How students of color sharing their truths impacted one educator Jinni Forcucci
So I first met Kevin
on my very first day of student teaching,
and it was during first period.
He had his head down
so I walked over and I tapped him
gently on the shoulder
and I asked him to lift his head,
and he did.
He also delivered me a pretty
intentional message
he told me to “never f-ing
touch him again.”
I was 20,
finishing up spring semester as an
English Education major,
and Kevin was 18, a high school freshman.
Several weeks into the student
teaching process
not much had changed
between the two of us.
He was certainly disengaged.
I registered his joylessness,
but it was really in great contrast to
what I was seeing
in the rest of my students.
They were thriving,
they were kicking butt.
And I was loving being a young teacher,
it was an incredible adventure.
So it was really easy for me to consider
the barrier between Kevin and me,
and sort of blame Kevin for it.
After all, he was the one
who had embarrassed me,
he was the one who was isolating himself
from the rest of us.
One day however, class was leaving
and I was standing out in the hall
and Kevin walked by
and on a whim I said, “Hey listen,
what are you doing after you graduate?
What do you think you’re gonna do
when you get out of high school?”
And again, with great intention,
he delivered a message,
and it was a truth I had never
considered before.
He said, “I’m gonna go to jail
and that’s where I’ll learn to cut hair.
So when I get out, I’m gonna work in
my uncle’s barbershop.”
And I stood there, as Kevin walked away
from me,
and you know that high school
fluorescent light,
you know that hallway,
and I felt, I had no words.
I certainly didn’t know if there was an
appropriate follow-up action,
no pre-service preparation had gotten
me ready for that exchange.
And so I remember having this
initial and immediate, innate response
that no person and certainly no student
of mine ever deserved to visualize
a future with prison as part of it.
And then after thinking about it,
I started to wonder if maybe the barrier
between Kevin and me,
had way less to do with Kevin,
and way more to do with systems,
and schools, and educators, and me.
So over the next two months,
I had two months left in this experience
to foster a relationship with this young
person
who based on age, he’s a peer, I’m 20
and he’s 18,
and I decided to make this connection,
and foster an authentic relationship,
but I need you to understand that this
wasn’t some sort of teacher strategy,
it wasn’t an act of selflessness.
It came from curiosity.
I needed to understand how two people
almost the same exact age,
could exist on such oppositional paths.
paths that would have never intersected
if I hadn’t chosen to become a teacher.
if I hadn’t been placed in
that particular school,
if I hadn’t been lucky enough
to get Kevin as a student.
And as I look back now, I am so thankful,
because it is the experiences and stories
that Kevin shared with me
that taught me that race too often
dictates the experiences
that young people have in our schools.
So my first step toward my journey
in awareness was to recognize that
personal truths don’t align.
Student experiences do not parallel mine.
And if I didn’t recognize that
in a tremendous
and fundamental way
as a young teacher,
and if I don’t revisit that now
as a veteran teacher,
then not only will I struggle
in the classroom,
but my students will falter.
And let’s be really clear about
one thing here
I’m not talking about falter
in the search for grades
or standards or assessments.
I’m talking about the struggle
as we search for climate.
It is a teacher’s responsibility
to create a space
where children are encouraged
to take risks,
and to speak their truths,
and to feel safe when they do it.
Sometimes however,
I have too many young people who choose
quiet over participation,
because the responses they have
traditionally gotten from their teachers
are dismissive, they are corrective,
and they can even be combative.
And that’s because of the systemic racism
that plagues our buildings, and
our culture, and our nation.
And it is my job, it is our job
as educators,
to do every single thing that we can,
every single day,
to help extract that.
How? How do we do that?
How do we ensure that each child
is equitably educated?
How do we ensure that the prejudicial
messaging and the implicit bias,
and the hurtful attitudes,
how do we combat them,
how do we negate them,
specifically, look at me.
How do people who look like me,
white ladies who teach,
because that is what our nation is
made up of, white female teachers,
that’s who we are right now,
how do we make sure that we are delivering
rigorous content in a safe environment,
where our kids are taking risks
and finding growth, and
being treasured every second that
they’re in our rooms.
I don’t have really easy answers
to these questions.
There is no bulletpointed listicle
that I’m gonna deliver,
and too many people are looking for that
that easy tool.
It doesn’t exist.
What I have are stories, and I have
experiences.
I revisit them, I welcome new ones,
especially those moments, those firsts,
that shed light
on why I believe the things that I do,
why I react the way that I do.
And so at the end of that student
teaching experience
my beautiful kiddos threw me a party
in the cafeteria, and it was cool,
it was awesome, I felt love,
I felt sincerity, there was taco dip.
There was someone missing.
Kevin, Kevin didn’t come,
and I was bummed.
But he did leave me a note.
This is what it said.
And so upon receiving that note
I had two immediate realizations:
one, teaching is where I belong,
it’s what I need to do.
It has made me a better friend,
it has made me a better partner,
it’s made me a better person.
It has made me a better mama.
And two, when used correctly,
“shit” really can be poetic.
So if Kevin taught me the value of
relative truths,
it is Ashley who taught me to recognize
the why behind these truths.
And I am so excited to talk to you about
Ashley.
So Ashley comes into my classroom
as a tenth grader,
she’s this 15 year-old bundle of absolute
glory,
she’s everything good, she’s excited,
she’s energized,
she’s willing to learn,
she’s thriving, she’s just cool, right?
We know those kids.
I learned more from Ashley that year
than she learned from me.
Two years later,
Ashley steps foot in my classroom.
Two steps closer to graduation,
more aware, more mature, more ready
to change this world.
So the day that Ashley pulled up into
our high school parking lot
and there was a confederate flag waving
on the back of one
of her classmate’s trucks,
and there was noose that was
dangling from its bumper.
It is no surprise that my young person,
that Ashley decided to act.
And so she and several of her classmates
organized a protest.
They wore red shirts in solidarity,
they wanted to send a message to our
administration
that they needed to act swiftly,
and appropriately
against this hateful message that was
delivered very freely.
The day of the protest,
many of the young people who decided
to be a part of this showed up to my room.
Another first period, another first
experience.
And as the kiddos came in,
I could hear their anger,
and I could hear their hurt,
I could see it.
And I decided, it was one of those
moments,
I decided to do my best in that moment.
So I scrapped my creative lesson plan,
and we went in and we just talked,
and to be honest with you, I mostly
listened, and let these young people
navigate through the hurt and
the anger and the frustration.
At the very end though I weighed in,
and I promised that I would do my best,
I will go to administration, I will stand
up to them,
I will make sure they do what is right.
And then Ashley raised her hand,
and another truth was delievered,
that I wasn’t quite ready for.
She said, “Mrs. Forcucci,
I appreciate what you’re doing,
but I can’t trust you the way that I would
trust a brown person.”
And uh, I got it, maybe not initially,
but what I know is
Ashley couldn’t trust that I was going
to handle it the way I needed to
because the hurt that she felt
from that message of hate,
I couldn’t understand because my whiteness
protects me from it.
And so, I got over the emotions.
First I was, well I don’t know if I’m over
the emotions, it still resonates,
but that initial moment, it was hurt,
it was embarassment,
she said it in front of twenty-five
of my students,
but what I know is that Ashley didn’t say
that to be injurious,
she didn’t say it to be malicious,
she said it because it was how she felt,
and she deserves to share how she feels
in my room, in our rooms, in our schools,
in our climate, in our nation.
She deserves to share that.
And so then I started to think about
the moment through Ashley’s perspective.
I wondered what it must feel like to sit
in classrooms for all of those years
with a white person in front of her,
wondering if she could trust them
wondering if they had her best interests
at heart.
At the same exact time that was going on,
I was in graduate school.
I was getting a Masters in Composition
and Rhetoric.
I had a professor, a veteran professor,
who often told us stories
of his growing up in the South.
I was also studying Baldwin and Ellison,
I very much believe that the humanities
and literature
can teach our children about the racism,
the pervasive racism, the white privilege,
the implicit bias that pervades.
I needed to understand, I still do,
I needed to understand the why behind what
Ashley said to me,
I needed to understand the why behind my
reaction to her.
I stand before you today,
and I’ve had some interesting experiences
with co-workers,
some have appreciated what I have done,
some have not and have
criticized this work,
but what keeps me going back are those
moments when as an educator
we deliver information that then
turns to awareness,
and then that becomes acceptance,
and then that turns to
community and family,
and when I see shifts in perspective,
and my room becomes a space
where children can thrive,
I will remain committed to this work.
So these truths that we are delivered are
often uncomfortable,
but that needs to be okay,
it’s the only way that we’re going
to negate and combat this bias,
explicit and implicit.
It’s the only way we’re going to
potentially eradicate the social barriers,
but those racial barriers will
not be eradicated instantly.
Although I’ll tell you, the tools that
Kevin gave me several years ago,
it’s 25 years ago,
those tools, Kevin taught me
that I needed to listen,
that I needed to self-reflect,
and that I needed to empathize.
And so if we continue to do that,
we won’t eradicate it instantly,
but I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll
crack it.
And if we crack it, it might crumble,
and then when it crumbles, the future
Ashleys and the future Kevins
will walk through our doorways into
spaces and rooms
with culturally literate and culturally
proficient educators,
who deliver lessons with joy
and compassion
and academic challenge and rigor,
in ways that every person deserves
so that our collective will thrive.
It is the collective, we will all thrive
from those lessons.
I know these tools work, and I’ll tell
you how.
I called Ashley several months ago,
and said,
“Hey, I keep revisiting this moment
between the two of us.
You want to talk about it?”
“Sure.” And she shows up in my classroom.
Ashley is the same age today
as I was the year she sat in
my room in the red shirt.
She’s 32. She brought her two beautiful
children with her, she has one on the way,
and we sat in our desk seats in my
classroom,
and we talked about lots of stuff,
and we giggled and we cried.
And when I asked Ashley if she
remembered that moment
between us the day she wore her red shirt,
if she remembered what I did,
she said, “I don’t really, Mrs. Forcucci,
I don’t remember what you did,
I just remember that I was encouraged to
share my truth.”
So the racial barrier that may have
existed between Ashley and me,
the day that she walked across
that graduation stage is gone.
She is a poet, and she is a believer,
and she is a healer,
she is an advocate, and she is a mama.
And when I told her I was going to get to
talk to you guys today,
I asked her if I could share her story.
She not only said, “Yeah go ahead and
share it,”
she encouraged me to honor her truth.
And if you ask me, that is poetic as shit.
Thank you.