Bronwyn Harris, Author

 I was incredibly honored to give the keynote address for Children Rising's annual gala earlier this month. I have been working with the staff of Children Rising (formerly known as Faith Network of the East Bay) to try to get out the stories of these amazing kids in Oakland and to come alongside them. Quite a few people have asked me what I talked about, so I'll share here. I mean every word of it from my heart. ***** I am so excited to have this chance to tell you about our kids, these wonderful kids in our community who have so much potential, and who flourish they’re provided with the love and support they crave and deserve. Let me tell you about my experiences teaching in Oakland. I taught at Lockwood Elementary School, in East Oakland, right by the Coliseum, for eight years. This school was in a particularly rough part of Oakland. I didn’t know this before I taught there but the police called this neighborhood the “killing zone” due to the high number of murd...

When I was teaching third grade, I told my students that they would always be "my kids." I didn't really think any of them would remember, but I'm so glad they did. I am hesitant to list the time I've gotten to spend with former students because it wounds like I'm bragging, but believe me, every single one of these interactions has been more of a gift for me than for them. In the last few weeks, I have been able to help find a criminal lawyer for a former student (a wonderful woman is paying for it) and take his grandma (along with a dear friend) to get proof that she is the legal guardian of her granddaughter. I was honored to give the keynote address for Faith Network of the East Bay's annual gala - talking about my experience teaching and all the wonderful work that Faith Network has done to support kids and teachers in Oakland. I heard from a former student who's going to be a dad and asked me to knit a blanket for his baby daughter. He...

I have been trying to write a post about Abuela , the grandmother of my former student, Jorge , who's currently incarcerated. (Read the links if you want to catch up!) The reason it's been so hard to write is because it has been so incredibly discouraging. Abuela has been trying to get custody of her granddaughter and it has been a mess. The social worker didn't give her the right paperwork, then the social worker quit, she's been calling and no one spoke Spanish, etc. etc. It felt hopeless. She asked me for help and THAT felt hopeless because I don't know the first thing about the legal system. In addition, I don't have the Spanish vocabulary to deal with "legal guardianship"and "foster care." But our friend Mitali and I prayed and researched and asked for help. And help came. First of all, an extremely generous person, who I don't know well, has offered to not only connect Jorge (in prison) with a good criminal lawyer, but to p...

I just wrote a piece about lockdowns on Medium ! Please check it out!

Since I've written Literally Unbelievable , I often get really uncomfortable with people thinking that I'm a really wonderful, caring, selfless person... all the time. I'm really not. I definitely love my students and former students, and I'm passionate about giving them a better chance at life, education... everything. But of course, I'm still human. I still get frustrated with kids. I still get impatient and try not to yell and feel lazy, just like everyone else. So I thought I'd share my process of making appointments to visit my former student, "Jorge," in prison. When I'm not in the process of making the appointment, I'm very excited to see him! I think about how wonderful it will be to catch up, how excited I am to be able to give his grandma the chance to see him, and what a relief it must be for him to get out of the cell and have visitors. I will admit, I do sometimes feel a little self-congratulatory and maybe grateful that I hav...

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...

First of all, if you search Google images for "ebonics," this is the only thing that comes up that is not totally offensive. I don't recommend doing the search. The ebonics (more correctly called African American Vernacular English or AAVE) debate started when I was in college, and wasn't talked about in those terms when I was teaching, but was definitely discussed, usually in derogatory terms. "Why can't they use proper English?" "I'm so tired of hearing "axe" instead of "ask"! "It's not "bafroom," it's "bathroom""! Usually there was some eye rolling and muttering about how uneducated people were, and even sometimes the expression "those people" which I hate. I'm not going to explain how AAVE evolved but if you're interested, check out John Rickford's work, which is fascinating and very informative. Even a quick search on Wikipedia can acquaint you ...

My friend Mitali and I went to visit Jorge in prison again, this time, much farther away. As I explained before, the visitor appointment system leaves something to be desired. But we finally got appointments and got to bring Jorge’s Abuela also. The trip down was long. Very long, and very dull, driving down I-5 with nothing to see. Abuela only speaks Spanish, even after over 35 years in this country, so Mitali and I were trying to speak Spanish, which requires a lot more concentration for both of us than speaking English! Probably because of this, we missed the exit. Unfortunately for us, I-5 didn’t have another exit for almost 20 miles. Fortunately for us, we were running early. But when we pulled up to the guard gate and weren’t sure which yard to ask for, I think we all got a little nervous. I remembered writing “D” on his letters and asked for D yard, which turned out to be correct. Getting in to see him was more difficult than before as well. They took an inventory of all...

The paperwork that I got from the prison where Jorge is incarcerated mentions that visits are essential for inmates' morale and rehabilitation. One would think, then that they might make visits feel a little more... possible. I've been trying to set up a visit for myself, my friend who graciously drove me last time and will do so this time (3.5 hours one way!! She's a saint), and Jorge's grandmother , who hasn't been able to visit him since he moved to the prison farther away. She was his guardian for most of his childhood and it's breaking her heart that she can't see him. Trying to get all three of us to visit, I called the prison's visiting appointment hotline. It is only available for three hours a week (Tuesday mornings, 7-10 am) and you can only make appointments two weeks in advance. If you don't make an appointment, you can show up for "open visiting" but it seems to be first-come first-served (I can't get a straight answe...

My student who is in prison, Jorge, has a very dedicated grandmother. We’ll call her Abuela. Abuela took over raising him when his mother couldn’t, and like all of us, she’s made her mistakes and had her struggles, but there is no doubt that she loves Jorge and her other grandkids and will do anything for them. Abuela came to the United States as a young woman; I believe about 18 or 19, with a toddler. I may be a little off on the ages, but I know that Jorge’s mom would be 38 if she were still alive and Abuela is only 54, so she was a young mother. I don’t know much about her history before she came to the United States, but I know school was not a part of it. Abuela was not taught to read or write in any langugae. She cannot speak English, although she can understand some, and she cannot read and write in Spanish. She is an intelligent woman who never had the chance to study. When I had Jorge in my class, he forged his grandmother’s signature on permission slips because she cou...

I had the distinct pleasure last weekend of speaking to the Yuba City area chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, a professional society for women educators. I was a little intimidated because in this group of mostly retired educators, there were literally hundreds of years of experience altogether. And here I was, only having spent eight years in the classroom, talking to them! I felt like I should have been the one seated and listening. The experience, however, was amazing. I was so honored by the compliments on my book, because I knew that these people understood. These were not empty words of flattery from people who say, "Oh, I could never do that!" These were people who had been in the trenches themselves, who knew the exhaustion of teaching, the feeling of finally maybe not being tired on your LAST day of vacation before you go back. They understood what it's like to not be able to sleep because you're so worried about a child who's not related to you, or to drea...

A friend sent me this article called The Singular Sorrow of Grieving Behind Bars. This friend has been with me to visit my former student "Jorge" who is in prison and knows how much he can relate to this. Jorge's mother, never a stable person, died two years ago at the age of 36. He is in prison for 19 years and could not attend her funeral and could not attend the mass said for her on the one-year anniversary of her death. (I was honored to be invited to that and took pictures to send to him of the altar with flowers and her photos). It made me think about how hard grieving is. I mean, when a person has support, community, and ceremonies for closure, grief is still really really hard. The hardest thing for humans. Now I try to imagine doing that while locked up, with no family or friends, and no freedom. No closure, no ceremonies, no ability to see the person one more time or be surrounded by others grieving. I don't know if I could do that. I mean, I don't...

My seven-year-old niece is practicing being a teacher. Many of us did this to some extent. I'm pretty sure I forced my sister and brother to sit still while I read spelling words to them that they didn't care about. Later, when I really was a teacher, I would see fifth-grade students come into my third-grade classroom and help kids in that same way, the "I really feel special acting like a teacher," way. It's really fun to see kids do that. It's very special to see that the relationship is so important that they imitate it and aspire to it. My niece, S, is very committed to her teacher role, not even slowed down by the fact that she doesn't have any siblings. She has been a teacher for her stuffed monkey, my parents' dog, and lately, a collection of stuffed squashes she was given. It's really fun to see how excited she gets about playing school. She writes out schedules that are better than any school I've ever seen: "Hello,...

I recently wrote an editorial for my local paper, prompted by some hateful vandalism in town.  It can be found here , on the Alameda Sun's site. 

My latest post on Medium: Why Supporting DACA is the Right Thing to Do After I wrote it, I was fortunate enough to have a former student named Dat, a 24-year-old Vietnamese American young man, write his own take. Although Dat was born in the United States, his parents weren't and he is closer in age and relationships to many of the young adults who will be affected by this. Here is what he has to say: I support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy because it presents an opportunity for kids without homes to grow up with a chance. Most immigrant kids have come to the U.S with their parents in search of a better life away from the impoverished country they once came from. DACA individuals are law-abiding citizens, illustrating their commitment and determination to stay in the U.S. To have DACA rescinded is detrimental because these are individuals with no home back in their native countries. They came at an incredibly young age to lay...

I wouldn't have imagined a couple of years ago, but I am looking forward to the letters I get from prison several times a month. If you've read my book , Chapter 10 is about "Jorge," my former student. If you haven't read it, it's cheap on Kindle right now and you can learn all about Jorge. Skip to Chapter 10; he's worth it. Anyway, he is a very very special young man who, in a nutshell, had every single thing go wrong in his life that could and (read the chapter!) he's now in prison for 19 years. I've gotten letters from three different prisons. I've been to visit him in prison twice, and I'd prefer to never go to a prison again, but that's where he is. And as I told my students many years ago, they'd always be "my kids." Jorge is working on his life story. When he read my book, he said that he was surprised that there were people in the world who didn't know how hard life is for people like him. he wants to ...

Three or four times a year, I teach a CBEST essay preparation class at the state university near me. The CBEST is the test require for someone to teach in California, whether substitute or fully credentialed. (There are many many more tests you have to take for your credential, and it ends up being quite a financial burden for a job that pays very little. But I digress) The CBEST is not actually very hard, on the surface of it, and I know plenty of people who are surprised that I teach a class, wondering why people need help passing it. There are three main reasons the essay portion of the test is hard for people: First, there are people taking it who have just been out of school so long that they have forgotten what taking tests is like and get really nervous. They usually do just fine once they practice. The second group is made up of people who have test anxiety and often the practicing helps much of the time. The third group is those who do not speak English as their native lang...

One of the greatest things that can happen to a teacher is to see their student succeed, in any way, no matter how old they are. So you can imagine how excited I was when I was invited to Stephanie's college graduation party! She graduated from Howard University with a double major in biology and sports medicine, and while I couldn't go to DC to see it, I wasn't going to miss her California party for the world. Stephanie has always been incredibly special: hard-working, strong family ties, and a confident attitude that has ensured her success even when many of the odds were against her. Being a black woman from East Oakland has meant plenty of obstacles, but I have never seen her fail at something she's tried. I've seen her realistically adjust her goals as needed and reach out for help as needed, strengths that many of us older people don't have and are impressive at 22. Stephanie is now doing a joint masters of public health and teaching program...