A Teacher's Travels & Search for Math/Science Theorems that aren't Named after White Men |
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A Teacher's Travels & Search for Math/Science Theorems that aren't Named after White Men |
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A Year Later (1/3/2020--a day on which Trump commits war crimes) It has been a year and 5 days since I first left for Botswana. It has been a year since I went to South Africa and immediately fell in love with and related to Mzanzi. My friend and original Botswana guide, Scencia, suggested I write a year after post. I didn’t think I had anything to say, and yet I begin writing. The world seems even bleaker now, today particularly, and yet, I begin to write. I put on Oliver Mtukudzi, that musician you all introduced me to in Botswana right before his passing, and I prepare to type. “Ndima Ndapedza,” is playing, and I close my eyes. Oliver’s music takes me back to his homeland Zimbabwe. Not just to Zim, but to Mosi-oa-Tunya,Victoria Falls, the most spiritual and beautiful place I’ve ever been. I begin crying, and I’m not exactly sure why. My tears could be for this world and its fires and its war, but they could also be for me, and for all that I saw, experienced and felt just a year ago. “Neria” begins to play. “Just go back to Botswana!” Or, When I Resigned from Teaching. I came home at the end of April, and I really struggled to complete the school year. My students were resistant to me, I was missing my adventures, and it was cold outside. Still, I managed to begin teaching less than 48 hours after my return. I remember the first hour was filled with hugs and love, and the challenges immediately started. I don’t blame the children, but it was confusing for them--they had several months of various substitute teachers who didn’t enforce rules, create boundaries and who didn’t have academic expectations. My principal wanted me to prepare them for state math testing, only a month away, which meant that I had to cover months of missed material to students already severely behind and dealing with daily traumas. Plus, I love teaching science, and I felt that I needed to catch them up in science, which meant a lot of daily material prep for me. Meanwhile, I wanted to get back into my gym routine, reconnect with my friends and family and get my apartment back in order. Luckily, I hosted two Batswana women who were Fulbrighters in Pennsylvania, I found joy at a Black Coffee DJ set, I drank rooibos daily and learned to make my own shiro. But, things began to fall apart. My colleagues were truly miserable, and my students began to lash out at me for the tiniest directions. “Will you please take out a pencil so we can get started.” “Bitch, go back to Botswana!” -an excerpt from one of many daily like interactions. I never really struggled with relationship building and classroom management, but I broke my students’ trust when I left, and then again when I came back sharing stories of a faraway place, with very different children. Intellectually, I was bored given the contrast between a 5th grade American classroom and the learning I was doing on a daily basis during my Fulbright. I had no other choice. I was going to leave teaching, and I was going to leave Chicago--a place I now found challenging and provincial. I felt I could only return to New York, which I always loved and whose embrace, I always missed. I finished the school year, which was really a blur, and I supported a former student in the hospital after he suffered a gunshot wound. I gave away probably 75% of my things, (mainly books) and I packed up my apartment on my own, and I moved back to Brooklyn without a job in the middle of summer. A New “Career” Stupid sounding? Perhaps. But it didn’t feel any more risky than my overnight buses to Maun and Ghanzi. I spent the summer moving into my apartment, falling back in love with NYC by wandering the streets and the parks and by finding the cheap eats. I of course applied for jobs, and I worked in a lot of part time jobs to pay the bills. I read and ran and reflected on my year thus far. I learned that teachers really are not seen as valuable or competent, as I applied to and interviewed for a million jobs. My experiences were and are seen as cute and sweet, rather than demanding and requiring of extreme organization, preparation, intellectual thought and a deep love of young people and collective liberation. Organizations love hiring “education professionals” as managers, curriculum developers, teacher trainers, consultants, you name it---who have never taught. I interviewed for many jobs that continuously hired these types of people (former teacher trainers, education coordinators, etc) who have never been the head of a classroom for longer than a few months. This is at the root cause of problems faced by children across the world. This has been something particularly sad for me. Alas…. Still, I began working in a job that I believed to be a strong fit--it involves curriculum writing, thinking through education programming and through a lens that is international. While that hasn’t been exactly the case, I’ve enjoyed the freedom that comes with no longer teaching. I’ve found that perhaps I don’t even value having a career or moving up the career ladder because I know that my labor will always be exploited and because capitalism makes losers of us all, I should find wins outside of spaces that provide me with money. My schedule has been more flexible, and I don’t ever need to bring work home, which means I can study languages, read, volunteer and think. Think Think. I think about why I set out to go to Botswana. I think about why I learned, and if it has been useful to anyone but me. My experiences inform the work I do as a curriculum designer, but I’m still trying to imagine a world in which an Afrocentric lens, is just a lens, and a world in which that continent, which I love, is seen the way I see it. I’ve been surrounding myself with art, literature, music, any cultural production I can find from the continent and its diaspora, and exploring new languages here. The other day, at a screening of a beautiful documentary from Kinshasa, Systeme K, I got into an argument with a woman who came up to me to share her problematic feelings of the film. She thought that it was a negative portrayal of the Congo and that “Africa” had problems because of greedy African billionaires. This was after watching a film about incredible, political performance artists in the DRC, a country that has been exploited, stolen from, enslaved, continuously and presently harmed by the ills of white supremacy and global capitalism. This hate for the African continent is so embedded in global anti-blackness, a form of racism unique and apart from the racism that other people, communities and countries of color experience. The trauma my students experienced in Chicago is part of the same legacy of global anti-blackness that the Kinshasa artists try to respond to in their art. My guess at why this random woman felt so offended by the film and so quick to blame rich continental Africans for problems on the continent, is because a world in which dark skinned people, connected to the African continent, in positions of power and showing agency is a huge threat to literally everything this world has ever known. Western civilization is in decline, at least I hope it is. We all deserve a world in which capitalism does not exist. We deserve a world in which the world’s colonizers and imperialists are not continuing to benefit from forever altering and destroying communities, ecosystems, cultures and climates. Africa and its diaspora are the future, and my Fulbright was part of decades long journey for me understanding my role in creating an Afrofuturist world. I’m not sure what that looks like exactly, and recently I’ve been focused on, at the very least, making this world one that is anti-capitalist by volunteering on Bernie Sanders campaign in my freetime. I also know that socialism is not white and is inherent in a lot of African cultures and societies, predating capitalist colonialism. Thus, celebrating and uplifting Africanness (of course not as a monolith--but Zulu-ness, Tigrinya-ness, !Xoo-ness, Igbo-ness, etc.) is integral to the survival of our species, and home and neighboring species because of the damages of capitalism and whiteness. Missing A year later. I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, and experienced a lot but nothing in comparison to what I was able to accomplish on my Fulbright. I’m imagining ways to recreate the Fulbright experience again in my life and how to encourage others to dive into learning that isn’t just self-serving, but self-shaping in ways that in turn affect the lives of our people and communities. I miss Botswana. I miss my dusty, tranquil walks around Gabs. I miss picking guavas with Nikky in the Maun sun. I miss hopping on the bus from Riverwalk mall, through Southwest Province and ending in one of my favorite cities, Johannesburg. I miss hearing Kwesta’s sultry voice, that is so uniquely his, blaring from passing car speakers. I miss hopping on a plan for just the duration of a long film and arriving in Addis Ababa, and strolling through Piazza with Haime. And while I am very in love with New York and really don’t want to live anywhere else, I sometimes sit and cry because I’m on this side of the ocean, in a place whose whole history is rooted in capitalist exploitation and the worship of whiteness. A year later, and maybe not a year more accomplished or a year wiser, but a year in deep thought. Still touched by Bots and its neighbors.
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AuthorFulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Archives
April 2019
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