Reshaping my Identity as an Urban Educator

Throughout my AUSL residency year, there have been a lot of experiences that have reshaped the way I view myself as an urban educator and the goals I seek to enact in my teaching. Some have occurred in the classroom while I was teaching, others have occurred in my classes at National Louis University as I listened to my professors talk, or participated in discussion with classmates. However, one of the most influential experiences happened while I was sitting at home in my reindeer pajamas, while reading Kevin Kumashiro’s book, Bad Teacher. His quote about White women teachers stopped me dead in my tracks.  

“White women teachers even today symbolize the goal of public schooling to assimilate difference, all couched in the image of nurturing and care, as depicted in popular Hollywood films, like Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, where white women teachers lift up their poor students of color.”   

  

In fact, this is an idea that is even parodied on network television. The glorified White woman teacher role in an inner city setting looks ridiculous, when the only basis is to "save them" like Kumashiro talks about. After reading his quote, and even seeing this short and humorous, yet powerful video clip, I began to reflect, and think about my own role as a white woman teaching in an urban public school. Do I symbolize a goal to assimilate difference? Do I nurture and care for my students with a deeper intent to lift up my “poor students of color?” As painful as it was to consider my own role in possibly assimilating difference to mainstream culture, I took a step back and thought about all the reasons that made me want to teach in an urban setting like Chicago, where there are a myriad of ethnicities, languages, cultures….and people. Assimilation was not one of those reasons. Pity was not one of those reasons. In fact, it was just the opposite. One of the reasons that drove me to teach in an urban setting was to combat the belief that these urban students are poor and need to be lifted up at all. In fact, this type of pity is seen by many culturally relevant educators and researchers as being racist.

In a study called “Racism Without Racists:Institutional Racism in Urban Schools,” the authors discovered that “under the pressures of teaching and with all intentions of being kind, teachers had essentially stopped attempting to teach black children,” (Massey, Scott, &Dornbush as cited in Delpit, 2006, p. 221). As Lisa Delpit writes, “See their brilliance: Do not teach less content to poor, urban children but instead, teach more!” (2006, p. 221). 

Having spent this past year in a school in the North Austin neighborhood, where poverty is very prevalent and violence is rampant, I understand the unique needs that students in urban schools face.  When some students are facing extreme poverty, inadequate healthcare, unsafe living conditions, poor nutrition, and other hurdles to get over, to some it may feel that classroom work should be last on the list of things to do. What these students need are high expectations and rigorous curriculum (Stovall, 2008). Urban students do not need to be coddled, or pitied—in fact it is this very mentality that continues to increase the achievement gap (Blanchett, 2006, 27). We need to push our students and expect more of them! “If children come to us knowing less, and we put them on a track of slower paced, remedial learning, then where will they end up?” (Delpit, 2006, 221). One of the best ways to help these kids “catch-up” is to give them reasons to get excited about their learning—provide them with learning experiences that are meaningful in the grand scheme of things instead of a worksheet here and there to help them memorize their spelling words.

Ultimately, I have a much more complex job than just teacher. As an urban educator with goals to push my students academically through culturally relevant and rigorous curriculum, it is imperative that I continue to reflect on my own role as an urban educator.