Connecting everything

"Miss"

At first I didn't know why they didn't understand call me by my name. I wanted to look to see what the children called the other teacher and they didn't call their other teachers either "miss" or "mr". This was the first time I had heard children call teachers not by their name. Delpit

"Who do you think you are, Oreo?"

The first time I was called a name like this I didn't know how to respond. I learned that I needed to know how to respond to the students and learn to get to know them. I needed to know where these kids where coming from when they called me this and why they didn't want a white woman coming into their life. I can see where they are coming from, who was I and why did I want to help them.

When talking to one of the students they were telling me how they had to talk care of their 11 siblings before they go off to school because their mother had to go to work. That really made me think of what the students had to do before they every got to school. They had a lot more stress from what was going on in their everyday lives.