TeachingInColor FINAL DIGITALPages - Flipbook - Page 15
What does your dream classroom
look like?
Students feeling safe taking risks. More
student talk than teacher talk. Creativity
and collaboration is honored. All
contributions are valued.
What do you consider the value/
impact of having a teacher of color?
You can’t be what you can’t see, and
representation matters.
What is one thing you would tell an
aspiring teacher of color?
You may feel alone, but you are not
alone. Find your people. If there isn’t an
affinity group, make one. I have done it
in two different districts now, so if you
need help come find me!
K
umar Sathy is
a professional
development facilitator,
writer, storyteller, and also
the Equity Facilitator for
Orange County Schools in
Hillsborough, NC.
When did you know you wanted to
be a teacher?
I studied Biopsychology for my undergraduate degree. I
When did you have your first teacher of color and how
was learning so much about how memory and cognition
did that teacher shape your learning experience?
worked that I wanted to see how public education was
I had a Black third grade Language Arts teacher. She had
adapting to accommodate that new research. Through
ridiculously high expectations and did things differently than
the America Reads program, I was able to go into 3rd
other teachers, so she wasn’t my favorite teacher then, but
grade classrooms and help students with their reading
she tops the list of teachers who had the strongest impact
skills. I was shocked at how little it seemed that instruction
on me now. She had us research an African country and
had changed. Classrooms still looked and sounded like
learn all of the countries in Africa. I credit her for my growth
the ones I sat in over a decade prior to that. The same
and interest in writing because if she read aloud uneventful
system that struggled to help me with my own reading
sample sentences or our own uninteresting sentences, she
comprehension needs in elementary school was still
would say, “Boring” in a long, drawn-out, monotonous tone,
struggling to help young readers.
not to embarrass us, but to push us to do better.
I wasn’t a trained educator, and I was just a college
student, but I knew we could do better, so I set out to try
to make that happen, even though it was honestly just
meant to be a 2-year temporary commitment via Teach for
America.
