Lessons Learned as a Teacher in the Hood

I am very grateful to say that I have lived in some pretty cool places.  When I graduated from high school  I moved from Boise to Salt Lake to attend Westminster College.  While there, I got my teaching degree AND met my husband, Mr. X, through a mutual friend.  Mr. X and I got married and he finished his undergrad at BYU and applied for Law School.  After applying all over the country we narrowed down our options and finally ended up packing up what little stuff we had and moving to Upstate New York.

I LOVED everything about Upstate New York.  I loved the people. Some of the nicest people I have ever encountered were native Upstate New Yorkers. I loved that I got to teach African refugees how to read, and tutor their kids in their schoolwork.  I loved exploring the outlying towns that were so quaint and beautiful.  I loved looking out over the hill we lived on and seeing luscious shades of green for miles and miles, and then when the colors turned in the Fall, the majesty and beauty of it was indescribable. I honestly don't think I have ever seen anything as beautiful as fall in New York.   I loved the cute little college part of town where we would go to get the best eggplant parmesan known to man.  I craved that little Italian restaurant on a daily  basis.  I can still remember the pizza place, with the wings and the thin crust pizza that made you drool when you dreamt about it.  And there was that one day when  I found the best sandwich shop ever. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time eating out our first year there. Oh, how I loved that little town.

As soon as we got settled I set out to find a job.  I wanted to teach. The only teaching position that was available was for a junior high Spanish teacher.  I don't know what possessed me to think I could teach Spanish to junior high kids, but I set up an interview anyway. I showed up shakin' in my boots and nervous as all get-out but determined to make it a good experience.  I sat down and we went through a series of questions.  Everything flowed smoothly and I felt confident about how it went.  After, I really did expect to hear her say that I was hired. But instead, what I got was, "Look, I think you are cute, and nice, and you will make a great teacher, but these kids will eat you alive! This is a rough school,  and you are just too sweet." Then she ended with, "There is a position for a bilingual teacher at an elementary school. I think you will be perfect for it." She passed on my info and the next day I got the job over the phone-yes, they were THAT desperate.  It was the best teaching job I ever had......it was the only teaching job I ever had.

I started teaching in an inner-city elementary school in Syracuse, New York.  Not only was it my first year, but I was teaching a bilingual class.  BILINGUAL CLASS.  I had learned Spanish in Spain....while on a mission.....for my church.  My Spanish was good, but it wasn't THAT good!  The kids that I taught were from Puerto Rico.  I thanked the heavens above they gave me a full time assistant, who was also from Puerto Rico.  I dove in head first and loved every second of it.

I soon came to learn that life in an inner-city school was far different from any life I had ever known.  Every single day, before turning the kids loose for recess, my assistant and I combed the playground for knives, swords (yes, we found an actual sword one day) guns, and drogas (that means drugs in Español).

One particular day, while outside, everything was flowing beautifully. All the kids were playing merrily, running, laughing, doing what sweet, innocent kids do, when all of the sudden there were sirens, and LOTS of them.  Within minutes of hearing the sirens we watched as eight cop cars pulled up to the house LITERALLY across the street from the playground.  I was in absolute shock as a group of policemen, all in bullet proof vests mind you, jumped out of their cars and proceeded with a drug raid.   TRUTH.  We were right across the street from this horrific scene and the horrible thing was I was the only one watching in horror.  There we played, naked and exposed to any bullet that should come our way (and by naked I mean without bullet proof vests and cars to hide behind, GASP). My assistant (who lived in the neighborhood) and the kids were so used to this scene they causally glanced over now and then to check in with what was happening and then went on playing.  I was in utter disbelief and I feared for, not only my life, but the sixteen lives I had been entrusted with. What if the people inside the house had started shooting? In our direction???  I yelled at my assistant to herd all the kids and get them inside.  She looked at me and said, "Oh Miss Ericka, we are okay, they are used to this."  My response was, "GET THESE KIDS INSIDE!!"  We made it back safely, without harm or gunshot wounds to the head.  Apparently, the house across the street was a well known casa de drogas and they arrested the guy inside, no shots fired.  I went home traumatized that night.

There were funny things that happened in that little classroom I loved so much. One day I was doing a lesson on insectos (bugs, if you will).   I kept using the word that I had learned in Spain for bug (which was not insecto btw). Every time I said the word my little students would giggle profusely.  Some of them even turned red in the face.  After about the fifth time using the word my assistant, pulled me aside and said in Puerto Rico that word was slang for a man's, ahem, you know what. I had repeatedly said "dick" over and over and over again.  "This dick goes from a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly, and this dick curls into a little ball to protect itself, this little dick bites, and those bites can really sting",  I think you get the picture. I was, of course, mortified and wanted to crawl into a hole.  My kids however, thought I was the funniest person on the planet.  I still laugh about that experience to this day.

There is yet another experience that I will never forget.  It was when I was teaching the unit on Community Helpers. We were on a walk around the school and we came across a cop car.  I felt this was a good opportunity to talk about policemen and how they serve the people. We stopped and I started an impromptu question and answer session, that didn't get very far.

Me: "What do policemen do?"
Josef: "Take away our mami's and papi's".
Me:"...................uh......"

That. Broke. My. Heart. These kids were growing up in a place where their visions of the world were so completely skewed because of the choices their parents made....because of the choices their parents made...and their parents before them.   They grew up in a world where all they were taught was how to SURVIVE living in that part of the "hood".  A lot of those kids looked at Police as the enemy: men and women who came to their house in the middle of the night, banging on their doors, hastily barging in and taking over their household. All while watching their parents scramble to hide whatever substance/weapon they had that was illegal.  I actually watched this scenario play out when the kids interacted in the "house" center. These kids didn't act out "mom cooking breakfast with baby in the crib, and dad getting ready to go to work" like I did when I was their age.  They acted out the scenarios that took place in their homes when their parents were taken away to jail.  They wouldn't run to a cop if they were in trouble, they would run from them because in their world, cops were on the side of the enemy.

 I had a mom who was in jail for murder, a dad who was a known drug dealer, and who knows what else, I would hear stories of how moms (some of them still teenagers themselves) would take their kids to parties till three a.m the night before and drag them from house to house.  I had kids who wore shoes that were two sizes too big and didn't have coats, in negative degree weather. There were some who had never been to a farm, or gone far enough from their community to see a cow in real life. While others who had never read a book, and didn't know what a horse said, or a lamb. Sometimes the only meal those sweet babies got was lunch in my classroom, and you can bet that we loaded them up.  If they wanted thirds, they got thirds.

I also had moms and dads who were good hard-working people.  Who tried to instill in their kids honesty, loyalty, hard work, and how to rise above the violence and crime that plagued those streets. I had single parents who worked 3 jobs and were still on government assistance to provide for their families. I saw and heard things that made my head spin. I learned to love and accept every single one of them.  The parents who dragged their children all over town till three in the morning, the parent who worked a night shift, only to turn around and go work a day shift to be able to put food on the table, the druggie, the partier, the teenage mother, I loved every. single. one. of them.   After all, that was the only world they had ever known themselves.

One incident in particular, happened when two of my students got in a fight. The fight resulted in punching and physical violence.  After breaking it up I sat down with each chico and we talked about other ways to resolve issues that didn't include hitting or violence.  Later that day, when the kids were being picked up I explained to one of the dads what had happened and the conversation I had with his son.  He pulled me aside and told me to never tell his son NOT to physically fight again! And that in that neighborhood it's either fight for your life or die.  I was speechless. I was so naive to all of that I just sat there dumbfounded not knowing what to say. A lot of those kids were taught from the time they could walk those exact sentiments.  They saw the kind of violence and activity that I only saw on tv, in their own streets....in their own homes.  It was a whole new world.

I ended up only teaching for a year and a half.  I got pregnant, had #1, and never went back.  The time that I taught in Syracuse will forever be one of my favorite experiences.  I learned so much. And I loved those kids beyond words. I find myself wondering where they are at in life.  It's a cliche, I know, but I ended up learning more from them than I could have ever possibly taught.