Bronwyn Harris, Author

This is a poem written by a teenage boy I know who doesn't have a very easy life and is struggling to pass his classes in high school . He said I could share it.  I don't have anything very profound to say about it except I love it. (The assignment was to write a poem in Spanish so he wrote it in English and tried to translate it with Google Translate.  Of course.)

I'm sure everyone has heard about Trayvon Martin by now.  He is the young black man who was killed by a neighborhood watch captain, in Florida (where apparently neighborhood watch captains carry guns?)   Trayvon was a teenager who got hungry while watching a basketball game on TV and walked to the corner story to buy Skittles and iced tea.  George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch of the gated community where Trayvon's father lived, called the police (for what?  Because a black teenager was in a gated community?) and was told to wait for police.  He didn't, and accosted Trayvon, ending up shooting him.  He said that he did so in self-defense, so the police let him go.  Apparently it didn't matter that Trayvon was unarmed and 100 pounds lighter than the white man who attacked him. I don't have much new to say about this except that, even never having met this young man, I am broken-hearted.  I have thought about the chance of this kind of th...

In the last week, I have seen  this photo that's made it around facebook and heard about an acquaintance saying something about someone acting "like a typical black kid" - meaning, of course, that the child was being a troublemaker. Obviously, these both make my heart hurt for a number of reasons.  The first thing I thought of was my Little Sister.  She is an ideal student and friend: thoughtful, caring, loyal, hard-working, and careful to think the best of everyone.  This is a girl who told me that we should give a homeless person her granola bar because the man didn't look like anyone treated him well, and everyone should be treated well, even if they're homeless.  She is also black.  I often think about what her reaction would be to either hateful racism, like this bumper sticker (and as snopes points out, whether it's real or not doesn't really matter, as you can buy plenty of products just like it online), or to ignorant racism like...

I have noticed - in an extremely unscientific survey - that most of the white children I know have only white dolls.  I mentioned this to someone recently who wondered if all children tended to have dolls that looked like them.  In my (again, very unscientific) observations, however, children of color (in the US) tend to have both dolls that look like them and white dolls.  This makes sense, as there is a wider variety of white dolls than other colors, of course (in the US). When having these conversations, I can't help thinking of the doll experiments performed by Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1940s.   These were the experiments cited in the Brown v. Board of Education case that eventually led to the desegregation of schools.  The experimenters provided children with two dolls that were identical except that one was white and one was black.  They asked the children (ages 6 to 9) things like "Which doll is the  nice doll?" and "Which doll would yo...

I've talked before about how excited I was when Barack Obama was elected - not just because I thought he was the best candidate (I did and still do), but also because he's black.  And he has a black wife.  And black kids. The city where I worked is a disturbingly segregated city for an area that considers itself progressive and diverse.  I have often heard statistics cited to show how racially diverse Oakland is, ignoring the fact that in many neighborhoods - especially the poorest and richest ones - there is virtually no diversity. The kids in my neighborhood felt this acutely.  When I brought up the idea of desegregation of schools, one of them scornfully pointed out that black kids and white kids don't go to the same school - and in her experience, she was right.Although none of these kids - or even their parents - had ever experienced segregation due to laws, certain ideas were so foreign to them that they assumed they were legally prohibited. I took the ki...

In the classroom, I didn't have a lot of interaction with my students' fathers.  There were a few, but I remember them clearly because there were so few.  Most of them were not around, incarcerated, or just not involved in life at school, preferring to leave those responsibilities to the mothers and grandmothers. As I've been tutoring in students' homes, I still don't see many fathers.  I primarily deal with the mothers, and often don't meet a student's father until a year or more into our tutoring relationship.  Other fathers are present but let their wives deal with scheduling, feedback, and payment.  Many of these men seem to be somewhat shy about getting involved with their children.  I don't usually get the feeling that they consider themselves above being interested in school, but often that they don't really know how they fit in.  I've notice with one man, particularly, that he seems to be really proud of his middle school daughter a...

My latest Teaching Tolerance blog is up , talking about the difference between wants and needs.

I talked briefly about some of the regrets I have here but I've thought of more.  Fortunately, there are many, many things I do not regret (like the feelings paper ), but there are a few things I would like to do differently. Most of my regrets have to do with adult bullying.  I think many people wouldn't classify it as such but I would.  For example: I regret that, when I was volunteering in a class after I stopped teaching, that I did not stand up to a bullying teacher.  She was a fantastic teacher - for any student who was willing to sit still, behave the way she wanted, and learn by direct instruction.  However, when children had learning difficulties, behavior problems, or emotional trauma causing them to act out, she shamed them.  Sh called them names, she told them that they would never do well, and she almost mocked them.  I don't remember if she ever used the word "worthless" but that was certainly what she was calling several children, wh...

When I was working in the inner city, I noticed that the kids were rarely unaware that they had less than other kids.  When we went on field trips, they would ask me, "Is this where the rich people live?  These house look like rich people houses."  They would often point out that white people in the grocery stores buy more food than their family was able to, and that other people didn't have to live where there was shooting most nights. As I've been doing private tutoring, I have obviously been working with many students whose families are much better off financially than my former students' families. One of the interesting things to me is that many of them are not aware how fortunate they are.  At one point, a student who goes to a prestigious private elementary school asked me if I tutored any of my former students.  When I said no, she asked me why.  I simply said that most of them couldn't afford tutoring - didn't explain further.  She looked at ...

another of my posts got published in Teaching Tolerance! I really liked this paint chip lesson so please read and tell me what you think!

I wrote about helping a friend's son with writing by using the two-minute writing game I made up.  You have the kid write any words at all - the only rules are that they have to be words and you have to keep writing for two minutes.  It has helped a number of my students who are perfectionists and just think way too long and hard about writing, never getting to the writing part. I got a Christmas card from this friend and actually laughed out loud.  She wrote: I honestly believe "Johnny" wouldn't be as successful in writing now without getting past the block with "Hey NASCAR toot fart butt pee poo yo he mom dad father" I wanted to introduce another writing game.  I don't have a name for this one, but I'm taking suggestions.  i have the student pick a number between 2-10.  Then we write a story together.  If the student picks "5" for example, she writes five words and then I write five words.  The story usually ends up being pretty si...

This post is not about politics.  For this post, I don't care if you like Obama or think he's the worst president in 100 years.  If you can, just for a few minutes, try to put that aside and hear what I'm saying - something about the First Family that is not political: There is a black family in the White House. This makes me so happy in so many ways.  Some of you right now are thinking that this is another form of racism - that I should only judge the First Family on their character, not on their skin color.  You're right and wrong.  That, of course, would be ideal, and I think that is a well-meaning position, but if that was your first thought, I'm going to venture a guess that you have never personally had to deal with racism.  I am pretty fortunate as well.  I'm a middle-class educated white person and I've never suffered from racial profiling or racial discrimination.  In fact, I've probably benefited from racism in more ways than I'm ...

I was watching some more of Tavis Smiley's Too Important to Fail series and the current 90-second clip that is up shows the same panel of young black male offenders that led me to find my student from first grade .  He is in this clip also although he doesn't say anything.  The young man next to him, however, talks about how he didn't pay attention because he was traumatized (the interviewer's word, not his) by his sister being killed in front of him.  He goes on to say that he thinks most black boys in his neighborhood had similar experiences (I agree). Then one of the other kids said that when he was in fourth grade, his teacher told him he wouldn't amount to anything and he gave up. I am pretty positive that I've made a huge number of mistakes and bad judgment calls in my years of teaching but I am confident that I did this one thing right: I never said that to a child.  I never called a kid bad.  I never told a child I hated him or her, and I never said ...

Dear person who told me "It's really too bad you don't have children; you'd be a good mother:" You're wrong. Not that I'd be a good mother - you're right on that.  I'd be a very good mother.  Anyone who has ever seen me with children can agree on that. No, you're wrong that I don't have children. It's not totally your fault - I wasn't thinking when you asked me.  And in fact, I haven't been thinking clearly any of the times that people have asked me that.  I always answer the way that people expect me to and I think it's time to change that. I know that when people ask me "Do you have children," (or my least favorite, "Do you have a family?"  "No, I sprang into being all on my own!"), they mean did I birth children who I am now the guardians of.  Maybe if they're more open-minded they just mean, "Are you the guardian of children?"  And the answer is no.  Before you start fe...

...was what I wanted to name this blog pos t.  But they published it, even with another title, so I'm still exited! Please read.   And yes, all true.  I did have teachers try to trade me their black kids for my Samoan kids.  Yes indeed.

I stopped by my old school the other day to pick up my Little Sister and take her to buy yarn (her mom is having a baby so I'm making a baby blanket).  When I parked and started walking, this kid - actually tall young man - ran across the lawn, arms outstretched.  I honestly don't know when someone has been so visibly excited to see me.  It was my student from third grade who met President Obama .  And ate lots of hamburgers while in DC.  (in reading his essay, that seems to be what stuck out for him). This kid is now in 8th grade, so probably 13 years old, has lots of friends, and appears to be a leader among his group of friends.  He is tall, confident, and outgoing.  And he's not embarrassed to be running to hug his third grade teacher in front of the whole school. That's worth it all right there. 

In my 8 years of teaching in Oakland, I was lucky to never have my grade level changed in the middle of the school year, but I had plenty of co-workers who did.  The schools try to staff for the kids who will come but they don't actually know who is coming and in which grades.   So every year, teachers would spend hundreds of dollars and countless days on getting their rooms ready, only to have to switch in mid-October. Here's a very brief story about it and another teacher's thoughts , very well explained. My Little Sister's teacher is being consolidated and she LOVES her teacher.  I happen to know that the teacher she's getting is very very good but she's spent 6 weeks bonding with the teacher she has and starting over is scary.

I took my Little Sister to an animal show today and we got a bat book. LS: I hate bats. Me: You know they eat mosquitoes, right? LS: I LOVE BATS!  They are my favorite animal.

From a teacher who wishes to remain anonymous, after Ann Coulter went off on "useless public sector workers."  [By the way, I don't like to think of human beings as "useless," but if there was one, it would be Ann Coulter] First, Jon Stewart had the best response I've heard to this.  Ever.  Check it out.   Then read this day in the life of a good teacher. I know, I know. But the word useless really got under my skin. "Dear" Ann Coulter, First you called kindergarten teachers "useless public sector workers" and then went on to say that public school teachers get off at 2 and get the summers off. Finally, you implied we're highly paid. Clearly, everything one needs to know really *is* learned in kindergarten: kindness, fairness, honesty, manners... Too bad you were truant. Why don't you walk a mile in the shoes of a "useless public sector worker"? 6:00 Get up, get the tea going, get the lunch ready and th...

I was working on my computer today when I got a facebook post from a friend and former co-worker:     "Hey, I am watching this special on PBS hosted by Tavis Smiley. He is at the Alameda Youth Jail and I think I just saw Fred. I don't remember his last name but I knew him as soon as I saw him. He had the scar on his forehead. Isn't that your old student. They said he was 18. Does that add up" Yes.  yes, it does add up.  Fred (not his real name) was a kid in my first and third grade classes, in 2000 (I came in January and they had had 6 substitutes before then) and then 2001-2002.  He was famous at our school, not least because he was expelled in second grade for hitting a teacher or something like that - I honestly don't remember.  He was brought back for third grade and I requested him again.  He was one of those kids who caused trouble everywhere he went and was so angry that it was just coming out of his pores, even when he was six. ...