Blog #1
Teaching as an Autobiography.

Growing up in South Minneapolis taught me you have to always have tough skin so this really hurt me that I felt like the odd student out all the time. I went to a school called Anne Sullivan Communication Center from K-6 then transferred from a public school setting to Seward Montessori. It was always really hard to attend and be happy to spend my last two years in a different teaching setting having to adapt to the teachers by first name and stuff was really weird. I came to school everyday with the intention that everybody would except me for who I was. It was hard to be the odd color out... no literally the odd color out, I was always defined not by the color of my skin but by the color of my scarf. I know its tragic but being where I'm from I knew that people had always had something to say and you just needed to accept it.

I was in the 7th grade and it was the first day at a Montessori middle school. The language arts teacher was low-key high-key someone who based people socioeconomic status. I was upset that it was my first day and I had already been isolated. She had not one student of color because she made sure her class was like that but due to overpopulation in other classrooms I got stuck with her. Her name was Kathrine and she seemed nice at first. Then we started reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" it is one of my favorite books. Being the only African American student in the class it was hard to have to always be singled out to share expeiernces of racism and diversity barriers that I had undergone previously in school. I don't like the references she used. 9/11 documentaries was the turning point in my class, thats when I finally realized the tiny jabs at me that I didn't think much of were serious. She sat down and asked us the story of the tragedy that struct and what we knew about it. I had to correct her many times that it wasn't muslims as a whole but the few that did commit the crimes. She continued to refer to us Muslims as terrorist and I spoke with the counselor in my year and she asked me to bring 3 other students who could vouch for me. I was in awe and to this day that still hurts.