A Most Vexing Lesson: On being taught by Black children how to teach Black children
I must thank our children, my children, our family, our young, for being willing to teach me lessons most necessary, most essential, and for being gracious enough to render these without demanding any pound of flesh. I am grateful, and will remind all others that they should be, when given the privilege to share space with the developing minds of Black children.
I did not realize, not initially, that I walked onto that campus in Orangeburg in August, and assumed that I would be offering those same students, those same minds and spirits in development, a “you’re welcome”, for the so-believed gifts that I would bring them from my professional career of service to the VA/Fed system. I had packed 12 years of work as a practicing Psychologist, Supervisory Psychologist, a TED Talk, countless hours mentoring, and boundless energy and belief into an emotional briefcase that I would unpack in the various classrooms that would be my staging area with students. My students, all grace and doubt and will and pain and potential and answers in waiting, had other plans for me. Many other clear, and necessary plans.
I had heard whispers from others about teaching at an HBCU. I had heard whispers about culture, and generational disconnect, and trophy generation sensibilities and academic preparedness, and talent, and, all of that was rattling around in there, somewhere near my shadow, being consumed, processed, and waiting for a spark. Jung suggested that we remain actively unaware of our shadow, that part of our psyche which we reject as being other, but I, for some time now, have known when mine stirs, and when it wakes, and when it feasts. And here it was, over my shoulder, taking in all of this so-called data, and so-believed wisdom, about our children, on this campus, and campuses and classrooms, everywhere. I was not fully ready.
I had assumed that the same emotional intelligence and command presence which had moved me through the ranks as a Clinical Psychologist in the gang warfare that is Veterans Affairs service would propel me up and over in the classroom. I had prepared an armor crafted of experience, expertise, so-believed charisma, and reason. Our children would ask me to set all of these, one by one, aside, until needed. I would heed their demand and guidance. And would grow to be grateful for them being willing to make the demands.
Black children are brilliant. Black children are always students and learners and teachers, all times, full stop. Never doubt that. By some awful fated turn of the human screw they have been born Black in a somewhen where White Supremacy is a tether, and currency. And they, Black children, have, in the laboratories of their minds and imaginations and homes, built means for projecting their lives and joys and voices and immortalities out to a world invested in their erasure. They shape and insist, and shatter our reason, and demand that we try again, and they give us the tools to do so. No cap.
Should you doubt that, I would borrow your reason for but a moment. I shall return it, bruised but better, the same as our children have done for me.
Life for Black families, children, women and men, has been a continuous reshaping of trauma experiences, retraumatizing, and coping with trauma. It has been a great deal more, naturally, as Blackness appears readily to be some manner of god particle, and infinitely resilient and resistant, but still wedded to humanity…and yes, much to unpack there, all things. But for this moment, the trauma that demonically rides Black skin here. Willfully, gleefully. I am a trauma treatment specialist by training, and can tell you without getting lost in the forest of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, that experiences of continued trauma bring about isolation an hypervigilance. Full stop. They bring about nightmares and distrust and avoidance and angry outbursts and mood disturbances. All. Full stop. Black children have taken these histories, these new narratives, as the trauma is still being visited on them, and have still found an emotional processing space for exuberance. They have found a language uniquely theirs, a patois, not to be known by all. They have found spaces for affirmation. They have found dance, and rage, and overconfidence and audacity, all. And we can learn much, I have learned much, by listening first to their demand that we watch them, and listen. Listen to all that ails, and drives, and wounds, and heals them. All.
What I absorbed from this first wave of being welcomed into a learning space with our children, Black children, is that teaching is an art and social science. Before you can offer whatever you suggest to others is knowledge, you must understand them, those students, as minds, bodies and beings. You must obligate yourself to know these children, and their story. You must emotionally descend from your dais, to their circle, and sit cross legged, and hear their narrative, as they offer it. You must give them brushes, and your early class time must serve as a canvas, and anything they produce must then be an essential part of your review, questioned and understood, and kept only for that space. I say that only as each class of Black children will need a fresh canvas, and will offer a fresh existence in what they paint on that canvas, and they, our children, will need you to be flexible. Learner before teacher. Perspective taker before expert. Servant before scholar.
Our children are not required to trust us. To trust you, simply because you are sharing a space with them.
A most toxic bit of dust that settled on much of what I saw in this early bit of my learning with our children is the hubris around our intent and effort as teachers. We demand that Black children simply know our intentions, and react to these as we have stated them. Through generations of trauma, and broken trust, they should simply, somehow, know us to something different and new. Some of us demand that they brand this on their awareness, and offer us the proper deference before we will willingly engage in an honest and caring partnership with them. We live, while there, in that us/them space, which our children, Black children, remain keenly aware of. They see you, and know how you move, and yes, you need more people.
To this, to this emotional illness, this unwell collection of beliefs and practices, I offer you the understanding that your best, and most essential approach, is to show these children. Show up, and do not parse out those who are most deserving, and those least, and create a class system in our children’s learning spaces. Do not craft yet another meritocracy, based fully on the concept that those who among Black children who fashion themselves into the best docile and refined American citizens are those that have best worth. Refuse that. See it. See it resting with your shadow. Uproot it. See it as a cancer, one which can return, and will need to treated again.
Black children, our children, my family, taught me the humility needed to learn their emotional language. I came in with a faith in my understanding of the human condition, and a belief that I could leverage this with these students. Our children, Black children, most immediately disabused me of any of these notions. They burned away my understanding of them from any text. They held my hand and served as guide through their emotional processing spaces, and allowed me to learn first,a number of things essential to sharing a learning space with them. Language is critical, and needed to develop the partnership necessary for teaching and learning. Our children did not need me to dress or behave or sound like or mimic their ways or movements. They asked only that I acknowledge the importance of these many things, culturally, and to give them breath and meaning, in our shared spaces. Our children are not asking us to agree with them. They are asking us to take the time to value who they are, even in the midst of disagreement, with boundless and present flaws, and to negotiate our shared spaces.
Black children are ever teaching us, that we are not always teaching them what matters most. And you know them to be right. If we are simply giving them tools to parrot concepts, and pass examinations, and to trim their humanity to make it broadly palatable, then we have failed in our relationships with them, and have failed in our obligations as so-believed stewards of their developing minds. They learn, know, that they must navigate a system which will only allow bits of their true human to trickle through. They will always be subject to review, to incredulity, to being ostracized, should they not fashion a version of themselves fit for consumption, and weighed down by this idea that grit is somehow an adaptive quality and not a means for enabling predatory abuse. We fail when we refuse to allow our children, Black children, the opportunity to dictate what teaching looks like, uniquely, for them, and that they can spend time in our shared learning space destabilizing the personal and systemic instruments of their oppression.
What our children, Black children, taught me, is that people, children, themselves, and their daily lives, are our most important natural resource with regard to building a healthy learning space. Hip-hop is a part of their way of life. Our science and life concepts must be tethered to that culture, and art, to allow them room to relate their understanding to it. Social media, relatability, an understanding of current events, acknowledging generational differences, giving them unconditional positive regard, specifically when they are at their so-believed worst…these are what they require of us, just to start, these must be in our personal syllabi.
I learned that much of the reluctance to own their greatness, and maximize their potential, and to simply run to their limitlessness, is due to the ways in which we, those given the responsibility of guiding them, have hamstrung them. We have battered these children with the sense that their worth is tethered to these grades, and their learning is contingent upon filing in behind this arbitrary standard, and we move them casually on to the next staging area, the next conveyor, where the abuse is more focused and consideration in even shorter supply.
I learned that we have a responsibility to discuss their greatness,their pending wellness in the mouth of this madness, their growing selves, are all of the answer that we need, and so I use much of my class time to imagine, and meditate, and to question, and challenge out loud, and to bring doubts into our shared space, so we may prosecute, and dismiss these, and form new beliefs…
Black children taught me the need for all of this, and that the approach to each class, and each child, and student, and student teacher, must be crafted for their needs. I learned to keep my office door, lesson plan, and approach open and flexible, as my learning space has dictated, and I am grateful for it.
After hearing so much from my fellow teachers, and seeing some of their resistance, and knowing much of it to be the system that wrongly taught them about my children, our children, us, I am crafting a discussion for so-believed teachers. A discussion to be had in our shared training spaces, a space where we will publicly meditate on what Black children have effectively taught us about teaching Black children and how we evolve with these evolving lessons. I ask that you be present, and then return to our children, ready to continue your lessons. Most days, I simply hope that they are passing me. See you out there, soon.
