“In both cases, they were criminalized and assaulted for sitting where they were – on the steps in front of their house or in a lunchroom in their school – and more fundamentally, for being who they were… In some cases it’s important to know that an angry student pushing back against a teacher’s authority is also fighting with painful memories of encounters with the authorities in the justice system.” – Chapter 2

Chapter 1 was a struggle to get through and chapter 2 was increasingly difficult by the paragraph. My experience with this book so far has been mostly re-evaluating aspects of my childhood and adolescence with the new perspective I have as an adult. Looking back at why certain school years were so difficult for me on a socio-emotional level and not understanding why. Not getting why it was so hard for me to do well in school, not getting why I never wanted to go home after school, and then reading section by section similar situations that were going on in my life and seeing it “click”. I get it now. This passage in particular helped me revisit those memories and understand why. It wasn’t that my teachers were bad, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a good students, I just didn’t respond well to authorities that mimicked too closely that of police officers and the unjust actions I had repeatedly seen terrorizing my neighborhood.

One cold winter Saturday morning a white police officer stopped my dad with my brother and I in the back seat because one of the license plates on the vehicle didn’t match the registration of the car. Someone had tried to steal my dad car but only managed to switch out one of the license plates before they were interrupted. As much as my dad tried to explain this to the officer in his “calm proper English” the officer just couldn’t fathom that this black man could have such a nice car so we all had to get into the backseat of his police-car, drive back to the precinct, and sit in a holding cell until someone could come with “more” proof that the car belonged to my dad. More proof than the registration in his name, more proof than the insurance of the car in his name. My brother and I cried in that cell while my dad held us for the several hours it took until someone could come with more documentation. 

I was 7 years old.

I didn’t understand.

Seeing police officers stand by their “emergency mobile stations” outside the schools in my neighborhood. Seeing 11 police-cars holding 4 officers each flood the corner of the bus stop I was waiting at because two high school boys were fighting across the street. Looking at my high school yearbook and seeing the faces of our 4 guidance counselors, then turning the page to the see the faces of the 16 security guards that were constantly patrolling the grounds of my school. Hearing my brother curse and get heated when talking about getting “Stopped and Frisked” for looking at an officer wrong. Not understanding why my friend didn’t come home and later learning that he got deported for hopping the turnstile on his way home from work because it was past 8pm and his student metrocard was invalid. Hearing my mother’s words “Cuidado m’ija que la policia no está buscando quien se las debe sino quien se las paga” (Be careful my daughter because the police aren’t out to get who owes them one but the one who can pay for it). Feeling the blood drain from my head when an officer stood only a few feet away from me looking straight at me successfully intimidating me with his hand on his gun strapped to his waist. Feeling the pain in my right wrist as my best friend pushed back against a cop trying to arrest me for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and then running until I couldn’t feel my lungs.

There are still many things that I don’t understand but now, as an educator, I’m more aware and perceptive of my students. We just don’t know what our students are going through and they may either not have the language to know how to talk about it or the safe-space to be able to speak out. But we can read their body language, we can be there for them. We can make the effort to see when they’re having a particularly bad day. They may be smaller or younger than us but they are whole humans experiencing real life and they may not understand it all.