White Teacher Fails: Part 3- Discipline Hurts

in

During my first year teaching, I was assaulted by a student. For the last thirteen years, since I started teaching at twenty-one, this is how I have worded it.

But the word “assault” is a shortcut. It is a knife meant to neatly separate me, the innocent victim, from my student, the scary perpetrator. But what happened was not clean and simple.

Read More

White Teacher Fails: Part 1- Labs

in ,

Here is my plea to other teachers: don’t deprive students of meaningful learning opportunities as a disciplinary technique. Studies have shown that students of color are much more likely to be given harsher disciplinary consequences than their white peers. Punishing the whole class by taking away learning experiences such as labs only widens the achievement gap.

Read More

The Clueless Teacher

in

I was an idealistic college grad in 2007, and I wanted to help people. I also wanted to be as bad ass as Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. I decided that the best way to do so would be to teach at a high school in the South Bronx. I joined NYC Teaching Fellows, an accelerated teachers prep program that would allow me to move into my own classroom in September, only three months after leaving the womb of undergrad.

I wasn’t ready. 

Read More