How I Came To The Work - Part 3: Awakening

I don’t remember thinking a lot about racism or sexism in my first teaching job. It was a high school band teacher position, and most high school band teachers are White men. I was aware of this but I didn’t see this as a sign of oppression. It just seemed like the result of individual choice.

There wasn’t any conversations during department meetings or faculty meetings about diversity. The other band teachers stuck pretty closely to the canon of school band music which was predominately  composed and arranged by White men. Even the “multi-cultural” music was composed by White men. All these lists of “essential” music and state lists of songs were mostly if not all filled with White male composers. I knew this at the time but it didn’t really bug me.

I felt like an outsider when we’d have these meeting with band teachers at other schools. There was no other people of color, everyone was taller than me, and it was hard for me to socialize and make friends with  other people. At the time I thought it had to do with the fact this was a hard job that was overwhelming, but in retrospect there was probably other stuff related to my racial identity that effected my experience.

My second teaching job, I was a special education assistant, and I started seeing teaching differently. Instead of focusing on what I was teaching, I was focusing on how to teach. The majority of student I was teaching were students of color, unlike my previous job where most of my students were White.

I had all of these new experiences at this job that broadened my sense of humanity. One of my favorite students was this wonderful 3rd grade girl. During a classroom party her mother came and the 3rd grader really wanted me to meet her.  When I started talking to her mom, the girl started translating for her mom, and I quickly realized that her mom didn’t speak English.

I shared a teaching space with students who had a wide variety of special needs including students who non-verbal. I felt discomfort being around students who were autistic, and I learned over time to see that as just one facet of their identity. The modeling of other teachers and the way that they treated them with dignity made me ashamed about my bias and gave me a new way see the humanity in different people.

The experience that impacted me the most was this little Asian boy who I taught. He had some language processing issues, which is why he got special ed services. And I taught him how to read.

I taught him how to read. 

That’s an amazing thing for me to think about. Reading is such an important gateway to the world, and I was the one who empowered him with these skills. I don’t know if he felt a unique connection with me because we were both Asian, but I know that I felt special connections, and a higher level of commitment to him, because I saw a part of myself in him.

I didn’t take this job looking for my eyes to be opened to the diversity of the world, but it came to me in ways I never expected. I had all of these experiences with people who different than me, and I found connections looking at these differences full on, because I couldn’t ignore them. And with one special boy, I saw myself, and something more in education. So when there was an opening at school that put diversity as a central part of their mission, I was intrigued, and I applied...