During my first year teaching, I was assaulted by a student. For the last thirteen years, since I started teaching at twenty-one, this is how I have worded it.
But the word “assault” is a shortcut. It is a knife meant to neatly separate me, the innocent victim, from my student, the scary perpetrator. But what happened was not clean and simple.
Read MoreI was centering curriculum on my own white experience rather than the needs of my students.
Read MoreHere is my plea to other teachers: don’t deprive students of meaningful learning opportunities as a disciplinary technique. Studies have shown that students of color are much more likely to be given harsher disciplinary consequences than their white peers. Punishing the whole class by taking away learning experiences such as labs only widens the achievement gap.
Read More