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Voices in Urban Education
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High School Redesign
VUE Number 8, Summer 2005
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EXCERPT:
Giving Voice to Discomfort
By Rosanna Castro
Rosanna Castro is a 2005 graduate of Brown University in Education Policy.
> Author’s Biography
A young Latina woman confronts her often-painful high school experience, relates how she learned to voice her discomfort, and advocates for an empowering education model to counteract the misunderstanding and bias that so often destroy opportunities for youths of color.
As I sat down to write the last essay of my college career, a flood of memory engulfed me. I remembered the White male high school English teacher who would never scream at us, no matter what havoc we caused in his classroom. One day, though, this teacher became so frustrated with me that he elevated his voice to what I can only describe as a shout. Exasperatedly raising his hands, he said, "Why are you so recalcitrant? You have so much potential!" I felt his strong gaze fixed on me as if waiting for an answer, and as I sat dumbfounded, he stormed out of the classroom.
After recovering from my initial shock, I grabbed the nearest dictionary and looked up the word recalcitrant. "Recalcitrant: Marked by stubborn resistance to and defiance of authority or guidance." Wanting to make sure I had not been called something perverse, I grabbed a thesaurus to look up some synonyms: contrary, defiant, unsubmissive, insubordinate, intractable, obstinate, opposing, radical, rebellious, resistant, resisting, stubborn, uncontrollable, undisciplinable, undisciplined, ungovernable, unmanageable, unruly, unwilling,wayward, wild, willful. I can live with recalcitrant, I thought.
It was then that the sneaking suspicion that he really cared about educating us penetrated my wall of cynicism. To this day he remains the kind of teacher who will buy books and materials for his students out of his own pocket. He was angry because I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about applying to colleges. He didn't know that my guidance counselor could have discouraged Jesus from the cross. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to tell my teacher about it because I was afraid that maybe my guidance counselor was right about the choices open to me. Later that year, with only two days before the admission deadline, my teacher went to the Brown admissions office and got me an application.
It perturbed me at the time that he didn't seem to understand or care about "the rules." I mean, didn't he understand how students of color and teachers in inner-city schools were supposed to act? His job was not to care about our future, but to try to "teach" us (mostly, keeping the classroom quiet and making sure we didn't beat each other up or wear hats). And our job was to find creative ways of making his job hard. We had an infinite variety of methods to do our job. We would play dumb, do the absolute minimum to receive a passing grade, mock Whiteness, intimidate faculty, be oppositional, and make life a living hell for Brown student teachers (a practice that, as a future educator, I hope doesn't come back to haunt me!).
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Archives
High School Redesign
VUE Number 8, Summer 2005
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
EXCERPT:
Giving Voice to Discomfort
By Rosanna Castro
Rosanna Castro is a 2005 graduate of Brown University in Education Policy.
> Author’s Biography
A young Latina woman confronts her often-painful high school experience, relates how she learned to voice her discomfort, and advocates for an empowering education model to counteract the misunderstanding and bias that so often destroy opportunities for youths of color.
As I sat down to write the last essay of my college career, a flood of memory engulfed me. I remembered the White male high school English teacher who would never scream at us, no matter what havoc we caused in his classroom. One day, though, this teacher became so frustrated with me that he elevated his voice to what I can only describe as a shout. Exasperatedly raising his hands, he said, "Why are you so recalcitrant? You have so much potential!" I felt his strong gaze fixed on me as if waiting for an answer, and as I sat dumbfounded, he stormed out of the classroom.
After recovering from my initial shock, I grabbed the nearest dictionary and looked up the word recalcitrant. "Recalcitrant: Marked by stubborn resistance to and defiance of authority or guidance." Wanting to make sure I had not been called something perverse, I grabbed a thesaurus to look up some synonyms: contrary, defiant, unsubmissive, insubordinate, intractable, obstinate, opposing, radical, rebellious, resistant, resisting, stubborn, uncontrollable, undisciplinable, undisciplined, ungovernable, unmanageable, unruly, unwilling,wayward, wild, willful. I can live with recalcitrant, I thought.
It was then that the sneaking suspicion that he really cared about educating us penetrated my wall of cynicism. To this day he remains the kind of teacher who will buy books and materials for his students out of his own pocket. He was angry because I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about applying to colleges. He didn't know that my guidance counselor could have discouraged Jesus from the cross. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to tell my teacher about it because I was afraid that maybe my guidance counselor was right about the choices open to me. Later that year, with only two days before the admission deadline, my teacher went to the Brown admissions office and got me an application.
It perturbed me at the time that he didn't seem to understand or care about "the rules." I mean, didn't he understand how students of color and teachers in inner-city schools were supposed to act? His job was not to care about our future, but to try to "teach" us (mostly, keeping the classroom quiet and making sure we didn't beat each other up or wear hats). And our job was to find creative ways of making his job hard. We had an infinite variety of methods to do our job. We would play dumb, do the absolute minimum to receive a passing grade, mock Whiteness, intimidate faculty, be oppositional, and make life a living hell for Brown student teachers (a practice that, as a future educator, I hope doesn't come back to haunt me!).
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