"The Brown Unicorn"

The task of reflecting on the first year of teaching cannot be escaped as I prepare to enter my second year. There were just. So. Many. Mistakes. I mean, there were definitely moments in the year I felt like "yeah! I'm doing the right thing here!" And to an extent those moments balance out the bad in my mind's eye. But I've talked to several close teacher friends (and I mean exclusively teacher friends because anyone outside the profession would only offer the added judgment towards a seemingly ineffective teacher) about a particular struggle that circulated throughout my first year experience. And with purpose, I write about it here, on a public blog post with my name at the top of the page, as a way to reflect, progress, and hopefully shed some light on an issue rarely talked about. I have no shame in my experiences because I am confident I am able to grow from them. And if it's uncomfortable to talk about, write about, read about, then it might just be worthwhile.

Teacher credential programs do a fair job of preparing the average (white) teacher for working with students of color, we have a ton of great models for that that can easily take up an entire movie marathon weekend. However, I can't shake the feeling of being unprepared to enter the room as a member of a underprivileged race, an anomaly resting on culture of power adopted by many students of the room, as I like to refer it, a brown unicorn.

In addition to the added privilege of higher education, earning my physics degree suddenly made me a fascinating and mythical creature--I was the brown unicorn. The young person of color, a woman (!) against all odds, representing an entire underprivileged group of people, entering a field predominantly made up of the patriarchal forces that be. It's not like this notion surprises me. I do wonder if it's surprising for (white) people to learn that I was very much aware of the fact that I was the only woman of color in my graduating class of physics students. I totally noticed when I was the only person of color to enter the 150 person lecture hall for one of my upper level modern physics classes. My undergraduate experience would warrant an entirely separate post about dealing with imposter syndrome, how I tried to train myself to think and talk "white", the frustration when I failed to do so, and the sexist comments I would hear from fellow classmates about other women in science. After graduating, I was reminded regularly, by advisors, employers, family and friends of the kind of "role model" I'd be for children, ESPECIALLY, for young women of color.  But it left me wondering something fierce: would I be just as great a role model for white male students?

The question grew even more intriguing to me as I transitioned from student teacher to job hunter the summer after I graduated with my credential. My first student teaching placement was actually at a high school down the street from where I grew up. This public high school served an urban, low-income and predominantly Latino community, and it was a dream come true for me to be working in a school in my home town. While there, I would get stopped by other teachers, the custodians, and even administration for supportive exchanges that made it clear they appreciated my being there. I was the brown unicorn.

During the last half of my student teaching experience, I worked with a public high school in a suburban affluent area that served a predominantly white population, that was about 20 min from where my parents lived. The year turned out as expected for a student teacher--awkward, clunky, picked up a few good tips I'll hold on to forever. But no one at that school ever made it a point to tell me just how important my presence was. Not that I was expecting it at all, but maybe worth noting.

When I was offered a position of science teacher at the urban public school I now work in, I was excited for the opportunity to build a physics program from the ground up in a Title I school. I had spent most of my undergraduate career dreaming of making a difference and building a passion for accessible and meaningful science learning. Upon considering, I visited the school before official accepting, and some time into the meeting with admin, it came out again--I was the brown unicorn they were looking for! After a casual tour of the campus and within the walls of the APs office, an admin leans over to me and says, "now I know this might not be the most PC thing to say, but I just think it's really important that our students have the chance to see someone who looks like them get excited about science and be a role model that shows them they can go to college."  Now at this moment, I was so grateful for all the other opportunities when white people have told me what a role model I was, because it prepared me to respond to that comment without cringing, giggling nervously or choking on my own saliva.

I get it! I want to stress the point that I totally get why people would think that way about me. I think all people that spot me as the brown unicorn have good intentions at heart.  I think it's great to have SOC learn from a teacher that looks like them. Heck, that probably would have done me very well had I had such an experience (side note: I never have a teacher that was a woman of color, although I did have a handful of teachers in high school and college that were men of color). But why am I a special case? Why was I not made to feel that I was offered the position because I would be good for ALL students.

What was so important about my presence in a classroom full of SOC in a low-income area that was not as crucial to me being in a classroom full of white students in an affluent community?

Why isn't it important for white students to learn from a TOC?



More on this next time...