社区黑料

See previous 74 interviews: Sen. Cory Booker talks about the success of Newark鈥檚 school reforms, civil rights activist Dr. Howard Fuller talks equity in education, criminologist Nadine Connell talks about the data behind school shootings, former U.S. Department of Education secretary John King talks the Trump administration and more. The full archive is .

Gloria Ladson-Billings remembers that there was a difference between the black and white teachers she had growing up in Philadelphia.

African-American teachers could give the students “the talk,” she recalls, referring to a 2017 Procter & Gamble that showed black parents talking to their kids about racism. The black teachers could speak to students honestly about what it means to be African-American in a way their white counterparts never could, she remembered.

Ladson-Billings 听 about her fifth-grade teacher, Ethel Benn, who first taught her about W.E.B. DuBois. She was amazed to learn that a black person had graduated from Harvard University, she remembers; at the time it seemed impossible.

Now, Ladson-Billings studies what it takes to be a successful teacher of African-American children and has written extensively about culturally relevant teaching since the 1990s.

Culturally relevant education is more than celebrating Black History Month or offering an ethnic studies class, she said. She has defined three pillars of culturally relevant teaching 鈥� academic success, cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness 鈥� which are more relevant than ever as educators and advocates decry and persistent achievement gaps. It means giving students space to talk about an event like the of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and letting students choose to investigate problems that affect them rather than teachers setting their own social justice agendas in the classroom.

Based at the University of Wisconsin鈥揗adison, Ladson-Billings was听 president of the National Academy of Education in 2016 and has earned numerous awards for her research on teaching and the intersection of education and Critical Race Theory.

Ladson-Billings talked to 社区黑料 about how her work is misinterpreted, the role of educators in Trump鈥檚 America and why she prefers the phrase 鈥渆ducation debt鈥� to 鈥渁chievement gap.鈥�

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

社区黑料: After all these years, how do you define culturally relevant teaching?

Ladson-Billings: I鈥檝e never changed it. What鈥檚 changed is the way people have interpreted it. But I defined it as a threefold听 to ensuring that all children are successful. That approach requires a focus on students鈥� learning, an attempt to develop their cultural competence, and to increase their sociopolitical or critical consciousness. And for me, that鈥檚 an all-or-nothing proposition 鈥� you can鈥檛 do one or two and say, 鈥淥h, I鈥檓 being culturally relevant.鈥� You鈥檝e got to do all three things.

How do you think the interpretation of your work has changed?

I think that people don鈥檛 actually read the work. They may read one article that appeals to them and think they know what we鈥檙e talking about, and so as a result someone will celebrate an additional holiday or color in a different face on the bulletin board or use one activity that they鈥檝e seen somewhere and then claim, 鈥淥h, we鈥檙e being culturally relevant.鈥� Or they鈥檒l say, 鈥淥h, we鈥檙e studying Benjamin Banneker in mathematics 鈥� that鈥檚 being culturally relevant.鈥� Well, that鈥檚 doing an activity. It really has to do with a philosophical outlook towards one鈥檚 approach to teaching.

A hallmark for me of a culturally relevant teacher is someone who understands that we鈥檙e operating in a fundamentally inequitable system 鈥� they take that as a given. And that the teacher鈥檚 role is not merely to help kids fit into an unfair system, but rather to give them the skills, the knowledge and the dispositions to change the inequity. The idea is not to get more people at the top of an unfair pyramid; the idea is to say the pyramid is the wrong structure. How can we really create a circle, if you will, that includes everybody?

How would you explain the way that those three fit together?

I, of course, saw it over the three years that I spent observing these outstanding teachers [to write , a book about successful teachers of African-American students]. When the teacher raises questions about what they鈥檙e teaching, they ask, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the cultural implication of teaching this?鈥� Then, 鈥淲hat do I want kids to do with it?鈥� I often talk about that sociopolitical consciousness as answering the 鈥渨hy鈥� questions. What I mean by that is, kids come to us all the time and say, 鈥淲hy do we have to study this? Why do we have to learn this?鈥� A typical teacher response is something like 鈥淵ou鈥檙e going to need this next year.鈥� That鈥檚 not an answer.

Culturally relevant teachers say 鈥淥K, here鈥檚 why you need to know this: because if we鈥檙e going to change this, if we鈥檙e going to actually speak to this level of unfairness and inequity, then you need some tools. You need to be able to read and you need to be able to write, so that you can speak directly to this.鈥� I think the other thing that happens is teachers pick up their own causes and decide, 鈥淥h, I鈥檓 making my kids critically conscious.鈥� You鈥檙e getting kids to do the work that you鈥檙e interested in. Sometimes critical consciousness moves away from what kids really care about.

I find that teachers often shy away from critical consciousness because they鈥檙e afraid that it鈥檚 too political. A perfect example for me is some years ago when Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, that district in Ferguson sent out a听 that teachers not talk about this. This is exactly what kids are talking about every single day, because at night when they go home and turn on the news, their streets are flooded with protesters, and they need an adult to help make sense of this. But the school has said, 鈥淣o, you can鈥檛 talk about this.鈥�

What do you think are the most common misconceptions about your work?

That it鈥檚 for black children. What I tried to do is figure out, if black children are the poorest performers, what could we do to improve their performance that would likely improve performance for everybody? One of the things I did is, rather than make them the object, I made them the subject of the study. I centered their experience.

Most research centers the experience of white, middle-class students. If they don鈥檛 tell you the race or ethnicity of the kids, it鈥檚 because typically those are white, middle-class kids. You鈥檙e supposed to know that. They need to be called just kids. And I decided I would do a study and black students would be just kids. But because they happened to be black, people presume that this work is only for black students.

Are there any other misconceptions you worry about?

Probably that people think that it鈥檚 something that can be packaged. Someone will come along with something like culturally responsive lessons, as if teachers don鈥檛 have to think and plan and decide what appropriate lessons are for the students they are teaching. That鈥檚 going to be different for different teachers. If your classroom has a number of recent immigrant students, then the package is not going to attend to that. The way teacher education is set up is that people believe, 鈥淥h, you can always just buy something that will attend to whatever the issue is,鈥� and it really does require thoughtfulness and planning.

In the past few years, we鈥檝e seen some cities and schools adding things like African-American history class or Mexican-American studies. In听, for example, there was a years-long fight over whether a Mexican-American studies course should be allowed, and then another fight about what it should be called. How do issues like that that fit into what you advocate for?

The ethnic studies debate goes back 50 years 鈥� it鈥檚 not a new one 鈥� but what research has found is just changing the content is never going to be enough, if you are pedagogically doing the very same things: Read the chapter, answer the questions at the back of the book, come take the test. You really haven鈥檛 attended to the deep cultural concerns. What happens is school districts want you to do just that 鈥� teach exactly the way you鈥檝e been teaching, just change the information. That does little or nothing to increase engagement, and it certainly doesn鈥檛 help kids feel any more empowered about what they鈥檙e learning.

Beyond ethnic studies courses, what are other steps that can be taken districtwide to make teaching more culturally relevant?

We probably need to have a serious revamping of the curriculum. I do think there鈥檚 a place for ethnic studies courses; I have taught those courses. It鈥檚 not either/or. It鈥檚 always a both/and. You still have to go back to a course like U.S. history and ask, fundamentally, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 missing?鈥�

The fear of just having ethnic studies classes is you create a kind of ethnic balkanization, and people think that the ethnic pride students might exhibit turns into hatred, and that鈥檚 really never been the point. But it will come across that way if you haven鈥檛 been thoughtful about curriculum development.

Here鈥檚 what I mean: If you take an ethnic studies course and one week we鈥檙e focusing on Mexican Americans and then one week we鈥檙e focusing on American Indians, what you get is that people are engaged and less engaged depending on what group you鈥檙e in. A very different approach would be to look across the common experiences of people and pull all those experiences to illustrate a point or an issue. If I were teaching one of these courses, one of the first issues I might take up with students is migration, because everybody has a migration story, not just Mexican-Americans or Central Americans. Everybody鈥檚 got one. It鈥檚 a fundamental question: How did you get here? That can be answered by everybody, and we can look across the migration stories to raise other kinds of questions. You might have a study about a concept like assimilation and acculturation: What is it that your family has done to assimilate into American society, or how have they acculturated if they haven鈥檛 assimilated? How have they made life here work for them?

Taking big ideas and then pulling across all of the different cultural groups requires a lot of knowledge, though, and a lot of times we get lazy. It鈥檚 much easier to say, 鈥淥h, I鈥檓 doing this two weeks on the Irish Americans.鈥� Now, the Irish Americans have a very interesting migration story. If you鈥檝e ever seen the film Gangs of New York, you鈥檙e kind of shocked: 鈥淥h my gosh, they went through all of this. I just assumed they were white and they just fit in.鈥� No, they didn鈥檛. There鈥檚 a powerful migration story in the same way that the Chinese on the West Coast have a powerful migration story.

You said in an interview that you had a lot of African-American teachers when you were growing up in Philadelphia. How do you think that affected you and how you perceived education?

It probably impacted me because my teachers didn鈥檛 have to censor themselves. Here鈥檚 an example: If our teachers were taking us on a field trip 鈥� say, downtown, a more public space where you鈥檙e going to come across a majority of people who back then would have been white 鈥� our teachers didn鈥檛 have any trouble saying, 鈥淟isten, you have to behave a particular way because when we get there, people are going to look at you, because they probably haven鈥檛 seen little black children. If you do anything, if you misbehave in any way, they鈥檙e not just gonna say, 鈥淥h, look at those badly behaved children.鈥� They鈥檙e gonna say, 鈥淟ook at those badly behaved black children.鈥�

OK, we got that. In an integrated setting, our teachers wouldn鈥檛 have been able to say that. Our white teachers would never say that to us. So there were ways in which black teachers could close the door and be real with us. I鈥檓 sure you鈥檝e seen the Procter & Gamble advertisement There was some backlash because people don鈥檛 realize, our parents really do give us this talk. And as a parent I have given my children that talk. That鈥檚 what black teachers are able to do: give us a talk.

New York City鈥檚 schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, in 2018 he was going to prioritize implicit bias training for all educators in the district. Do you see that as a step in the right direction, and to what extent do you think something like that could have an impact?

So, here鈥檚 where I maybe differ from a lot of people who do this work. I look carefully at work. She鈥檚 a psychologist at Stanford who was credited with discovering what actually happens in the brain around implicit bias. I believe there is something called implicit bias. What concerns me is that it becomes the default, and what I mean by that is: People do things that they have no business doing, and the response is 鈥淲ell, you know, I have implicit bias.鈥� Duh! So I鈥檓 worried that it becomes an excuse 鈥�

When we do this work, there are certain baselines that people have to have. Number one, they have to believe that racism is real, and number two, they have to believe that they may be acting on it. Now, we have some people [who] don鈥檛 want to participate just because of that. For example, I was in Green Bay and teachers wanted to know some resources for implicit bias training, and I said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 the first place you go.鈥� You鈥檙e already setting people up to be defensive. You鈥檙e telling them walking in the room, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e biased.鈥� It鈥檚 true for all of us, but not everybody can hear that. And if they can鈥檛 hear it, it鈥檚 difficult to work with them.

So I know what they鈥檙e trying to do, but the question is, is it exacerbating the problem, where people begin to think, 鈥淲ell, there鈥檚 nothing I can do about it; it鈥檚 just the way my brain is working?鈥� Or is it actually educating them to the point where their behavior changes?

Is there something that would be a better strategy for Carranza and other superintendents to deal with implicit bias among teachers?

First of all, I think that almost all of this work has to be local. I think we have to stop bringing 1,500 people in the room and thinking we can preach them into better behavior. I just don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 going to work. But I know we work on economies of scale, so we just think, 鈥淟et鈥檚 bring a trainer in and just train everybody.鈥�

You have to be able to look at your specific and local context, so for these teachers in Green Bay, I told them, 鈥淲ell, why don鈥檛 you guys do this? Why don鈥檛 you go back and just pull your data, look at your suspension rates and who鈥檚 being suspended, look who鈥檚 being assigned to special education, look who gets into advanced placement class, look who鈥檚 in honors 鈥� just document that, and then share that with each other and say, 鈥楬ow do we explain it?鈥欌��

People鈥檚 explanations will help you understand why certain things are happening. If their explanation is, 鈥淲ell, you know, we have all these poor kids,鈥� OK, the poverty is not gonna stop next week. Are we saying because the children are poor, they are incapable of X, Y or Z?

You听 several years ago that what we typically call the achievement gap is really more like an education debt. What do you mean by that?

When we use that gap language, we are often putting the blame on the individual child or their family or, in some cases, the teacher. It suggests that everybody else is doing just great and you guys need to catch up. I鈥檓 saying it鈥檚 much more complex than that.

And I came across the notion of the debt when I was headed home from New York and was stuck in traffic, as is true of everybody headed home from New York. I looked up and saw a billboard, and it was lit up and it had numbers, and it was spinning like crazy. And I happened to read the caption under this huge number that said, 鈥淭his is the national debt.鈥� And then, under that big huge number was another number that was pretty big, and it was spinning too, and that caption read, 鈥淎nd this is your portion of it.鈥�

I thought, 鈥淥h my God, there鈥檚 no way I can pay this.鈥� For me, the question was, 鈥淲hy did I think I needed to pay that? Why did I feel like, 鈥極h, I have this responsibility?鈥欌�� Well, part of it is that the rhetoric of this country has been 鈥淲e鈥檝e got to do something about the national debt. We can鈥檛 keep leaving our kids this debt.鈥� Every politician will get up in front of people and say, 鈥淲e鈥檝e gotta reduce the debt.鈥� Now, the way that鈥檚 framed, it鈥檚 everybody鈥檚 responsibility. It鈥檚 not just the congressperson鈥檚 responsibility, it鈥檚 not just the president鈥檚 responsibility, it鈥檚 not just the governor鈥檚 responsibility. It鈥檚 everybody鈥檚 responsibility, and we are all saying, 鈥淲e don鈥檛 like this debt, this is hurting the country, we can鈥檛 leave our kids in this sad situation with all this debt.鈥�

I thought, 鈥淲ell, yeah, but we鈥檝e left them what I would call an education debt.鈥� There are things that we didn鈥檛 just start doing 鈥� we鈥檝e been doing them for a very, very long time. We have historically not provided a good education for all of our kids. Black children didn鈥檛 even get universal secondary education until the 1960s 鈥� not the 1860s, the 1960s. So there were still places in this country where you couldn鈥檛 go to high school if you were black.

We鈥檝e never done well by American Indians in terms of their education, and on and on, so we have this historical legacy. We鈥檝e also had the funding legacy. We have done inequitable funding for centuries. There鈥檚 some school districts that just haven鈥檛 gotten adequate resources. We continue to do that. There鈥檚 a huge difference between the way urban and suburban schools are funded. Then we鈥檝e also had this political debt, where if you didn鈥檛 start letting people vote until 1965, then they haven鈥檛 had a history or a legacy of voting and participating. They couldn鈥檛 even pick their school board members in some places. They couldn鈥檛 pick their own mayors and city council folks and governors.

So all of this is accumulated, and that鈥檚 what I mean by debt. To me, that鈥檚 not a gap, that is really a debt, and society owes large groups of people because for generations, we haven鈥檛 done right by them and their families.

You originally wrote that more than 12 years ago. Do you think since that time the country has made any progress on that debt?

Not much. Because, number one, we haven鈥檛 acknowledged that it exists. We鈥檙e still talking about achievement gaps.

There have been a lot of headlines and talk lately about teacher diversity and the teacher pipeline, which is leaving us with about 80 percent white teachers, and more broadly, people are re-examining the importance of representation for kids. What do you think would help attract more minority teachers to the field and fix some of the leaks in the teacher pipeline?

The unspoken thing about that is you can鈥檛 be a teacher if you don鈥檛 graduate from high school. That鈥檚 a fundamental truth. If you鈥檙e not improving the rate at which kids of color are leaving high school, that鈥檚 not a leak, that鈥檚 a break in the pipeline. You鈥檝e already decided, you鈥檙e not going anywhere. That鈥檚 a huge problem.

The second issue is, people have other choices, so how would you convince someone to take a low-status, low-paying job when they could have an opportunity now to go into a profession that will remunerate them more highly?

The third issue is that we keep talking about this mismatch between students and teachers as if it鈥檚 only about kids of color and their teachers. White children desperately need people of color as teachers. I keep getting students at the college level who tell me, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e the first black teacher I ever had.鈥� That鈥檚 a problem. That鈥檚 a real problem because do you think you can go out into the world and interact with people when you鈥檝e never had an ongoing relationship with someone who鈥檚 different from you? There is some data that suggests that white children benefit from having teachers of color. We rarely talk about that. We think, well, we just can fix everything that is going on with black or brown children if they have black or brown teachers.

You were quoted in 2017 in听 about the importance of kids having access to at least one culture besides their own. We know that our schools remain racially segregated even though the student body is more diverse than ever. Do you think integration is part of improving achievement for kids of color?

Yeah, integration but not desegregation. They鈥檙e two different things. Desegregation is often about just trying to get the numbers right, and that鈥檚 essentially what Brown v. Board of Education required, that you don鈥檛 have just a concentration of kids of one race or ethnicity. But one thing we don鈥檛 talk about: The most segregated group of kids in the country are white kids. We never refer to their schools as segregated. We refer to black and brown kids as going to segregated schools.

So, integration in which kids of different races and ethnicities have an opportunity to fully participate in the life of the school is what I would hope to see. What I see with schools鈥� desegregation models is that kids get bused somewhere, they鈥檙e in school for the school hours, but they can鈥檛 鈥� because of scheduling and transportation resources 鈥� really participate in the school, so they can鈥檛 stay after school. For example, I remember when we lived in California, one of my kids鈥� Little League coaches had a son who was an excellent baseball player, and he loved the game just like his dad loved the game. But he was bused across town, and he could not stay after school for practice because there was no bus to bring him back, and his parents both worked so they couldn鈥檛 take off to pick this kid up from practice, and so he couldn鈥檛 stay. So here, he鈥檚 gone to a school to desegregate it, but it鈥檚 not integrated. He鈥檚 not participating in the entire life of the school. So I want to make that distinction between integration and desegregation because I think integration affords kids something totally different than school desegregation.

Integration has become such a political word, especially in light of the recent controversies about in New York City and making the specialized schools more diverse. Do you have a theory about how schools could be integrated fairly and effectively in a way that benefits students?

The challenge is really further upstream. It鈥檚 sort of like the pipeline issue. We鈥檙e asking about people at the college level when the truth of the matter is, the problem is at the high school when the people don鈥檛 graduate. When it comes to school integration, the problem is not at the school, the problem is in the neighborhood, and neighborhoods are deeply, deeply segregated. And you can鈥檛 make people live together. You just can鈥檛. So you end up having schools try to engineer a fix that never makes anybody happy and is almost always on the backs of kids in the minority, so it鈥檚 always the black and brown kids getting on the bus headed all the way across town. When you tell white people that they need to do that, they opt out of the public system.

The only instance where you see white folks make this extra effort to get their kids somewhere is when that school is considered a specialty school, so in Philadelphia, it would be Central High School, where you have 90-plus-percent college-going rate; in Chicago it would be Whitney Young; in San Francisco, it鈥檚 Lowell; in New York, it鈥檚 Bronx Science. I mean, it鈥檚 not that white people won鈥檛 go to certain neighborhoods 鈥� they鈥檒l go if it鈥檚 what they believe is the absolute best quality.

I noticed you鈥檝e written about the听 for no reason, saying that it stems from racism, not ignorance, and it comes from white people having a sense of entitlement about where people should and shouldn鈥檛 be. Certainly in a culturally relevant classroom, teachers talk to their students about these kinds of incidents. What do teachers need to know to be able to have those conversations at school?

I think the first thing to ask, is, 鈥淲hat are your kids鈥� experiences? Have they themselves experienced something like this?鈥� I remember I used to have this thing about making sure I was in the mall the day after Christmas 鈥� and I remember being there one day and I saw these three little black boys somewhere between the ages of 13 and 14, being not black boys, but being 13- and 14-year-old boys, being silly, being loud, true of every 13- or 14-year-old group of boys I鈥檝e ever known, regardless of race or ethnicity. Everywhere they went in the store, white people would move away from them. At one point, it was so obvious that I went up and said to them, 鈥淗ey, you guys got a disease or something?鈥� They started laughing and they said, 鈥淵eah, we must have it, we must have something.鈥� They recognized that people were going out of their way to avoid them.

You have to know what the kids鈥� experiences are. Has something ever happened to you that you believe happened because of your race or your ethnicity or your age 鈥� because kids will think of all kinds of reasons. 鈥淥h, they thought we were poor, they thought we were loud.鈥� Students don鈥檛 always run to 鈥渂ecause we were black鈥� as an explanation. Sometimes that鈥檚 in our head, but we have to know what the kids鈥� experiences are to be able to have these conversations.

Is there any other advice or guidance that you would give to a teacher who wanted to talk about something like this but wasn鈥檛 sure how?

I would say, rather than force it, allow it to come to them. You have to have a space in the classroom where kids feel free to say, 鈥淗ey, did y鈥檃ll see this thing on the news,鈥� rather than have the teacher say 鈥淭here鈥檚 racism in the society 鈥︹�� Sometimes the kids are just not there. And again it gets back to, we鈥檙e not there for our agenda. We should be there to 鈥� let students know that whatever is of concern to them, they ought to feel free to bring it here because we鈥檙e going to talk about it, we鈥檙e going to try to make sense of it.

You鈥檝e also written that the听 鈥渉its at the very heart of racist sentiments in this country,鈥� and you have been pretty candid about your general feelings about Trump. What do you see as the role of teachers in this moment of so much division and conflict in the U.S.?

Again, it is to provide the space for kids to have the conversations and to help them provide the evidence. I know that our emotions and feelings are running high, but part of the skills that we as educators should be giving kids are analytical skills in which you don鈥檛 just say, 鈥淏ecause I feel this way鈥� 鈥� but you are able to say, 鈥淎nd here is the evidence.鈥�

My point about his issue with the athletes was, you don鈥檛 lose your citizen鈥檚 rights because you decide to be an athlete. You still get to be a citizen. There is a very long tradition of protests by high-profile people in this society. The back of apartheid is broken not just because of the work of the ordinary people, but because people like Stevie Wonder and Harry Belafonte, even Aretha Franklin, said something about it. Stevie Wonder went to jail protesting apartheid. And because you are so highly visible, you鈥檙e going to get the attention.

In 2016, you were the president of the National Academy of Education. What would you like to achieve in that role?

The academy is a relatively small group of people. There鈥檚 somewhere in the 200s maybe, and it鈥檚 honorific 鈥� We have been elected to be in the academy, but we do have some ability to help push an education research agenda, which is different from, say, a political agenda. We have indeed put out some statements about some things that have happened since I鈥檝e been president, from the perspective of 鈥淗ow does this impact education research?鈥�

The first statement we put out was about the decision to ask the . Essentially, from our place as researchers, it is likely to skew the data because people won鈥檛 answer, and so if we don鈥檛 have good data, we can鈥檛 make good decisions. So we didn鈥檛 really put it in a political context as much as a research context and said, 鈥淚f you do this, this is the likely outcome, and this is why this is detrimental to the work we鈥檙e trying to do.鈥�

Then we also put out a statement in conjunction with some others academies 鈥� the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Engineering 鈥� to say that has a long-term psycho-social impact, and so just taking a kid away is not just what happened in that day, and we have pretty good research about childhood trauma and parental separation, and so you鈥檙e making a mistake to do this. That鈥檚 one of the places where the Academy has been able to speak to some current issues. But I think our long-term goal is always to improve the quality of education research.

Is there a certain teacher or a moment you remember that made you want to devote your life to the cause of education?

I didn鈥檛 want to be a teacher. I didn鈥檛 choose teaching. Teaching chose me. But I did have a teacher who made a profound impact on me, and I talked about her in a variety of places. That was my fifth-grade teacher, Ethel Benn. She was just someone who, first of all, had such deep pride in being black, which, in the era when I was in school, was strange. Nobody wanted to be black, but Miss Benn would tell us wonderful stories, which I know were not part of the curriculum, about the accomplishments of black people.

The first time I ever heard about W.E.B. DuBois was in fifth grade from Miss Benn, and I thought she was making it up. He was one of the first people to graduate from Harvard, and I was like, 鈥淎in鈥檛 no black people been to Harvard.鈥� It just seemed incomprehensible. But she was also someone who was set on exposing us to a big world. Miss Benn was the school鈥檚 chorus teacher, and people wondered how we had such a big chorus at our school. Well, we had a big chorus because if you were in her class, you were in the chorus. She didn鈥檛 care if you could carry a note in a bucket of water 鈥� you were in the chorus. And being in the chorus was not merely singing, but the opportunities that she provided to take us all around the city, because we sang everywhere. That was just the coolest thing, to be able to go to parts of the city that we normally would not have gone to, because we had a teacher who thought it was important that we see more than our own neighborhood and our own backyard.

I learned to sing the Latin song from Miss Ethel Benn in fifth grade in West Philadelphia. Now, I鈥檓 not white, I鈥檓 not Catholic, I鈥檓 not any of the things that I associate with that song, but I learned that song, and interestingly enough, by the time I got to where I had to take a foreign language, the language I decided to take was Latin. So yeah, she was crucial, and she was generous 鈥� The funny thing about me and Miss Benn is I did not want to be in her classroom. She just seemed so old, old-fashioned. Now, she was probably younger than I am right now. She just seemed like an old lady. I remember when I found out I was assigned to her, I begged my parents to get me out of there. I wanted to be in this younger, white woman鈥檚 classroom across the hall. Because she was cute, and she had a ponytail, and she wore high heels, and I said, 鈥淚 want to be over there.鈥� And my mother said, 鈥淵ou haven鈥檛 even given her a chance. You decided from day one you don鈥檛 want to be there. No, we鈥檙e not changing anything.鈥�

And that was good, because Miss Benn made a huge impression on me.

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