When I went to get my master’s I was originally pursuing a degree in biology. I was the
only American Black in the master’s program, and I ran up against much opposition. I re-
member when my father died. I had to go home and bury him, and I missed a week of
classes. One professor told me that missing classes demonstrated that I was not qualified to
become a scientist.
At the time I was taking some classes with medical students, and I kept thinking “This is
not how I understand science.” The attitude of the teachers was that only special people
could understand the material. I really felt like it could be taught so that it would make sense
to everybody. Part of Albert Einstein’s genius was that he could explain the theory of relativ-
ity to ordinary people. He had the ability to make the complex seem so simple. He did not
worry whether he sounded erudite.
I had always felt that I had the ability to explain. I tutored lots of friends and helped peo-
ple get through their courses. I learned how to translate academic science into something
that made sense in my life and was relevant to my experience, and I figured out ways to
translate it back on tests. I called my mother up and said, “I think I’m going to transfer into
education.” She said, “You know, I could have saved you 10 years. That’s where I thought
you should go anyway.”
A major reason I decided to become a teacher, and then a teacher educator, is that I be-
lieve I owe something to the people from my neighborhood and to the Black students who
never graduated from my high school. I know I was not the most talented or the brightest of
the bunch, but others were systematically pushed out until they could not stand it anymore
and quit. Maybe I am more pigheaded than the rest. I managed to learn in spite of the teach-
ers. I decided my mission was to go back to high school as a science teacher and say to stu-
dents you can have a good experience because of me. You do not have to learn in spite of
me. It is possible to achieve and I will help you do it.
At my first secondary school teaching job I worked with students who had always been
low achievers, and they began to be successful. I knew some of my students were interested
in dancing, so I used it as a hook to get them involved in science. I was teaching them about
cilia and how these hair-like projections move cells around. At the time there was a dance
called the body wave. I brought the music to school and we got up and did the body wave.
That’s how students learned how cilia beat. My principal was not necessarily all that happy.
He looked in and wondered what was going on. I said let me try and teach them this way. If
they do not respond, I will go back to the traditional methods. But my students did just as
well, or better, than the other classes.
Another time, I had a student who was very artistic but did not want to learn. The other
teachers let him sit in the back of the room and draw in his notebook as long as he did not
bother anyone else. They warned me that if I tried to engage him in class he would become
very disruptive, but I could not stand having him sit back there and not learn anything. I told
him that his job was to draw all of my diagrams on the board. I bought him the most expen-
sive chalk I could find because he was an artist and was going to help me teach science. He
drew the most beautiful diagrams and carefully labeled each one. By the end of the year, this
young man was talking about becoming a science teacher.
As a young teacher I learned that if I worked at teaching, and figured out what made my
students “tick,” something would get through to them. I know it gets through. This is a far
more effective way of teaching than boring students, punishing them, and feeding into the
resistance culture that alienates them from school. It is the right thing to do and it makes
your life in the classroom much easier.
As a result of these experiences, I was invited to lead in-service workshops to show other
teachers how to make the material more accessible to students. Later, I ran a program at the
118 CHAPTER 4