The Best Lesson: Then and Now

The best lesson that I’ve ever taught my students didn’t come from a book. 

The best teaching that I’ve done with my students hasn’t been on the best day when everything went right. It hasn’t been on the days where everything makes sense, in fact, it’s been on the days where the opposite is true. 

I am a teacher.

I am an advocate. 

I am a believer in the beauty that exists in the minds of children. 

If my students have walked away from my class with anything, it is the notion that we do not grow from what comes to us easily, but from the moments where we are stretched beyond what we believed possible. For me and my students, growth has always existed on the other side of fear. 

I am no stranger to challenge and adversity. In reflecting back over my personal and professional career, it is the moments where the task seemed too steep or too grand that my own capacity for achievement shined through in ways that I was not aware of, but am grateful for. I grew up in the protective bubble of the suburban South with few disruptions to my academic or personal life. I went to college and graduated with the intention to step out of my comfort zone in order to have the impact that I saw myself capable of. Having little to no formal experience in the classroom, I jumped into teaching in one of the most disproportionately impoverished neighborhoods in the city of New York with only the desire to help and serve. The realities of gun violence, food insecurity, and familial hardships arose as painfully present factors in the lives of my then 5th graders. The first year of teaching was difficult, but I finished having seen a tremendous amount of growth in my students and in myself. 

I have had the honor of watching groups of students grow for nearly five years. I graduated from a historically black college, Tuskegee University, and left with a passion to impact communities of color through the context of education and to advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves. I have seen first hand the impact that systematic lack of resources has on communities. While this is reality for many of my students, I have also seen the lengths that communities will go to support, affirm, and make spaces for each other in the most necessary times.

I believe in the collective power of teachers. 

I believe in the innate brilliance of Black and Brown students. 

I believe that the way schools look now does not have to be the final chapter. 

I believe in a better future for our students.