"Often Imitated, Never Duplicated": Black Womaness in Education
This month, I'll be featuring the voices of female educators in honor of Women's
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Ms. Aryee-Price, you're not going to believe this. I'm writing an essay that was assigned to the 8th graders!"
You see, that's Aida. A seventh grade, Afro-Latina student of Dominican descent whose thirst for knowledge reminds me of myself at her age. She gives me life within an oppressive system I find myself having to navigate and negotiate every day.
As a Black woman teacher who is also a numerical minority in my district, I often feel like a sea otter in a bed of sharks that are waiting to attack and devour me at any given moment. Making the wrong move, uttering the wrong sounds will cost me my life. That's real. My Blackness and womanness intersect in ways that I cannot escape, so survival becomes the ultimate goal. My students are my survival.
I grinned; her enthusiasm for school gives me a unique kind of energy that keeps me coming each day.
In a classroom discussion about The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton and the protagonist, Ponyboy's obsession with Gone with the Wind, I encouraged students to critique this problematic story of the Old South. Aida's constant questioning and wondering led us into a brief exchange.
"Next year," I shared, "you all will read To Kill a Mockingbird, a text that explicitly tackles racism, power, privilege, and what justice looks like for some..." She was intrigued.
I could see the wheels spinning in Aida's head. In the only way that she could express, she blurted out, "I'm going to read that book." And she did.
My hope is in the children I teach each day. Our language arts classroom discussions center their lives, their stories, and the experiences of people who look like them. It is important they get to see themselves represented in the classroom. It is important they get to see humanity in its fullest form and what happens when an oppressive system attempts to dampen their hopes and desires. And it is equally as important for them to see when people like them fight this oppressive system: win, lose, or draw.
So when Aida told me that she did not pass language arts class last year, I questioned how that could happen. What went wrong? Did our system fail this child? How can a system that is not intentional about educating students of color, predominantly Black and Latino, succeed? Having a colorblind approach to teaching our students not only invalidates their lives but discourages them from seeing the divine and magic within themselves. As a Black woman who teaches mostly Black and Brown students, and as one who approaches the classroom from an anti-racist and social justice lens, it is imperative that my students see the divine in themselves. That's their survival.
Unfortunately for many of us, we are born into this white heteropatriarchal society. It's an oppressive society that we have all inherited, so anything counter to that reality runs the risk of being silenced, isolated, and defeated.
And because we were all born into this unjust system, we cannot escape it's oppressive ways unless we actively and collectively work to disrupt it. As women, we internalize this oppression, and see it manifested and perpetuated in various forms between our daily interactions with each other. But as a Black woman in this system, I need to go into work fully armored.
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