My teaching career began at Brown University in Providence, R.I. As I began the teacher education program at Brown, I immediately became im-mersed in teaching. By experimenting with a variety of teaching texts and reading authors like Lisa Delpit, Paulo Freire, and Ted Sizer, my cohort group began to explore what it means become educated.
In the university setting, my peers and I confronted some uncomfortable realities of teaching. We began to sort through what it means to be an educator grounded in social justice theory.
Instead of simply seeing the classroom through my own eyes and experiences, I began to recognize that dialogue is at the heart of all good teaching. But the growth I experienced as a result of our conversations at Brown seemed to have no place once I began my student teaching at Shea High School, in Pawtucket, R.I.
Race and class issues at Shea felt overwhelming (the student population at Shea consisted primarily of African-American, Cape Verdean, and Latino students), but I didn't see educators reaching these students. There were a total of three teachers of color in the entire building, including me and one other student teacher. I felt I needed the perspective of an experienced, committed teacher to support me as I confronted these difficult issues every day. But my cooperating teachers were unwilling or unprepared to give me the guidance to explore the complex dynamics of what it means to be a teacher in public schools.
Throughout my student teaching experience I kept asking myself the question: Why does the conversation that I began during my university experience in confronting issues of race, class, gender stop at the university door?