“As an educator, this idea of changing tomorrow became increasingly evident the more time I spent in the classroom. Teaching a majority, minority student population, I was confronted very early on with my very personal and deep-seated bias towards this vein of thinking. Every day I was forced to come face-to-face with the fact that the reality that I believed to exist for everyone, one where your ability to prosper was based solely on your willingness to work hard or that those who do wrong are equitably brought to justice, was a false narrative. As I sat day after day with my students I learned that there was so much about our history, and subsequently our present, that I didn’t understand – and I was a U.S. history teacher, mind you. I witnessed first hand the injustices brought against my students because of a system that had been created by people who had no concept of their contribution to the destruction of an entire group of Americans … As a parent of a young girl, it is my duty to address issues of racial inequality with her on a regular basis so that it isn’t a foreign, and uncomfortable, topic for her as she gets older. It’s important to let her know that there are still areas of bias that I struggle with, but that God is good and He provides a whole lot of grace. It’s important that I surround myself with friends of color, seeking out true community so that I have a safe space to seek answers and to be lovingly corrected when it’s needed.”
– PhD student in Curriculum & Instruction, Texas A&M and Former K-12 teacher in Bryan ISD
(Published on June 19, 2020)