“So what year are you?”
I hesitated. In circles like these, I’m usually the odd person out. People probably ask themselves qualification questions privately, as well. On any given day, I can represent the 3.6 million teachers of America, the 20% of teachers who identify as nonwhite, the 2% of Black male teachers, the 1% of Latinx male teachers, or just me. I’m usually invited to have the race conversation because that’s the necessary one, but sometimes, I rather have the easy one. Like math.
Normally, when I get questions doubting my purpose for attending a given space, I get real New York City hood. It’s usually an instance where I’d break into slang. “Wait, you deadass asked me that? Keep that same energy when …” followed by a few claps post-every word. The shoulders get raised. “You KNOW you’re not about that …” with scrunched eyes and menacing mouth twist. Even in professional settings, I might respond with a high road response and a sarcastic laugh.
It’s not that I’m unapproachable; it’s that I prefer my time be valued, especially if organizers requested (and paid for) my presence in a space.
Before I could start answering, my friend says, “Well, he’s not really in this group. He’s got a few books, a widely-read blog, tons of followers, a fellowship, and a National Board certification, so he really doesn’t need this.” After I prepared myself for another argument I didn’t ask for, I probably let out a timid “Thank you” and went about the rest of the evening floored that someone would go to bat for me like this. Another friend pulls me aside at an event that “folks are really mad because you’re self-made and they’re not. They gotta thank a random somebody from some office that they’re where they are.”
We should always be critical of sword-swallowers and disappearing card conjurers with titles.
I came off a school year where I had to battle my own school district because of my own teacher ratings. That meant for a whole year, I’d have a label on me that I neither earned nor could contest. While teachers of color often leave / get fired quicker than their white counterparts, those of us who remain in these schools still face policies meant to sever us from the students we serve and the work we must do. In this, I feel connected not just to the current set of educators, especially of color, across the country facing similar or worse conditions, but the droves of educators before my tenure who saw this coming, whose narratives never get told, who were ignored for the pyritic stories of wayward children saved by mostly white sympathizers.
Yet, and still, all of this pales in comparison to the context in which this work has become ever more critical. We have children, both immigrant and “native,” locked up for the reason of being “other.” We have children committing suicide, and many of them because our society has not deemed their gender identities appropriate. We have children who feel invisible and inhumane in their own schools and children who’ve disappeared off schools’ rosters after their district went private. We have children who’ve had their hair cut for sport, and children who had the police called on them for any number of reasons and no apparent reason all the same. We have children who only know the word “refuge” after their own countries were bombed the way smart phones ring across our collective homes from 5:30am to 7:30am on weekdays. We have children who will definitely be too ill-resourced to make the Earth hospitable to us after oligarchs destroy its resources in their excesses.
Oh, and we have racists, fascists, and xenophobes all up and down our government making decisions against and on their behalf. Dude, the Racist-In-Chief abides.
This acknowledgement seeps into our operations, too. We say we didn’t vote for fascism, but appreciate when our schools have expressionless, incurious, and obedient children. We equate success and learning with children who came milly rock and shoot dance only on command. We prefer them in lines, rows, and aisles sans the reasons we call excuses as to why they just won’t. We like schools that call disobedient children’s parents once an hour until it’s our child. We enroll our children in institutions with a clear theory of praxis even when said praxis is deleterious to their self-fulfillment. We negotiated our children down to where we’re A-OK if we lose a few.
Statistically, the loss of a few students perpetuates the inequity, but asserting our wokeness and putting up a Black Lives Matter poster in our windows works better than a hall pass.
Our pedestals do nothing if they don’t give us a macro view of the world we must impact. In every and any space I was passed the mic, I made sure to drive a message for these children who could not be in attendance and our responsibility to them. I treated every one of those conversations like I’d never get invited back and will continue to do so. The same organizations who kept proffering teacher voice finally got this teacher to keynote / present on a panel at their conferences. Nothing about us without us is for us, right? Observers and critics have their questions as to how these spaces that want teachers and never had one speak suddenly had one that would both attend and speak.
It’s simple. In mornings and afternoons, I teach my kids math. In the evening, I tell adults what it takes to make that happen. Alignment.
All I asked is that people match my energy this year. It’s life-affirming to have educators willing to teach in the very spaces America has left to rot and still find ways to ground that narrative for the rest of us. Everywhere I went, I found these hope bearers, educators who speak as if they taught the same students I did and wanted to change the course of their education. I may have created rifts between me and people who had no intention of hearing me out, but I built even more bridges with people who didn’t know which side of the rift they wanted to be on.
I learned that the best accolade was the one where my partners-in-arms across the country and the world felt like they could do this beautiful, powerful struggle work one more day.
A guide recently told me I’ve been asked to go from a fisher of fish to a fisher of people. I don’t know what that metaphor means, but 2018 felt like it was preparing me to assume the role of the person I need to be. For Alejandro. For Luz. For #EduColor. For my friends and fam. For the world around me. And, when I encounter the world, I hope it keeps that same energy.