I attended both middle school and high school in the lower income suburb of Inglewood, California. While attending La Tijera Junior High School and Inglewood High School I didn’t know that it was such a different experience for many Black and Brown children across America in that the majority of my teachers looked like my classmates and I. Even stranger was the fact that many of my teachers lived in the neighborhood. I remember one teacher living a couple of house down the street from me... that was definitely stressful. Most of my teachers also grew up locally and some even attended the same schools as I, evidenced by the dusty year books that I found in the school library.

When I moved to New York to become a teacher many of my new colleagues were dumbfounded by the fact that I chose to live within walking distance of my school on the Walton Campus, in the Bronx. I thought that I should experience the neighborhood that I was serving. Plus, I found a really affordable apartment on my not so great first year teacher salary. My apartment on Bailey Avenue was at the crossroads of a few gangs beefs and drug deals that often spilled in to my school. There were many times that I thought to myself this is crazy, but then I would be reminded that this is what my students face everyday, and not that much different from what I experienced coming up in Southern California. 

Looking back I wouldn’t change anything about how I chose to jump into my career as an educator. I knew my students, their neighborhood and their stories. It helped me in building relationships and being an effective teacher. 

I wonder what it would have been like to have enter the lives of my students without knowing anything about them? It would have been terrifying.

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Uche L. Njoku, EdM (The Sneaker Principal) at:
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