“I’m New Orleans born and raised. I graduated from Carver in 2001 so to go back home and teach there gave me an instant connection inside of the classroom. I really have a cheat sheet, because I sat in the same seats that they sit in. They want to hear what it was like back then. If I say something, you could hear a pin drop. And it’s not because I’m about to say anything profound.
My biggest joy from teaching is building solid relationships. This was my first year teaching seniors. I started with one picture on the wall because I went to one of the kid’s basketball games and I took a picture of Speedy shooting a free throw. I didn’t say anything about it - I just put this picture up. So of course everyone comes in like ‘Oh! How’d Speedy get on the wall? What’d he do to get on the wall?’ Come to my classroom now, I got 175 pictures up there. The students started bringing pictures - 'I wanna put my mom on the wall! I wanna put my grandma on the wall!’ It’s little stuff like that, bringing a sense of community inside the classroom.
School is a seven hour relief of whatever problems [the students] have going on outside of this. I always keep that in the forefront of my mind. I understand the struggle that you took to get here. Your lights are out. Your water’s off. Your mama ain’t home. Your daddy ain’t home. There ain’t nobody fending for you and you still made the choice to come here.
The relationships that I’m building are like: I’m at your Thanksgiving dinner table. I’m at your daughter’s 1st birthday. I’m at your wedding. Those are the type of relationships that you get to build when you intentionally teach or you intentionally love or you intentionally fill the space with joy.
You always want to be optimistic in the times that we’re in, right? Because sometimes school is the only safe haven that the babies have. But then you think, is this safe? In this time - are we really going to be able to house a building full of people? It’s almost a Catch-22. You want to make sure that everybody’s getting taken care of, but then you always second guessing, is this the best choice for the school? For the students? Is this the best choice for families? For teachers?”
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