Happy Birthday, MLK

Overheard in the teachers' room, CT, urban school district:
"So, did you join that gym?"
"Yes."
"Do you like it?"
"Yes, I do. I took a class yesterday, and there was this colored woman next to me working out and..."

Many years ago, when our Superintendent was quite new, she implied that the teachers in our district were not adept at teaching African-American students. We were all incensed. First of all, I thought back then, look at our demographics; most of our students are of Latino descent; most specifically Puerto Rican, and, I thought, if I can teach and raise my Puerto Rican son I can certainly teach the Latino students in a school district in which I grew up, and any other student as well. Hell, my family members come in every color imaginable. As the years have passed, I've noticed that the teacher (who is Puerto Rican, so her racism surprises me more, though I know it shouldn't) next door places her African-American students outside her classroom door as a punishment, resulting in loss of instruction for them. She even went as far the other day to say, when a student began complaining about something, "I could make a sweeping generalization here, but..." This, and many other examples from other teachers, have caused me to reconsider the Superintendent's statement. The 40 year old teacher who used the word "colored" would be mortified to be called a racist, but how the hell can she not know not to use it? We're in central CT, for crissake. How could the teacher next to me think for one second that I would be sympathetic to her views? I get her students every year because of the special program we teach for high readers. The first thing I said to J*** this year the first time he acted silly was that I would never, under any circumstances, send him out of the room. For him, that means he feels more a part of the class and he knows he can trust me; I knew I had to do it because he was missing skills from being kicked out so many times in first grade for being off task or silly.

This has lost cohesiveness, it's just that I spent the day upset, angry and sad, and those feelings remain. If you don't thing everyone is capable of learning, and deserving of the best education available, then get the hell out of teaching. In closing, a big "fuck you" to my son's sixth grade teacher who said he didn't belong in Honor's math, and asked his Dad what he did for a living because she wasn't sure if he'd be able to help our son with the homework. Guess what, bitch bag-his PSAT results state he did better than 94% of the other 55,000 Juniors who took the test.