teaching – Women Who Submit

June 24, 2020

Breathe and Push: A Letter to Students in the Spring of 2020

By Rosalyn Montgomery

Dear Students,

Navy, white and gold graphic of the text Class of 2020 with the C wearing a cap.

I have thought long and hard about my decision to address the newest example of police brutality against Black men and women in America that has resulted in the worldwide protests. Sometimes the only way that I can deal with the rage that these images evoke in me is to become numb as a defense mechanism. Far too many times these occurrences flood our timelines for a few weeks, and then are gone until the next incident. I worry about myself, but more than that, I am constantly worried about my family and you, my students. I pray that the world can see the joy and light that I see in your faces daily. I see you for the individual qualities that you bring to the classroom. I see your excitement but also your pain and struggle. Quiet, loud, extroverted, introverted, disengaged, actively participating, Black, White, Asian, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Native American, Multiracial, Gay, Straight, Bi or Curious, I see you and advocate for you. I want nothing more than to protect you as you figure out who you are as you pass through the awkward years of middle school. You have enough to deal with becoming yourself without having to deal with images of abuse due to immigration status, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, oh and on top of all of that, a worldwide pandemic that has isolated you from friends and loved ones for months.

The last time Los Angeles was awakened by a civil unrest was in 1992. I was a couple of years older than you are now. I remember how that impacted me and the many emotions that I didn’t know how to express. I experienced all three stress responses: fight, flight and freeze. I felt powerful from the rage but also completely helpless against a system that continuously exhibited disdain for me and my people. The far too often attacks on character either through explicit statements or with microaggression based on implicit biases adds to the stress of trying to exist in peace.

Through the years with each new murder at the hands of police or “stand your ground laws,” I could feel the pressure building to another eruption that inevitably happened two weeks ago. I would like to be optimistic that this time it will be different. So far, the evidence is suggesting that this time may be different. Maybe since people were confined at home and couldn’t turn away, they finally see and understand what Black people have tried to explain about mistreatment and the systemic racism found in the police, healthcare, and school systems of our country.

I hope and pray that when you are my age, you will not have to tell future generations experiencing yet another civil unrest the story of “When I was your age…” My parents told me of Marquette Frye in 1967, my story in 1992 was LaTasha Harlins & Rodney King, and in 2020 it is George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberry and too many others to name. I believe that your generation can break this cycle. You are open to an entire world through social media to share experiences and understand each other. Learn and become who you are so that you can celebrate and respect the similarities and differences of others. You have shown that you can adapt and survive anything. To quote one of my favorite cartoons, “I believe that you have the power to change the world” (Avatar the Last Airbender).

Congratulations on all of your accomplishments. I am so proud of each and every one of you. It has been my pleasure to be your science teacher.

Sincerely,

Ms. R. Montgomery

I majored in Biology and graduated from California State University Dominguez Hills. My first teaching position was at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles. I left the field of teaching to work in a pathology lab at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. I spent three years studying the effects of alcohol induced hypoxia due to binge drinking on the liver of rats and mice. I left the field of research and returned to teaching to answer a calling. After my experience at Crenshaw, I wanted to reach students earlier in their academic careers. I received my preliminary teaching credential in biological sciences from UCLA Center X with a Social Justice emphasis. I taught at Bret Harte Middle School in South Los Angeles for 12 years. I am currently teaching at Emerson Community Charter Middle School in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. I believe that everyone can learn if given a fair opportunity. I try to instill a love for learning and a need for students to stay socially aware.

January 24, 2019January 24, 2019

Writing Through the Storm

By Noriko Nakada

Even as I sit here writing this column, I’m not sure how it will be written.

I missed writing the last Breathe and Push post of the 2018. I had every intention of writing a summary of this column’s first year, of this Women Who Submit community willing into publication essays about the labor of writing, about Stephon Clark and Black Lives Matter, about teaching while breathless, and the refugee crisis, about writing while mothering, and creating poetry in the midst of tragic news, about gentrification, and Mr. Rogers, and finally, about the upcoming LA teacher strike.

And then, on December 19^th, the day I was supposed to publish that column about Breathe and Push’s first year, the UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles) set a January 10^th strike date and the words for that last column were lost in a sea of text messages and emails.

Winter vacation for our two-teacher household revolved around strike preparations, getting our heads around the work stoppage and organizing our family and school communities. Then we waited, wondering if and when the strike would come, until all of a sudden, after all of those days, it was here.

If you were in Los Angeles during the strike, you might have seen us. We wore red and carried pickets. We chanted on neighborhood streets and on major thoroughfares. We accepted donations of umbrellas, coffee, and doughnuts. We carried beautiful handmade signs that disintegrated in the wet, and then we remade them. We danced on sidewalks and onto computers, and we screamed and sang until our throats grew hoarse. We moved through rain and wind all week in numbers that surprised even us: 30,000 teachers out on strike, rallying crowds of 40,000; 50,000; 60,000.

public ed rally in LA — Thousands rally for public education in Los Angeles.

We stood shoulder to shoulder in awe of the collective power of our city pulling in the direction of a common good: quality public schools for kids and families and communities. We pushed: a whole city, in rain and wind and finally into sunlight, and by the start of the second week of the strike, an agreement was reached, members cast votes, and small victories were won.

These were not the glorious victories you might think 60,000 people in the streets would win. The contract teachers won was not glamorous, but all of those teachers, and students, and families breathed and pushed public education in the right direction.

And guess what. I barely wrote a word about it.

But now the column is almost done, on the night after my first day back teaching, when I wasn’t sure I would be able to write at all.

Neil Gaiman says of writing “You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”

So keep those words coming. Keep on breathing, pushing, and writing because that is what matters. We might not always win. Every draft won’t be pretty or perfect, but we have to keep moving forward. Keep going. Keep writing.

Noriko Nakada is a public school teacher and the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.

November 29, 2018December 3, 2018

Breathe and Push: Why LAUSD Teachers Might Strike

By Noriko Nakada

Union Sign

Like most fall weekends, this past one was busy. There was a Friday night festival at my child’s school, there was a homecoming football game; there were soccer games and birthday parties.

But this weekend was not like all the others, because I’m an LAUSD public school teacher, and like every other year, I had many papers to grade and many students on my mind as I made my way through the weekend, but unlike other years, this year held an added stress. All weekend I carried the weight of a looming work stoppage, and very public contract negotiations that put my public school colleagues and me in the crosshairs of public conversation on the sidelines of sporting events or gathered around a table waiting for the cake to come out.

And in all of my interactions this weekend, I had to gauge, fairly quickly, where friends, old and new, stood when it came to public education. What did they already think about our public schools and what were they willing to learn? Did they ask me about what was happening with the teacher strike? Did they want to hear my perspective? Or, did they know nothing about this issue, because their kid goes to a charter, or a private school, or they don’t have kids, or upon hearing I teach in a public school they want to explain to me why community public schools just don’t work? Continue reading “Breathe and Push: Why LAUSD Teachers Might Strike”

April 27, 2018

Breathe and Push: Teaching While Breathless

Classroom board By Hazel Kight Witham

This year has been a breathless one. Lately a clutch of lines from a poem by Stevie Smith has played like a refrain:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

I am, this year, much further out than I thought, and, it seems, nearly every day, I am adrift, no toe-touch in the murky depths I find myself, staring back at the shore of my life, not waving but drowning.

I spend each workday treading water in the high seas of California’s public education system. Not waving but drowning.

Continue reading “Breathe and Push: Teaching While Breathless”