Confessions of a DC Teacher

She welcomed me to the classroom with the coldest of stares, piercing my eyes with hers, saying "Fuck you" without even opening her mouth. When I placed the worksheet on her desk and offered a "Hello, what's your name?" she quickly stood up, snatched the paper, held it a foot from my face, ripped it into 100 pieces, and sat back down, fuming as the shreds of white dropped harmlessly to the floor.

This happened on Day 1 for me as a first-year English teacher in the Washington, DC, public school system. I had never been treated in this fashion by anyone, much less a 15-year-old girl. My face reddened. The other 10 girls in the classroom sat giggling, pointing, awaiting a reaction. "Show them I'm not intimidated," I thought. So I went back to my stack of papers, returned to the steaming student, and put another worksheet—filled with 15 simple yet personal questions—in front of her. If her first greeting was angry, her second was apoplectic. "Who the fuck are you, nigga? Get the fuck out my face!" The words flew out with unchecked fury as she sprang out of her seat, and this time, she did not sit down. Instead, she demanded an answer. "You don't want to participate today?" I whispered, my voice cracking. She widened her stare and held it a moment. "Man, get the fuck out my face!" She then sat down, burying her head in her forearms, disappearing for the remainder of class. And that was that.

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