DID I JUST GET PUNK'D????

Yep, it looks like I will be taking a few tequila shots to the head tomorrow on July 4th because that is the only vacation I will have until Christmas. Thursday will mark the first day that I enter a classroom to observe and to start teaching…for the very first time. (hence my title “high school virgin”) I’ll blog about my “first day”the next go round, but for now I must fill you in on what has happened to me so far in my summer prep for the Fall.


Many folks thought that after I quit my job as a TV producer weeks ago that I was gonna kick back and have a long, adventurous summer sipping on daiquiris and getting a few shades darker under the Brooklyn sun…..WRONG! I had a 2 day break after I quit my job and I started grad school to obtain my masters in education. So I’m in this program called the NYC Teaching Fellows…basically the city of NYC pays for your masters while you teach because they are in DIRE need of teachers to educate inner city youth. I heard my calling and I gladly bounced from the world of entertainment. However, the three week experience I’ve had in grad school so far is just mind blowing.


Why mind blowing? …well, many of my classes are “discussion” based classes and I have lost count of the number of “heated” or “tense” discussions on race relations, slavery, stereotyping of the black and latino race…you name it. It was hilarious and sad at the same time. One white female grad student had the audacity to raise her hand and ask majority of the black people (we were all clustered on one side of the room)…”I think it’s unfair that the black male teachers said they want to primarily teach to reach the young black males. I think that is a racist statement.” She proceeded to say “If I had stood up and said I want to teach in order to uplift white females, then you would call me a racist.”……It took everything in my power to not jump down her throat, but in my mind…I was launching invisible spears in the air directed towards her temple. (These comments took me back to my days at my previous job in which I’d have THEE wildest conversations with my “psuedo sista” Anne!!–the coolest Jewish woman EVER!)
The professor felt the air getting thick so he devoted ONE hour to let the whole classroom HASH it out. Boy, we found out a gang load of stuff during the all out discussion. There were at least two white people who were approaching 30 years of age who said the first time they had ever seen a black person was when they were roughly 21 years of age! One white girl pretty much said that “urban” parents don’t care about their kids and send them to school dirty (I almost passed out when I heard this crap). We did a few “power in culture” physical exercises that blatantly revealed racism, sexism, and classism in society and many of the white grad students expressed that they were “uncomfortable with the discussion” when all the blacks and latinos were cool as a cucumber and wanted to talk about the injustice in the world. Guilt had set in for some folks and reality for others.


I can write for days about my grad school class alone!! According to my advisor this discussion was had last year in another class and some of the grad students ran out of the room crying and hollering!! WTH?? lol …and they want to teach Brooklyn kids? stop playing.


Anyway, so going back to school feels like a pure social experiment! Some days I feel like Ashton Kutcher is going to come busting out of the closet “punking” me based off some of the comments from some of my peers. Despite our racial, cultural and religious backgrounds there is one thing we surely have in common…the fact that we will dive in a waterless pool HEAD first starting Thursday to get our first taste of what it feels to teach summer school. None of us have teaching experience. Pray for me and my journey because this is the only prep I get before I head into teaching my very own class in the Fall. Oh yeah…I forgot to tell you that starting in the Fall…I won’t be teaching the average student, I have been assigned to teach Special Ed….

Until next time…..