Black student to make sure they did not say the wrong thing. It puzzled me to watch the pro-
fessor acting worse than the students. I became fairly good friends with the Black student
and we used to talk about how the class would react to his presence. He was very conscious
of the situation. The funny part was that he was from a rich neighborhood in Ohio. It turns
out that he had less experience with urban minorities than most of the kids in the class. He
confided in me that this class was the first time that he felt like a Black man. This was the
first time that he had been treated differently because of the color of his skin.
I began to take a long hard look at the school. It bothered me that the college, which
prided itself on being fairly left wing, did not actively recruit in urban minority schools, and
that the tuition prohibited most lower income students from attending.
After college, I entered law school where I spent the better part of a year miserable, trying
to figure out how I would tell my parents that law school was not for me. I also discovered
what I wanted to do with my life. The law school sent us to speak to high school students
about the criminal justice system. I visited a school in one of the poorest neighborhoods in
Brooklyn, New York. My experience at this school made me realize how lucky I was to re-
ceive the education that I did and that the students in urban minority schools do not have
the same opportunity that I had. It really bothers me that a child’s socioeconomic situation
dictates the quality of education they receive. The children who need the extra resources
are not getting them. This experience inspired me to want to teach and I enrolled in a sec-
ondary education program.
In one of my education classes, we were assigned to read the bookSavage Inequalitiesby
Jonathan Kozol. It discusses the horrendous conditions that exist in some of the poor urban
schools. The class was appalled at this situation, but few people were willing to take any ac-
tion. Most wanted to teach in suburban schools with students like themselves. But I decided
I wanted to work with minority students where I thought I could make a difference.
I believed I knew how to teach before I went to graduate school. I learned over a very diffi-
cult year that I did not have a clue about what to do. I came in with desire, but I needed to
learn the tools to be a teacher. During my student-teaching experience I had one of the best
cooperating teachers. She taught me all about classroom organization, that you do not have
to yell at kids, that you can be caring to people, and that there are ways of getting a class to
cooperate with you. It is not all about walking into a class and slamming the door and
screaming at kids. It is about understanding and appreciating them.
When I started, I expected my students to be instantly motivated to want to learn. But I
soon realized that my job was to motivate students to want to learn and to help them con-
nect to what we were studying. In my experience, a lot of teachers underestimate the impor-
tance of motivation.
I always let my students know who I am—that I am a Jew. There is often a lot of tension be-
tween Blacks and Jews. The kids see too much on television and they begin to think that all
Jews are one way and that Black people and Jews are supposed to have an antagonistic rela-
tionship. It is important for them to understand that there are people teaching in their
school whom they like and who care about them, and they are Jews.
***I Want to Give Back to the Community
By Pedro Sierra
Pedro Sierra is a social studies teacher and the dean of students in a troubled inner-city high
school. His parents were originally from Puerto Rico. He grew up in the neighborhood near the
school, but earned his high school diploma from an alternative educational program. Pedro at-
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