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• 1 2019-09-28T19:02:19-07:00 Tachelle Herron on Connecting to Community 11 plain 2019-09-29T17:46:01-07:00
  
  
  What role does education play in your life and in your community?
  
  The women in my family are teachers so they worked at Pelton. Tey work at Roosevelt and they worked at Woodrow Wilson. So they’ve worked in the Bayview as well. Born and raised here…My grandmother only had a third grade education, my grandfather only had a fourth grade education. Education is important. It’s more important than eating. You don’t work, you don’t eat. You don’t go to school, you don’t eat, so it was like “everyone wants to eat soul food!
  And I have several little cousins that attend this school so I am heavily invested in the school and the community. I’ve never been disrespected, cussed out, hit, screamed at, or even made to feel bad. But students do that to teachers on a daily when they don’t see them in their community.
  
  So students see me all day all night. I will go to their house. I have no problem with knocking on the door asking their mother for a cup of sugar, which I don’t need to. I’m here all the time. They know me. I’m Ms. Tachelle because I started as a para. I went to school with the majority of their mothers or grandmothers so they know me by my first name.
  
  I’m in the Black teachers project. One of their first inquiry groups says every child deserves a Black teacher. And I agree every child deserves a Black teacher because Black teachers have magic.
  
  
  Did you have Black teachers growing up?
  
  I had two Black teachers. My first Black teacher was Miss Scott at Guadalupe. She was cool. She never graded our papers with red ink. And the reason why she said because it disrespectful. Keep your classroom neat, show a child how to be organized, connect with the parents. She had a lot of conferences with my grandmother because she thought I had some learning disabilities. I just I would just rush and I wouldn’t take my time. I had a lot of trauma going on but it worked out it worked out for the best. When I did graduate from Laney College, I did see Miss Scott and she was like damn near proud of us like, me and my grandma because she know you’re raising a Black granddaughter.
  
  My second Black teacher was Miss Taylor and I still talk to Miss Taylor...I went to college because of her I. She would just always motivate me just always motivate me and her assistant was Maxine...They understood my dilemmas in not having a mom. Always. When I get angry fighting and things like that. They took their time to guide me and to keep me structured inside of a box. They did not want me outside of that box because they said, “you have to be normal”, but I’m not I’m not normal. And when I graduated with my masters, Miss Taylor says, “you know what you’re not normal. You’re amazing!” And then I got that tattoo. So every tattoo that I have is from a degree that I earned. So I have seven degrees. I have seven tattoos and they are defined my journey in life.
  
  Could you talk about your teaching philosophy?
  
  [My teacher] Mr. Stan in the sixth grade introduced me to Black Studies and I just adored it. I like I did my first report on the Maasai so I just I liked it and I wanted to teach people.
  
  I am a culture keeper...there’s not a culture on the planet Earth that I should not want or know about. You can read those letters on my doors from my kids, And it’s, I teach the kids what I did not know in school and what they should know going into the real world.
  
  You ask questions. I teach them about Socrates, Plato. I don’t do low level stuff even though they’re reading levels are low here. I make them more well-rounded so when they get into a class and they recognize a racist teacher they can remember their non-racist teacher and I said, “if your teacher ever objects with you here’s my email. Let me fight your battle”. Because I have the rights and privilege in my masters of education from equity and social justice to tell a teacher, “you’re wrong”.
  
  Teaching is probably what I will do, writing curriculum, just knocking down old bridges, building better bridges because the ones that we are walking on now have a lot of holes that children are falling through.
  
  
  Instead of teaching from a curriculum you know like this green book up here, TCI. Chapter One The Roman Empire. Hell no I’m not starting with Rome. Why would I start with Rome? So we went from the back to the front. We started in where mankind starts-Africa...We started in the Fertile Crescent, from the Fertile Crescent I created fake passports for my students and as Good Samaritans we traveled to China, India, back to Africa, back to Mecca, up to Russia, down to Mongolia, took the Pacific Ocean and went to MesoAmer ic a, f rom Meso-America we went to Mexico, from Mexico we went to the islands from the islands, now I’m going to Italy and to Rome because they want what we have, all the inventions.
  
  So my two Asian students those are my Chinese emperors. They sit next to my Mayan princesses. I’ll put them together. There’s nothing in this book about Filipinos. Not one thing. Oh my mom’s stepmom is Filipino. Caught her back in the Philippines, “Lola can you tell me everything about the Black people in the Philippines that live in the mountains and then how did the Philippines take over when the Spanish came?” And I just literally wrote the story down, made a Powerpoint and my Filipino students loved it and I tied it to America Filipinos and the farmworkers. A students went home, told her mom, her mom walked in here with two dozen lumpias. This is my life right here. And she’s never heard her culture in class but I can’t let you go through this whole semester not exploring your culture. I have one student with bright red hair bright red hair. Clearly she’s Irish or Viking. So I had to change that curriculum. Clearly had to change it. I have dark dark dark skin boys. And everyone’s just all like you’re black like dirt, you’re black like oil... Showed the Moors and how the Moors and the Muslims and the Chinese all traded on that trade route. Tey still don’t talk about color. But now you know your color was so important that you were the guardians of the road. And hopefully when they get to high school, they will keep these tools because the tools that I’m giving to them.
  
  Interview by Jin Zhu Edited by Alexandra Lacey and Wynn Newberry