How We Got Here

The Origin Story of Theory & Practice

I was a classroom teacher for ten years. I taught in public schools, public charters, private schools, and a public university. I’ve also had the privilege of being a youth outreach instructor for Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, which has let me teach creative writing in public schools, alternative schools, after school programs, and libraries. I have taught every economic bracket, in both predominantly nonwhite spaces and predominantly white spaces, every age from elementary through college, and in predominantly straight spaces and predominantly queer spaces. I know what schools look like when they’re over-resourced and what schools look like when they’re starved for resources. My breadth of experience has given me a deep understanding of the systemic failures of our education system. This is what I learned:

In every environment, patriarchal behavior leads to sexual harassment.

I had a seventh grader—a literal child—tell me my tattoo of a sketch of a naked woman was “sexy” and asked if it was my body. I had a married assistant principal who texted me “good morning, beautiful” a couple times during the last weeks of school. I once had an engaged male colleague say, “My students can’t stop talking about how hot and perfect you are.” I knew several adult men who gave teenage girls their phone numbers upon leaving a school. I saw a non-binary amab teacher give teenage queer students head scratches and back rubs in full view of the entire school during a fire drill. That same teacher would tickle students, tell them who they could and could not trust, tried to see them outside of school, and even made plans to take some students clubbing.

When I taught undergraduates, I had a cishet white male student who was older than me that started stalking me. He was silent in class, but once class was over, he would email me to tell me how beautiful I looked, or how much he appreciated me. My program director said it was “cute” that he had a crush on me. Things escalated to the point where he was calling my cell-phone number (which we were stupidly, and dangerously, required to put on our syllabi). At that point, there was a Title IX investigation that resulted in his expulsion after it was revealed he was expelled from a different university for stalking a female professor.

In private schools, it was my male students who crossed the line. Once a sixteen year-old boy googled me during class and emailed me from across the room pictures he found of me on my LinkedIn profile. I had another who, when I asked to spread out so we could take a Covid-safe advisory photo, said, “I won’t be the beta, you be the beta,” and shoved one of his male classmates away from him instead of moving.

This is, of course, reflective of what a patriarchal system does: it gives men power without consequence and dehumanizes the targets of sexual harassment. In doing so, it also dehumanizes men by releasing them from their responsibility to others and elevating their entitlement over the humanity of everyone involved.

Racism is, of course, fully embedded.