I made this little picture (which is click-able for full view) after I swear I saw the devil right in front of me. One of the scariest moments we’ll ever encounter as teachers is when we see the devil in the eyes of the people who are supposed to help our children. We can tell when we see them when they’re doing things to our kids that are not only irrational but immoral, when they walk the tightrope on the rules so it works to their favor, and when they smile, proud of the job they’ve done with themselves.

The first time I saw a bit of the devil was in middle school, when I had a disagreement with my language arts teacher. At first, it was no big deal; we were arguing over what constituted a predicate, something that confused me a little bit at my young age. That wasn’t too bad. Then he started getting on me for the use of the phrase “What happened?” my response to something I didn’t quite hear. He wanted me to say, “Excuse me?” After using the former a good 10 times in his class, he made me write that phrase over 1000 times during the course of the school year. It was so absurd that I continued to use it, and the fact that he wouldn’t call my mom to rectify the situation made me believe he was the devil; his ears might have burned in my Catholic household. (Jokes, jokes …)

The second time I saw the devil was in my junior year of high school; the man’s prestigious record included decades of service to my school. A father of the cloth, how could someone with such a rapport be anything but G_dly? One fateful morning, we had a read-aloud in preparation for the SATs. He called on me to answer, and I did … only he didn’t hear me. I said it loudly enough that a teacher across the way closed his door. Yet the teacher continued to pretend to not hear me. He called on the boy next to me and the boy gave him the same answer. The teacher said, “That’s correct.” Shaking my head in disgust and waving off the cackles from the student population / peanut gallery, I thought I’d never see the devil within the confines of that edifice.

The third time … well I can’t talk about the third time. All I know is that the devil has no color. The spirit wears many cloths and sometimes all at once. It wasn’t a race issue because I’ve found the devil amongst my own “people.” It’s not a monetary issue because it can be people who don’t live for money. It’s amorphous.

In the teaching profession though, evil usually rears its ugly head in the spaces where the heartless once held their arteries. People often think of negative things happening in a far-off land in some book designed for the Read-180 program or in one of the 25 books these kids need to read to get a “grand prize.” No. It’s ever present, and when teachers and administrators don’t genuinely care about the children they have powers over, the faint scent of sulfur and charcoal don’t follow too far behind. There’s a difference between a teacher who doesn’t care about the profession, just collecting paychecks, and a teacher who makes it his / her personal business to mistreat his students. The first is more readily professionally developed; the second is often a dark minion to a more evil cause.

I’ll file this under creative writing, but be warned. Maybe using Santeria to cast good spirits in your school isn’t a bad idea. I’ve looked into the eyes of the devil, and the devil still treads his feet in our system.

jose

p.s. - Thanks to Education Matters US for including me in the latest edition of the Carnival of Education.

After this post, you would think I’d be done with analyzing portions of my background. Then Sunday arrived: the annual Dominican parade. I had a meeting I couldn’t cancel in a place I couldn’t avoid. I had questions I couldn’t avoid like “Are you going?” and “Why not?” and “What’s good with the girls?” They’re all very valid questions but …

It’s not that I hate parades. I like parades. I think. Well at least I thought I did. Then, I got a little knowledge, and for the life of me, I realized that more than 1/2 of the people in the Dominican Day parade had no reason to truly celebrate. After all, if they knew that Rafael Trujillo instilled Dominican pride by belittling their African roots and hence by killing Haitians, they might not be so loud and proud. If they knew that even to this day, Black Dominicans in Dominican Republic who wish to express themselves through their art and culture often get dismissed, stripped of funds, or told to “take that down.”

If they knew that the view people have about what Dominicans look like is as limited as the spaces they often travel. I know too many of mi gente that never leave their barrios, whether it be Bonao or the Heights, and only look at themselves as the standard for what it means to be Dominican when in fact, there’s no way to tell whether someone’s truly Dominican or not.

Then again, I see all these other parades for the Irish, Puerto Ricans, Columbians, Italians, Indians (and by that I mean people from India), West Indians, and a million other parades, and come to the fact that it’s cool to have a celebration just to have a celebration. Often, we lose sight of our culture because there’s this constant amalgamation in America. We incorporate other people’s foods and language at a rather steady rate, merging us into this stew pot of bits and pieces. Therefore, for many of us, it’s important to have these moments when people from the same or similar culture can have a time to celebrate what’s left and the progress they’ve made. It’s not self-segregation, but recognition of one’s ancestors.

Plus, one can make the case that the higher-ups in America would prefer to water down our culture in favor of assimilation into the more dominant culture (that’s easily seen in our schools, jobs, and everyday life). So instead of tearing some of these jerks a new hole for acting so pretentious, I just nodded and walked away, hoping information like this might infiltrate the subconscious of a people with transfigured roots …

jose

p.s. - By the way, I just wrote an article about Common’s recent rise to pop star. Common’s definitely not common …