Educating In Today's World

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What role does my identity play in my classroom and in relationship with my students?”

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It is crucial that we as humans know ourselves, know who we are and how the bias we carry around can affect our success but more importantly the success of the young minds we hold in our hands. The question of who you are is a super loaded question. Many of us would answer this question with our profession.  In my experience with people that is just one facet.

I'm Cynthia Mallard, and I am a black woman who was born and raised in New York City with a sprinkle of Decatur, Alabama tossed in. When it comes to profession, I can imagine many say they knew exactly when they wanted to be an educator.  I am not in that pool.  I did not dream of my future classroom, nor did I dream of students sitting looking intently at me as I explained the protocol of the day.   I grew up in public housing on the 6th floor of a 22-story building.  A place called Linden houses.   I look back and I can remember seeing the drug deals happening downstairs, the fights heard in the hallways, the slamming of the incinerator door by the elevators and the pool of blood sometimes seen while making my way to the subway. Growing attended St. Rita Catholic school. My mother who was from Alabama enrolled me there because she felt public school in Brooklyn was not the best for me.  She was a nurse and told me she wanted me to do better than her and go further. She would tell me every morning she loved me and that it was my responsibility to survive and to win.  She would say I will not be here one day and you have to find a way no matter what to live and flourish.  I can still hear her say… “What are you going to do?”  I was raised as an only child, a latch key kid at the age of 9 years old.  Although I attended catholic school and knew all the catholic rituals, we attended a Baptist or was it a presbyterian church?  I’m not sure but I was raised believing in God, the trinity. I had three best friends whose names I remember to this day. There was Hezena who was from Haiti, Deborah from Puerto Rico and Desiree who was a cool but shy white girl. I gravitated to all people of all nationalities my entire life. I realize a lot of these everyday encounters created my identity.  I remember fight for my white friend and for my Puerto Rican friend when others insulted them for their race. The insults didn’t just come from White people but also from other races who had been taught racial bias at home.  I didn’t choose to be the protector, but it was the marginalization that I recognized was not right from a early age.  I can say there was marginalization in the north but when I moved to the south specifically Alabama, I felt I had been run over blatantly by it.  For example, I saw teachers make the statements that students who were Asian were genetically smarter in math and science.  In turn they didn’t expect much from African American students such as me compared to Asians.  You could see the teachers light up when talking to an Asian student and then exhibit less enthusiasm when having to speak to students of color. These teachers didn’t see how much genius there was in me as well as those who looked like me. These educators were bias, and it drove them in their everyday life honestly turning off the black students to the point where friends of mine didn’t do their work because they felt the teacher only cared for the Asian students.  Present day I see the same. Fellow teachers only concerned with successful students who have demonstrated high level skills.  For me it’s not just the skills that matter, but it is the whole child.  My identity plays a hug role in relating the material to any topic or theme in the world. My identity forces me to be an ally of these students.  Knowing that I have faced racism allows me to relate to that student who has moved from one environment and the subject of ridicule. My identity allows me to understand if feeling loved or not is a block for a student. I know what brings me joy and I know being able to identify that joy for a student and using it in curriculum can be a game changer.  In criticality I know a lesson must be made concrete for students.  How is this material in the classroom appealing in the world a student goes home to every night. I was super blessed to have some teachers who were able to relate content to my world, but it was my mother, also a teacher who gave me that criticality with everything I was learning in the classroom.  Now I have bias.   I tend to look toward Black women as the leaders.  I still believe White people have a superiority complex when they encounter people of color. These bias come from my experience and who I saw as saviors and who I saw as villains or as the enemy. Through an implicit test I found that I associated math and science as more favorable for men and boys and that I associated liberal arts for women.