations about life and meaning and it got really poetic. We lost one of the kids from that class, and I was devastated when I heard the news. He was such a good kid and used to sell breakfast tacos to support his family. I pray his soul rests in peace. But overall, those kids were ready to learn from Day One and would challenge you academically. It was a great place to learn and grow, and the staff were hella helpful. They wanted everybody to succeed. That school worked. It had its issues but everybody led with love and it was a great environment to work in. But they year had to end and there was no open position for me to fill, although I know if there were, I’d probably still be there. But my principal recommended me for another job and I went there and thrived. 

Lee Gresham Pinkston High School - West Dallas, Texas - Pride of the Westside

Pinkston was like the energy of a blackness festival every single day. It was in West Dallas, where crime was high, but spirit was too. Those kids loved West Dallas, and a lot of them never left or had any reason to leave. I lived in North Dallas, drove through downtown across a bridge to the West. Some of those kids had never went over that bridge before. But they loved themselves and everyone around them. There was a pride on the west side, even when they were looked at as less than. We were a family there, a dysfunctional one at times, but a family. Everybody played their role, and we had a lot of crazy days, but at the end of it all, the village was raising those kids. My first year I taught seniors. This year was easy money because I taught seniors the previous year as a resident and these kids were on the way out. The year was shorter than it is for other grades, and we got to have a lot of fun, go places, and just interact on a real level. These kids were again, not that much younger than me, so we could relate and they trusted me as a person. I used to rap literary texts to them and had the whole class hyped when I freestyled. I haven’t had that type of mojo in the classroom since then honestly. I started the year teaching 9th grade, which was certainly going to be a challenge, but 3 weeks in,they needed me to step up and take over the seniors, which I was happy to do. My 9th graders were pissed, feeling like I left them. But it was still all love. The following year, I taught both 9th and 10th grade on top of my tutoring class. So in a span of 2years, I taught students from all grades and all backgrounds. Those EOC tutoring classes were some of my favorite. Not because they were my last class of the day, and not because sometimes there weren’t many kids, but because no matter what we did, those kids appreciated that I was there. I have countless students from those classes who credit me for helping them graduate. I didn’t know it was that big a deal at first, but passing those EOC exams or writing essays to replace them, got students to graduate so they could move on and have better lives. I have students who work in HVAC, Construction, Mechanics, you name it. A lot of my kids didn’t want to go to college, and I didn’t force the idea on them.. I just wanted them to finish what they started. I love those kids. My second year at Pinkston, while I was teaching everything under the sun, I was also a basketball coach. Middle and high school. This made me into a real mentor for a lot of people. When my players were out of line , they were sent to me. I had an automatic respect from a lot of kids because I was Coach Brown. And I showed those kids that you can be versatile, and take care of business in a lot of different areas. Now I wasn’t always on top of my job, but they always thought I was. I was also the yearbook coordinator, which was a big time struggle. Working on that book with only 5kids, I thought I was gonna go crazy. But we got it all done, and were able to make a book to help kids cherish memories of that school year for years to come. It wasn’t good in the traditional sense, but it represented what we were, not the best but true to ourselves. I really enjoyed working at Pinkston. I hated it sometimes, but overall it was a great experience. I could write about LGP all day. 

KIPP Atlanta Collegiate - Formerly Turner High School - Dixie Hills, Atlanta, Georgia

Fast forward to KIPP Atlanta Collegiate. Woo wee. What a mess. I thought I’d be going into something totally different, and I found out that all schools are really the same. I got to Kipp thinking that I was gonna have a great deal of autonomy and really be able to teach how I wanted, and to no avail. It was interesting to be in a place that seemingly had the kids' best interest at heart, but the students saw it differently. Every day, I came to work and listened to them gripe about the uniform and complain about all of the rules they had to follow. And similarly to some of my Dallas kids, they said their school felt like a jail. From then on, I tried to do things my own way and allow my classroom to be a safe space for students to vent and be able to feel how they felt and express themselves, with no consequence. This kinda backfired though because I had one group who came in and complained every single day. I had another class who came in so sleepy every morning, I could barely tell if my lessons were boring or if it was just not the right time of day. And then I had a really engaged class that emulated a church, them labelling me the pastor and all the students taking on the roles of a traditional church. I had a deacon board, ushers, mother board and all, and I used my preacher voice to lead the class. It was a fun experience and I would give alot to have been able to finish that school year. As we moved into the next, students still fought the good fight against oppressive rules and regulations, and things got a little lax when we went virtual. Now it's really hard to be sure who's engaged and who's not. And it has to be a sign of the times. I try to make my class the exact opposite of the meetings we have because I'm often waiting on the zoom to end and don't want the students feeling the same way about my class. But they're young and they just want to be able to do what they want to do on their time, which I understand. So I try to be very flexible. Sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes it haunts me in the future, but at the end of the day, I just try to be there for them and above all the grades and attendance, I just genuinely pray that I can have a positive impact on my students. Education is not a profession of instant gratification, often times it's a profession of no gratification, but as I tell teachers all the time, the positive impact you have on a kid's life, you might never actually see. But you have to keep pushing, because you have a much more positive impact than you'll probably ever know. We don't work to get tips or even really care about being a teacher if the year. This field is all about setting people on the right path and leaving them with tidbits of wisdom that they'll remember along the way. One day they'll come to a crossroads and a piece of advice that you have them 20 years prior might be the one thing that sticks and help them make that decision, or they'll be in a situation where they want to quit, but they remember when you told them times like these would occur, and so you know that there's a better alternative. It could be anything, but 9/10 they won't be able to thank you when the impact you made on them really hits. So at the end of the day I just keep my head up, knowing that God put me in this position for a reason and although I may not see the change I'm fighting for, it won't go unnoticed and future generations will be better off for it.