The Rewards of Incompetence

For the last three weeks I have absorbed all that I possibly could on the subject of educating African American children. I needed to create a project for my school counseling class that would serve as a resource for a school counselor to improve their school. I wanted to do an inservice for new teachers going into a classroom of African American kids. Part of my reasons for choosing this was sort of a chance to redeem something from my teachign experience last year.

Last year, I taught at Montbello High School, a low-income, 98% minority school in North East Denver. I was shocked when I became aware of the disparity of public education first hand. In line with national statistics, the students at Montbello were graduating with and 8th grade education (Thernstrom, 2004, 270.) Some of this was understandable. The largest minority population at Montbello was Hispanic. In this particular area of town, many were first generation Hispanics who were battling language and culture obstacles, as well as legal issues (many were undocumented). However, the performance of African Americans at the school was just as low. In fact, correlation of parents education and children’s education is much stronger in the Hispanic community then in the Black community (Thernstrom, 2004 p. 127).
While the learning gap in America is affected by several factors including family systems, and socioeconomic factors, the racial gap persists despite geographic location, income, or marital status of the parents. (Kunjufu, 2002, p. ix)

I feverishly devoured books and articles, and interviewed 10 different educators on thier opinions on the subject. The most exciting interview I had was with a woman I came across while looking through the bibliography of a doctoral thesis I was reading. The woman, Dr. Okpokodu, was a Nigerian-born teacher who created an inservice on cultural diversity for new teachers. Her program is edgy and controversial. Her cirriculum demands students to face their "White privilege" and "White Dominance." I got ahold of her by email, and she sent me her home phone number and allowed me to call her over the weekend. We talked for two hours about her teaching, and her experiences with racism in America. When her son was in kindergarden, the kids told him to wash his skin because it was dirty. When Dr. Okpokodu talked to the teacher about addressing the problem, the teacher dismissed her. When her child's teacher recommended him for a gifted program, the counselor refused to test him. I typed as she talked, and ended up with ten pages of notes from our conversations.

Then, I didn't save it right and lost all of it! She wrote me to see if I could send her the notes from our conversation, and I admitted sheepishly that I lost the whole document! I was really embarrassed.

I felt like my paper and project was a flop. I spent so much time devouring information that I couldn't sythesize it all enough to write a decent paper. Its not like I didn't have good ideas, but my writing was disorganized and rough. I barely had time to even spell check it!

Basically, these are the things I addressed: First, we all need to understand our own race, both how other cultures see us in light of our history, and the positive values we bring because of our ethnic background. Second, we need to understand our student’s culture, and we need to develop a strengths-based approach to teaching them. Third, we need to address our curriculum, and teach in a way that adequately reflects the viewpoints of other cultures.

Here is what Dr. Okpokodu wrote me:

Greetings!

Thank you for sharing your project with me. Anyone reading your paper would not know that you had some technological problem--losing your interview data. I really enjoyed reading your paper. Most importantly, I was impressed with your quest for knowledge and your ability to use suggested resources to construct new knowledge. I was particularly impressed with your engagement with Gary Howard's book that I introduced to you and how you not only read it but demonstrated a good understanding and connection to the ideas.

It was truly wonderful to be in contact with you and I appreciated your openness, quest and desire to be an intentional learner and concerned educator. I wish you well as you continue your journey toward transformative practice and change agency. Please stay in touch. Take care!

Dr. Ukpokodu,

Thanks for reading it. I decided to join a racial reconcilliation group in town, in hopes of continuing the journey. I will stay in touch. I would love to develop this project further to use as a school counselor in training new teachers at my school.

Thanks again,

Jaimie


Great. Although I have only known you briefly and through cyberspace, I am excited about your desire for self-development and passion for diversity and educational justice. I think the ideas you shared with me about your challenging experience as a new teacher with predominantly African American students is vital and will be valuable to the community of scholars and especially classroom teachers. I would like to collaborate with you to help disseminate this knowledge, that is, write a manuscript for publication. Let me know if you would like to take an advantage of this opportunity and I will get back to you with details. Take care!

Dr. Omiunota Ukpokodu