Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Teaching While Black
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1956
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/author-pamela-lewis-on-teaching-while-black/ * http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teaching-while-black-pamela-lewis_us_56d07b88e4b0bf0dab31d21c
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2008006079
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2008006079
HEADING: Lewis, Pamela, 1956-
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374 __ |a African American educators |a African American women authors |2 lcsh
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670 __ |a PowerPoint magic, 2008: |b E-CIP t.p. (Pamela Lewis)
670 __ |a E-mail from publisher, 1-25-2008: |b (b. June 6, 1956)
670 __ |a Fordham University Press, April 19, 2016 |b (Pamela Lewis is an educator, writer and activist in New York City) |u http://fordhampress.com/index.php/teaching-whie-back-cloth.html
953 __ |a sc15
PERSONAL
Born June 6, 1956, in the Bronx, NY.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator. Has worked as a school teacher in Harlem and the South Bronx for more than a decade.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Pamela Lewis is an educator and writer. Born and raised in the Bronx, she has worked as a teacher in Harlem and the South Bronx for more than a decade. Lewis has also authored several technical books with CDs for teachers, including Spreadsheet Magic: 40 Lessons Using Spreadsheets to Teach Curriculum in K-8 Classrooms in 2001 and PowerPoint Magic in 2008.
Talking with Rebecca Klein in an article in the Huffington Post, Lewis shared her thoughts on why she thought it was important to go into teaching as a career. “I really always knew I wanted to help my community. That was a driving passion—I’ve always been somewhat of an activist. I knew I wanted to help people of color, and it became very clear that the way to do it was through education.”
Lewis published Teaching while Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City in 2016. The personal account relates Lewis’s experiences as a New York City educator, particularly focusing on being a person of color. She highlights the problems with the public school system in its failures to specifically address the needs of its students of color. Lewis offers a number of solutions to these issues and also provides points for both new and veteran teachers to consider throughout their career.
In the same interview in the Huffington Post, Lewis talked about her motivations for writing this book, particularly after reading several memoirs by white teachers. “I wrote Teaching while Black because I wanted to show a perspective from a teacher of color. I’m experiencing the joys and stresses of teaching differently than other teachers…. Being a woman of color, I bring different things, including my own history and my style, to the table.”
Lewis also talked with Tim Goral in an interview on the District Administration website about the way the race of a teacher can affect the psyche of a child. She pointed out that “the school system is extremely segregated. As diverse as we believe New York City to be, the communities aren’t…. This was my reality growing up in the public school system as well—the students and their families are not accustomed to seeing anyone who doesn’t look like them. And a lot of times, because their teachers are the only white faces that they see, it automatically equates to “whiteness means intelligence.” These faces represent authority.” Lewis continued: “Sometimes this creates tension because there is opposition to that authority. Sometimes it actually works in the favor of white teachers: when they are seen as authority figures, it’s their way or the highway and the students have to listen to whatever it is that they say. Race and the color of our skin is constantly something that affects the dynamics in the classroom every day in so many different ways.”
Lewis addressed the issue of students of color having low self-esteem after going through the public school system. In an article in Fordham, she explained that “the lack of motivation and work ethic has a lot to do with how students feel about themselves and their self-worth. I feel like if they loved themselves and felt they were worthy of a better education, they would try harder.”
In a review in Choice, P.S. Arter took note of the “realistic insight” that Lewis offer in her account. Arter “recommended” the book, saying that teachers of all levels “will be able to relate and benefit from her experience.” Reviewing the book in the Huffington Post, Stuart Rhoden lauded that it is a “must read tome.” Rhoden observed that “her descriptions of the culture of the school are some of the most well written prose concerning this issue. Her juxtaposition of understanding the landscape of public education as an entry-level non-tenured teacher is spot on.” Rhoden later concluded that the author “highlights how all people are not one identity. She speaks to the intersectionality of her neighborhood, her gender, her race and her educational level in a way that is much needed in the discourse surrounding public education. Here is hoping that educators, academics as well as policymakers all learn from her experiences navigating urban public schools in New York City.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Lewis, Pamela, Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City, Empire State Editions (New York, NY), 2016.
PERIODICALS
Choice, October 1, 2016, P.S. Arter, review of Teaching While Black, p. 259.
Fordham, August 30, 2016, Nicole Larosa, “Author Pamela Lewis on Teaching While Black.”
ONLINE
District Administration, https://www.districtadministration.com/ (May 16, 2016), Tim Goral, “Recognizing Racism Exists in Today’s Schools.”
Hechinger Report, http://hechingerreport.org/ (June 21, 2016), Pamela Lewis, “It’s a School, Not a Plantation: Five Ways to End Black Teachers’ Disengagement in the Classsroom.”
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (March 1, 2016), Rebecca Klein, “What It’s Like to Teach while Black;” (March 16, 2016), Stuart Rhoden, review of Teaching While Black.*
BLACK VOICES 03/01/2016 05:06 am ET | Updated Mar 01, 2016
What It’s Like To Teach While Black
“Instilling black pride is not a threat. It is a necessity.”
By Rebecca Klein
MILLS MILLER
Pamela Lewis’ new book, Teaching While Black, argues for teachers who aren’t colorblind.
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Pamela Lewis isn’t like most of her fellow teachers. Lewis is black. She’s from the North Bronx and grew up in housing projects. She attended schools in which it was not a given that students would go on to colleges and careers.
So, in a country where only 17 percent of K-12 public school teachers identify as minorities, she believes she has rare and valuable insight into the issues facing students of color. In her book to be published this month, Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City, she argues that educators should refuse to be colorblind and should give deep consideration to their students’ racial backgrounds.
“I pray this book will help you to never be so naive as to think that racism has no grip on your classroom,” Lewis writes. “I simply ask you to see us, and to promote our children’s ability to see themselves. Instilling black pride is not a threat. It is a necessity.”
Teaching While Black makes a broad call for a more culturally responsive curriculum. In detailing Lewis’ own experiences during her first decade of teaching in New York’s public schools, it takes readers inside classrooms where students are sometimes distressingly poor and deeply uncomfortable in their own skin.
The Huffington Post spoke to Lewis about her new book and why more teachers should embrace race in the classroom.
What made you decide to write this book?
I’ve read a few teacher memoirs over the years, and they’re typically by white men and women. I wrote Teaching While Black because I wanted to show a perspective from a teacher of color. I’m experiencing the joys and stresses of teaching differently than other teachers — [teaching] as a black woman from the same community as my students. Being a woman of color, I bring different things, including my own history and my style, to the table.
I really wanted to write the book with students of color in mind. I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past few days after seeing a few things happening on social media. It seems like there’s an awakening among many black folk. We really feel like it’s our time to control our own destiny when we see things happening around us. We’re kind of fed up, we’re angry, we’re passionate about what we’re seeing because we want change to happen.
Why did you decide to go into education?
I really always knew I wanted to help my community. That was a driving passion — I’ve always been somewhat of an activist. I knew I wanted to help people of color, and it became very clear that the way to do it was through education.
As someone who grew up in the same type of community as a lot of your students, what are the things you’re able to see in your students that someone else might miss?
One thing that sticks out for me is understanding the need to change the self-perception of black and brown students. I speak about this lack of self-love that many of our children face as a result of living in a white supremacist world. I think sometimes if you don’t have that perspective, you might not necessarily pick up on how many times it rears its ugly head.
If we had more black and brown leadership that knew how to speak to these issues, then we could have a massive shift in our children’s state of minds, which would only bring forth greater achievement.
It’s not that I don’t think white teachers can be change agents. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But at the same time, don’t tell me you think you totally get my students in the same capacity that I could. It’s nothing against you. We need to have more faces of color showing students where we came from and how we still were able to achieve despite where we came from.
I don’t want students to grow up thinking that white people are the gatekeepers of education. When they only see white teachers, they think education is whiteness, and that sends a message, and that’s the wrong message to send.
I read a report that talked about how teachers of color are more likely to leave the profession. What, in your experience, contributes to this trend?
I think that the same way that our current school system is disengaging to our students of color, it’s disengaging to our teachers of color as well. There are many teachers or potential teachers that take issue with the current system of micromanagement or the lack of respect for teacher expertise.
It’s not that only teachers of color feel that. I think that pressure is something all teachers are feeling. But considering that there’s a legacy of us being controlled in this country, the history that we bring to the classroom makes it even worse and makes it even more difficult for some of us to handle.
Research shows that New York City has the most racially segregated schools in the country. How do you think that impacts your students?
We have people who are poor among all races. But when you live in areas of concentrated poverty, and all the people around you are not just poor but all black and brown, it sends a message. They think all poor people are black and brown. The only time they see people who are not of that color, they are their teachers.
To them, if you’re smart, you’re “acting white.” If you’re pretty, you “look white.” It’s really screwing up their self-image.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Suggest a correction
Rebecca Klein
Education Reporter, HuffPost
Biography
Pamela Lewis is a writer, teacher and activist in New York City. She was born and raised in The Bronx, and has taught for thirteen years in schools in The South Bronx and Harlem. Her first book, "Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education" is published with Fordham University Press.
Home > On Topic > Recognizing racism exists in today’s schools
ON TOPIC
Recognizing racism exists in today’s schools
Efforts to improve education system ignore the real problems, a veteran New York City teacher says
Tim GoralDistrict Administration, June 2016
5/16/2016
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In her new book, Pamela Lewis underscores the importance of filling classrooms with teacher role models who look like their students of color.
In her new book, Pamela Lewis underscores the importance of filling classrooms with teacher role models who look like their students of color.
When it comes to racism in our public schools, many people pretend it doesn’t exist, says Pamela Lewis.
In her new book, Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City (2016, Empire State Editions), Lewis says a misplaced focus on test scores hides the true causes of underperforming inner-city schools: poverty and race.
In this memoir recounting her experiences as an inner-city teacher, Lewis underscores the importance of filling classrooms with teacher role models who look like their students of color. Ignoring race only exacerbates the problem.
“Not seeing race preserves racism by implying that it doesn’t exist,” Lewis says, “and thus the notion that there is no longer a need for a head start, a way to catch up to those who’ve always had one.”
Your revelations about teaching in inner-city schools will likely surprise many readers.
That’s why I wanted to write the book. There are a lot of conversations surrounding education in reference to teachers—things such as unions, blaming teachers and pointing fingers, and test data and things like that.
It was very obvious to me when you listen to the media, or even to people who aren’t in the profession, that many people really have no idea what it’s like to be a teacher of any persuasion. It’s something that you really don’t understand unless you’re in it.
Then when you add even more confusion to the mix by considering what it is like to be a teacher of color, it introduces an entirely different level and layer of complexity and madness. It is something that you really cannot relate to unless you are experiencing it.
And even though there are hundreds of teacher memoirs out there that try to do the job of explaining it, there weren’t very many classroom teachers of color writing memoirs.
So, on one hand, I could relate to some of the things I’ve read, but then there were these other conversations—important conversation about race—that just weren’t even discussed in any of these particular memoirs. That was what ultimately made me decide to write it.
Since then, I know there have been a few other teachers of color who have written memoirs. I think it’s a bit ironic that they are all coming out around the same time. Maybe it is because we have all been pushed to our limits in terms of feeling as though we were excluded from this discussion.
You say that people don’t consider how the race of a teacher can affect a child’s psyche, or how having mostly white teachers can harm a child’s belief in the ability and intelligence of their own people. What does that mean to you?
In New York City, the school system is extremely segregated. As diverse as we believe New York City to be, the communities aren’t. You have pockets of black people, pockets of Hispanic people. I can go to Washington Heights and be around Dominicans. I can go to Harlem and be around African-Americans. I can go to the South Bronx and be around Puerto Ricans. I can go to Lower Manhattan and be around white people.
This was my reality growing up in the public school system as well—the students and their families are not accustomed to seeing anyone who doesn’t look like them.
And a lot of times, because their teachers are the only white faces that they see, it automatically equates to “whiteness means intelligence.” These faces represent authority.
Sometimes this creates tension because there is opposition to that authority. Sometimes it actually works in the favor of white teachers: when they are seen as authority figures, it’s their way or the highway and the students have to listen to whatever it is that they say.
Race and the color of our skin is constantly something that affects the dynamics in the classroom every day in so many different ways.
Teachers of color are dramatically underrepresented nationwide—82 percent of teachers are white.
And the percentage of public school students of color is rising more and more.
Why do more people of color not go into teaching?
Based on my own experiences, I’m starting to think this is not a profession that many people of color would choose, considering how controlling it has become.
As I’ve grown in this profession and become more expert in what I think I know in terms of teaching and education, I feel that I’m constantly being micromanaged more as the years progress.
It’s definitely becoming more difficult for me to stay because of the fact that I can’t be free to do as I please, to do what I know is effective. And it’s often not the administration, because they are following what the Department of Education tells them to do. I had more freedom in the classroom teaching as a novice at the age of 21 than I do now at the age of 34. To me that’s crazy.
You wrote that the public school system was an aversely racist institution. What did you mean?
I think the best way to explain it is with the idea of avoidance. When you talk about avoiding the obvious, that’s the way that racism tends to rear its ugly head in today’s times. It’s not as blatant. No one is going to say, “These kids are poor and black, so we don’t care that their schools are not funded in the same way.”
But they can say that it’s the property tax that determines how much money a school receives, when we know that a school in Harlem that’s full of black and brown kids is a poor school and, therefore, is not going to get the same amount of money as a school somewhere else.
So you don’t even have to say it’s a race thing. But we know that it is. I mean, that’s just something that we feel all the time being black in America. You see that cops are killing unarmed black men and they keep making a justifiable excuse for it, but you don’t see it happening to unarmed white men as often.
But no one is going to actually say what it is. So we’re going to avoid the obvious and pretend like race has nothing to with it, when it has everything to do with it. I think that’s what the education system does all the time. And when you avoid the obvious, children will suffer and not care enough to do anything about it.
Several times in the book you write about kids who gave up. They had reached a point their young lives where they didn’t care.
It doesn’t matter that they don’t care—we’re still avoiding the obvious. The obvious is that their parents are not bringing them to school every day at the elementary school level. Or in high school, the obvious is that they’re coming in at noon instead of 8:15. But we’re not going to address those issues. We’re just going to keep teaching to the test. We’re going to keep pressing them and see if we can get that Level 4 from these students who are Level 1. We’re not going to pay attention to the things that really matter.
Those are examples of aversive racism, because I believe that if these things are happening at other communities, common sense would kick in and people would say, “Well, let’s focus on these issues rather than worrying about what test result they get.”
Were you shocked to discover that the clique system and racist behavior carried over to your adult colleagues?
I was beyond floored. This was when I was in my early 20s. I think I was still wet behind the ears in terms of life and of me having such a higher expectation for humanity at that point—I wasn’t so jaded.
I really did not anticipate those type of interactions with adults. To be honest, I didn’t think that those types of conversations and statements would happen in the space of a school, where we have this daunting task of teaching children in poverty-stricken communities who don’t want to learn.
I didn’t think anyone who would even try to take on such a great responsibility would have time to be petty, and it was very hurtful.
I always valued the role of a teacher so much. It’s almost like I put the profession on a pedestal. And I really thought that anyone who chose this profession in life had to be a good person. I didn’t anticipate that for some it really is just a good job with benefits and that children were secondary to their ulterior motives and agendas.
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It’s a school, not a plantation: Five ways to end black teachers’ disengagement in the classroom
Changes to consider
by PAMELA LEWIS June 21, 2016
Pamela Lewis
Meeka’s teachers used to always tell her that staring at the clock would only make time move slower. Now grown up and a teacher herself, Meeka couldn’t help glaring at it as if it were responsible for how bored she was listening to Mrs. Brown painstakingly review the senseless rubric her group would be assessed with. Seemed like white teachers needed a manual to even breathe. Meeka looked at the clock again. She spotted Mrs. Brown heading toward her table to “check in.” Attempting to look busy, Meeka doodled on her agenda sheet:
Thirteen years, two months, three days, and twenty-two minutes until retirement …
I provide this bit of expository writing to illustrate an oft-overlooked point: Teachers of color are often as disengaged as their students in our nation’s urban classrooms.
While there are more students of color than white students currently attending public schools, teachers of color still only make up 18 percent of the teaching population.
What’s worse is that is has become exceptionally difficult to retain the few teachers of color that remain.
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Many black and brown teachers are just as disengaged with our current school system as that of their students, and like many of the children that they teach, many will eventually drop out.
So how can we increase retention rates for teachers of color?
There are several adjustments that policy makers and administrators can make. Here are my top five:
1. Stop making us feel like we work at the plantation.
One shouldn’t compare any job to slavery.
But considering the hours upon hours of paper work that seem to never end, constant scrutiny and critique of our practice exhibited through tons of formal and informal observations, the expectation that we should neglect our own families for work, and all the harsh punitive actions taken against teachers for not following scripted rules, it’s difficult not to channel Kunta Kinte’s spirit of rebellion.
2. Realize that we are valuable assets
Teachers of color often feel as if their knowledge and experience aren’t valued.
As of late, it seems that to be a young, white and out of touch data cruncher is the prerequisite necessary to be considered a master teacher.
Teaching is so much more than the willingness to create a thousand Excel spread sheets on student data, such as building strong relationships with one’s students.
Related: How should online teacher programs be judged?
Teachers of color have the ability to inspire their students in ways that many white teachers simply cannot, and many of us have ties to the communities in which we serve.
We understand that our students are extended family, and that a strong bond outweighs any of the supposed strategies we are told to Jedi mind trick our kids with.
3. Let us do our own thing!
Everyone talks about how strong the black woman is, how feisty the Latina woman is, so why force us to teach with someone else?
Co-taught classrooms are the new wave, and it seems that schools across the nation feel as though two teachers in the room will always be more effective than one.
While many teachers may take no issue with co-teaching, many men and women of color are strong enough teachers to manage a class on their own.
It becomes especially annoying when having to teach with someone who feels entitled to take charge because of the color of his/her skin.
Related: Experts say teachers are being taught bad science
It can also be irksome when a teacher of color can’t just be him/herself, or when certain necessary curriculum and/or style can’t be taught in the presence of a white co-teacher because it makes him/her uncomfortable.
4. Stop hiring racists to teach our children.
We can’t do anything about the ones that already exist within our public school systems, but the least we can do is to not hire any more.
Despite what one might think, it is possible to smoke out a racist. Racism, like religion and morals is something people truly believe in.
Ask the right questions during an interview and it will make it very difficult for even the most closet racist to hide.
5. Allow teachers to be more in tune with the realities of the communities in which we serve.
Many teachers of color teach in poverty-stricken communities.
And while many of the children that live in these neighborhoods are stellar students, many others have deeper issues that prevent them from learning to their full potential.
Homicide, incarceration and teenage pregnancy are real-life issues students in urban communities fall victim to every day.
Many urban students are depressed, anxiety filled and suffering from symptoms linked to PTSD.
However, teachers are just supposed to teach textbook curriculum and virtually ignore their students’ realities.
After all, what good is a test score to someone in maximum security prison?
Or to a corpse, for that matter.
Pamela Lewis is a writer, teacher and activist in New York City. She is the author of Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City.
Want more?
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Black and brown boys don’t need to learn “grit,” they need schools to stop being racist
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Pamela Lewis
Pamela Lewis is a writer, teacher and activist in New York City. She is the author of Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race… See Archive
Author Pamela Lewis on Teaching While Black 0
BY NICOLE LAROSA ON AUGUST 30, 2016 BOOKS, FORDHAM MAGAZINE
Lewis_hi-resFULLCOVERAfter Pamela Lewis, FCRH ’03, had been teaching for some years, she began to feel defeated. A teacher of color, she was faced with an education system that she felt was failing black children. “I was angry, originally. I felt as though I needed to have my voice included in the conversation,” said Lewis, who holds two master’s degrees from the Mercy College School of Education. “I had read a few teacher memoirs by then, but they were always by white people talking about their experiences. I hadn’t read any memoirs from anyone of color.”
This year, Fordham University Press published Lewis’ memoir, Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City. The book is a deeply personal account of her 11 years of teaching in New York City, one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country. Lewis details her frustrations in trying to reach her students while working within a system that did not value her own understanding—as a black woman—of what children of color need to succeed.
In the introduction, she writes about the effects of “double consciousness” on her and her students. The term, coined by civil rights activist and educator W.E.B. Du Bois, refers to the challenge African Americans face when they are forced to view themselves not only through their own eyes but also through the eyes of others around them. It’s something she’s felt both as a Fordham undergraduate and in her teaching career. She urges educators who are not of color to be mindful of the theory of double consciousness, and she challenges all educators to acknowledge the role race plays in their classrooms and, above all, “to not be color blind.”
_BG_4781_Mbw_l-cPamlewis
Pamela Lewis (photo by Bud Glick)
Teaching While Black is filled with anecdotes of Lewis’ students—how they struggled, how they bonded with her over music, how she could relate to them and their families. It is Lewis’ hope that curricula in communities of color will continue to grow to better reflect their diverse student body, and that the city will attract more black and Latino teachers. A dearth of knowledge and education about one’s own culture, she said, contributes to low self-esteem and can lead students to struggle in and out of school.
“The lack of motivation and work ethic has a lot to do with how students feel about themselves and their self-worth. I feel like if they loved themselves and felt they were worthy of a better education, they would try harder,” said Lewis, who’s now working as a literacy coach in the Bronx. She added that “just having that presence of black leadership” in the classroom “makes you realize what your potential is a little more.”
Lewis, Pamela. Teaching while black: a new
voice on race and education in New York City
P.S. Arter
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
54.2 (Oct. 2016): p259.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Lewis, Pamela. Teaching while black: a new voice on race and education in New York City. Empire State Editions,
2016. 212p ISBN 9780823271405 cloth, $70.00; ISBN 9780823271412 pbk, $19.95; ISBN 9780823271443 ebook,
contact publisher for price
(cc)
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MARC
Pamela Lewis's Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City is insightful and
reflective. Written as a narrative, her story captures readers' attention by focusing on the issues of being a teacher of
color in New York City and teaching--with few resources--students of color. Lewis writes from the perspective of an
idealistic, newly appointed teacher and how she experienced veteran cynicism within the system. Her narrative is
challenging and honest, a personal account that also includes actionable ideas for current and aspiring teachers to
develop plans for culturally responsive teaching methods. Readers gain a realistic insight into teaching at-risk students
and the issues leading to teacher burnout in an era of No Child Left Behind. Teacher candidates to veteran teachers will
be able to relate and benefit from her experience. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All readership levels.--P. S. Arter,
Marywood University
Arter, P.S.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Arter, P.S. "Lewis, Pamela. Teaching while black: a new voice on race and education in New York City." CHOICE:
Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2016, p. 259. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479869010&it=r&asid=501bd22e51c9ca0067e7e89db157acb4.
Accessed 5 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479869010
THE BLOG 03/16/2016 03:26 pm ET | Updated Mar 17, 2017
Review of Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City by Pamela Lewis
By Stuart Rhoden
2016-03-16-1458108788-8003955-Slide1.jpg
Ms. Lewis is accurate when she starts by stating that this story is a “love story.” The totality of this story takes us across a journey from the streets of the Bronx, to Fordham University, to the New York Teaching Fellows and finally into her own classroom. I found her narrative to be told in such a beautiful way that I sometimes wanted her to make the narrative match the grittiness and difficulty of the struggle. That Ms. Lewis presents this story, a story of struggling through college as a woman of color, coming from the projects of the Bronx and being in a teaching program with very few persons of color, as a love story speaks to her maturity not just as an educator but as a writer as well.
In the first chapter of the book, she describes her self as “an educated sister from the hood” and she never wavers from that narrative. Her account is, as Gilberto Conchas describes, “one part streetsmarts and one part booksmarts.” Her combination of street and academia is what makes her such an effective educator, and this a must read tome. Her ability to fluidly transition and code switch between the narratives of students and faculty is of critical importance. Most significantly, what makes her streetsmarts critical to her success is how she is able to swiftly draw conclusions about her students that most young educators her age simply are not able to conclude because of their age or lack of experience. Her awareness of the lived experiences of her students adds years of experience to her resume and highlights a blind spot that many educators never reach.
Those of us in higher education wish we could teach what Ms. Lewis intuitively knows about her students, because as she says “I must admit that my kids “got me” more than they got their other teachers because I was them...that is if they didn’t get caught up in the realities of ‘hood living.” Being able to understand the cultural experiences and personal narratives of students of color in urban environments is not something that is easily ingested by many students in teacher training programs. Many young, would-be teachers feel as if they are already “down” simply by being familiar with a particular pop or hip-hop artist, current film, or speaking the latest urban vernacular. While those things are important, and are entry points into learning about urban students cultural background and lived experiences, they are just that, an entry point. Too many educators, both veteran as well as novice, end with being comfortable using students vernacular or knowing the latest musical artist. Ms. Lewis starts there and zooms past that marker with ease.
While Ms. Lewis highlights that her story is a love story, she doesn’t shy away from the struggles of being a pre-service and in-service teacher. Her articulation of the challenges she had with professors while in college resonates to those doing work focusing on culture and diversity, particularly focusing on microaggressions. She was fortunate enough to find a professor who gave voice to her negative experiences, and in many ways gave her hope. Her ability to reach out for assistance and to go to another professor, one who is a white male, speaks to her deeper understanding that not everyone who is of the same race, or gender, shares the same experiences. Dr. Mark Naison, a Professor of African and African-American studies at Fordham University, eloquently describes Ms. Lewis’ circumstance as “aversive racism.” His articulation led her to see a bigger picture, many young future educators simply do not see. She goes on to state that because of her problematic collegiate experience she “realized that the entire public school system was an aversively racist institution” meaning that students of color in urban school districts across the country are not overtly denied rights, but rather are covertly denied access and opportunity based on where they live.
When Ms. Lewis describes her first time entering her own school classroom and meeting her students, you can see how this is a love story. Many fear urban classrooms full of Black and Brown students, and in her case Special Education students, but she ran towards them. Many see “these students” as deficits; Ms. Lewis saw their potential and abilities. As she succinctly articulates about one of her most challenging students, all he needed was “love and respect.” Too few teachers, no matter their color, age or experience level enter their classrooms with this type of reverence, or humility. There is ample room for classroom management to include love, trust and respect.
This book, Teaching While Black: A New Voice on Race and Education in New York City, highlights relationships not just between Ms. Lewis and her students, but also her colleagues, most of whom are significantly older. Her descriptions of the culture of the school are some of the most well written prose concerning this issue. Her juxtaposition of understanding the landscape of public education as an entry-level non-tenured teacher is spot on. Ms. Lewis seeing the totality of the situation, not in an exclusively negative light, like many teachers who end up leaving the profession, but rather as a challenge, speaks to her urban grit and resilience. She is extremely open to being mentored by her colleagues and has a wonderful relationship with her Principal. However, she is also pragmatic and authentic when it comes to the multitude of inequities and ineptitude that is taking place at the school site level to her students, and in the school.
Ms. Lewis, in this must read tome, highlights how all people are not one identity. She speaks to the intersectionality of her neighborhood, her gender, her race and her educational level in a way that is much needed in the discourse surrounding public education. Here is hoping that educators, academics as well as policymakers all learn from her experiences navigating urban public schools in New York City.
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Stuart Rhoden
Professor, Consultant, Scholar, Activist, Mentor, Parent.