Bronwyn Harris, Author

Most people have an idea of what they consider to be basic human needs. In an excerpt from my book, Literally Unbelievable: Stories of an East Oakland Classroom , a classroom of first graders had a surprising take on "needs versus wants." Like many people, I sometimes overuse the word "need." I have a tendency to say that I need the new iPhone or I need a pedicure, even though those are clearly just things that I want. My greatest lesson on distinguishing between wants and needs came with my first grade class during my first year of teaching. Volunteers from the business world came to our school through the Junior Achievement program to teach for a day. As a new teacher, I was overwhelmed and relieved to not be responsible for lesson plans for one day. However, I was nervous about how an idealistic businessperson would deal with twenty extremely needy first graders living in one of the most violent parts of Oakland. The woman who showed up at my class was c...

This is a sentence I have heard from many, many people with regards to my students. “If their parents really cared, they’d come to parent-teacher conferences.” “If their parents really cared, they wouldn’t let their kids join gangs.” “If their parents really cared, they’d feed them better.” I’ve heard this from very well-meaning people, including co-workers. We all want our students to have what they need, and to have the best chance possible in life. But this particular phrase makes me angry, and it has since the first time I heard it. When I was a new teacher, I was in a collaboration meeting with the other third-grade teachers and one of my colleagues was talking. I had some excellent colleagues but this guy was not one of them. Actually, he was an excellent teacher to a certain group of students, but only those he chose to teach. He frequently tried to trade his Black students for my Asian students because he was “supposed to” be the teacher for the immigrant kids. I oft...