Flashback to 2007!

My Students, My Mentors: How 29 young black men changed my life.

Last year, the public high school I worked at opened a section of American literature that was open only to African-American male students. The school became aware of a significant population of students in this demographic who had passed the high school exit exam but scored "Far Below Basic" on the state exam. In this day of high stakes testing when much is riding on the performance of all significant ethnic subgroups in a school's population, the school wondered if a single gender, single ethnicity class could make a difference. It turns out it could, but not necessarily in predictable ways.

While our principal was wondering about this approach, our short-staffed school needed an extra period of American literature to help level overcrowded classes. In a magical and decisive moment, I volunteered to teach this pilot section of American literature which was only open in enrollment to African-American male students. The principal made sure that we did things right with such a targeted approach, and with parent approval and students enrolled on a volunteer basis, the class was formed.

Our pitch for the class was this simple: "We can see you've passed the high school exit exam. We can see that you didn't score even remotely close to the same level of achievement on the state exam. The school would like to offer you a unique educational experience, one in which we recognize you as young black men, one in which your identity is highlighted, appreciated, and valued. In short, the school thinks that if we were to offer you an all-black male class, it would be a positive experience and you, in turn, would allow us to encourage you to do your best on the state test." Win-win.

So I was this teacher. This white male teacher. The first day of class, one of the young men asked me, "Do you know what you are doing?" It turns out that I didn't know what I was doing, that I was guided by good intentions (which are never enough), an intuitive sense of what was working (or not) in the classroom, but most importantly of all, a commitment to do my very best for the students who were sitting in front of me.

I began the first day of class by asking the students to recall how they had heard of the class, what they felt about the class when they heard about it, and what they were feeling now, sitting in a public classroom - by choice! Outside of an elective or two, none of the students had ever chosen to participate in a specific class, and certainly none had ever chosen to participate in a class because the class specifically and explicitly offered racial and cultural identity development aimed at them.

"How does this feel? What is familiar or strange about this experience so far?" I asked.

"This reminds me of home," Jacob offered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, home is the only other place I go where everyone is all black," he stated. The rest of the class laughed. A few looked nervously at me, as if to question Jacob's judgment that we were "all" black here. I felt embarrassed for a moment, acutely aware of my whiteness. This was one of the first of many moments of a growing awareness of my own racial identity. The students let the moment sink in, and for a second, we experienced a deep and sudden stillness.

That did not last for long, but it still sticks in my mind as one of the first steps on our journey together - a journey where they ushered me, without judgment, without evaluation, without condemnation, without sarcasm, into a deeper awareness of who I was, of how I was different from - and similar to - them, and of how I interacted with others, based on my racial and cultural identity.

I told them that the class would not be mine, nor would the class look, feel, or sound like any other class on campus. We would study the same California state standards for eleventh grade English Language Arts, but we would commit to making it work for us. I began to use the first person plural everyday in class, talking about what "we" were going to do. This was a new step for me, a tentative and conscious inclusion of myself into another cultural group as the outsider, as the alien, as the visitor. And for a white person, who can live their entire life in a condition of normative blindess, that is, simply seeing the dominant culture as "the way things are," rather than a position of privilege, this was a first. This was valuable. This was life-changing.

How did 29 young black men change my life? We participated together in a community of choice - I chose to be their teacher and they chose to be open and engage, not only in our classroom experiences, but in our struggles to make the educational system WORK. We worked the system - they, by communicating openly about their needs and being "real" in each moment in the classroom, and me, by changing whatever we could change about the system to make it serve the students better. They engaged me, and they pushed me to think hard about what mattered and what could be sacrificed. These young men taught me what it means to participate in a culture, not by default but rather by choice. These young men taught me what it means to make a commitment. These young me taught me what it means to be a teacher. These young men taught me.