TeachingInColor FINAL DIGITALPages - Flipbook - Page 20
B
rianna Tuscani, a
Rhode-Island native and
Southerner at heart, is
teaching English & African
American Literature at Charles
E. Jordan High School in
Durham, NC.
When did you know you wanted to be
a teacher?
For 1st grade career day, I dressed up as
a teacher — but I definitely dreamed lots
of different dreams of what I’d be one
day between then and when I needed to
make choices about a course of study.
I suppose that pull to teaching was
always there deep down. I returned
to the deep knowing that I wanted to
be a part of the teaching and learning
process when I was getting to the end of
high school. At the time, I was exploring
either law or education in ways to help
people and address issues in our world.
Between the first wave of attention to
Black Lives Matter happening at the
time, and taking American Civics and
Legal electives showing me there wasn’t
a clear path to “helping people” in that
area, I decided education was the more
direct way to make change for me.
I was warned against becoming a
teacher even by my own teachers, but
I always saw the work a little differently
than the ways they portrayed it to me. I
wasn’t a savior, and I never wanted it to
