Angel is my why. Not the why in why I got started but the why in why I continue. He is the why in why I’m continuing to teach and why I will always speak my truth. It’s not only what he would have wanted me to do, if he was still alive, but what I feel I’m meant to do. I am a great teacher. All the hate that was thrown by the central office staff in my former district tried to break that out of me… they tried to break a lot of things out of me. You can’t break something that’s inherently a part of a person.
In school I was never smart– I barely graduated from high school. I had a 1350 on the SATs (out of 2400), a 3.1 cumulative high school GPA, and I never passed a standardized math test. I had to get a wavier to graduate from high school because I had done running start and had already gotten into the University of Washington. I got into UW because of my story mixed with doing running start, thankfully.
I also didn’t play sports and wasn’t very outgoing. I didn’t drink or smoke… I didn’t really have any hobbies. I didn’t do art. I worked, I listened to music, I hung out with people I trusted, and I dreamed.
In school I was always the kid helping the other kids solve problems or talking to the new kids and the kids who didn’t seem to have very many friends. I use to stay in from recess to help kids clean out their desks who were really messy or spend time getting to know my teachers. I was the kid that was comforting others and reporting the hurtful things as I saw. I made my first CPS call with our school counselor in 7th grade. I’m sure at times my compassion for others was a little on the annoying side for some of my teachers and staff… and if it was, I could never, ever tell. They just let me, be me.
What a gift they gave me. They let me be me.
When we don’t try to change children, which is separate from their areas of growth, we are teaching children they are valued and it’s acceptable to be them. I always felt like it was acceptable to be me and because of that, I’ve always known who I was. Sure, I’ve gotten lost a time or two, but at my core… I’ve never changed. And that’s the self-esteem (if that’s what we want to call it) of someone with an ACE score of 9. By the time I had met these educators I was referring to, I was already at a score of 7. How we treat our students and each other matters so much. How we treat others is very much so a part of us.
Part of being me is being a storyteller.
During my second involuntary transfer “beg and plead meeting” to stop the transfer, I shared Angel’s story and how it impacted him. When I was involuntarily transferred from middle school, he said it was worse than the day his dad was deported back to Mexico… and he was already nervous I wasn’t going to high school with them. When he said this we were all crying in the back of my old classroom… crying alongside 5, 13-14 year old boys was hard enough… hearing that though… my heart sunk. That memory will be engrained in my mind for the rest of my life. I shared that when he started going down the wrong road, I tried to teach him out to advocate for himself, and continued to be there for him. I shared how he went to juvy and I wrote him a letter… and I shared what happened next.
When kids trust you, sometimes you’re put in very awful situations. He was on house arrest and had cut off his ankle bracelet. He saw me at the mall one afternoon while he was on the run and told me every thing. For hours, we talked, and made a plan. He couldn’t turn himself in and I ultimately had to do if for him. I had him arrested. I had to call 911 on a student that I loved because it was the law and what he knew he needed to do but couldn’t do himself. No teacher should ever be put in that position. Then, 9 months later, he died. I explained to her that I didn’t want to experience another story like this again and there were ways this could have been prevented.
Her response? She looked at me as I was crying and said, “I can tell you feel personally responsible for what happened to him and that’s one of the things that concerns me about your relationships with kids. It’s not good for your well-being.” I was shocked. She continued to provide no evidence for why I should be moved to another school, continued to respond instead of listen, and ultimately showed her true leadership colors.
The hardest part is this is typical of how the leadership is operated in my former district. They use shame and fear as a means to gain compliance and control with their educators. They look for your perceived weakness and use it to their advantage. In my case, she saw Angel’s death as a vulnerability in my life. She saw my sensitivity and my emotions and drew an inaccurate conclusion that could have been incredibly harmful to me, had that been my truth.
Her statement was not only cruel and inaccurate… it was abuse. If she would have hit me with her fists instead of her words and power, she would have been removed immediately from her position. Instead, because the abuse was invisible, the years of abuse and mistreatment doesn’t matter. I had no marks to prove what she did was breaking me… but it was. It’s a sad world we live in when a person would rather be hit than endure more psychological trauma… simply because then someone would have done something about it. She had treated me much worse in the past, for years prior to this encounter and even months after. This was simply the conversation where I looked someone in the eyes for the first time and felt the feeling of true hate, of actual evil, being slapped into my soul.
People’s behavior is a reflection of them– that is a statement I believe to be true.
Therefore, I have and will always continue to treat her with compassion while honoring my story and the role she played in it… because that is a part of me. Truly, I can’t even begin to imagine how broken and hurt she must feel on the inside to treat people the way she treats them. Some time in her life, the world and people taught her to be cruel. They taught her to value power, compliance, being right and being the best… and how to make decisions in her best interest, not in the best interest of others. We have to start honoring the importance of other characteristics outside of grade point averages, test scores, and resume building opportunities… all things that equate to power. It’s time for the idea of power to change.
The last truth I believe that I will share today– hate is not an inherent trait. It’s a choice. We aren’t born with hate running through our veins. We are born hoping for and deserving of connection. Love, however, is an inherent trait, and it takes greater strength to choose love than to choose hate. So while there is a lot of darkness in the world, there is also a lot of light. Angel is my light in the darkness. He’s my why. I know there are more people like us and the only way to shine light on the darkness that others cause is by being vulnerable and speaking with integrity… by doing all things in love. This advocate series is done in love in hopes of creating more light.
In one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s sermons, Loving Your Enemies, he said “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
and sometimes love is truth.
with kindness | ashley