School District of Hillsborough County (SDHC) in Tampa, Florida

I remember my first week interning at the School District of Hillsborough County (SDHC) in Tampa, Florida last summer when my supervisor took me to meet with Debbie Cook, the Director of School Reform. Debbie was talking about how she tries to solve the following question: “how did the district fail to meet the needs of our schools?” in response to schools that received a school grade of a D or an F. One solution was putting highly effective teachers in the district’s highest need schools. I raised my voice and talked about how learning is not only in schools but also in homes, e.g., children or families that do not have access to books at home or illiterate parents and guardians that cannot help with schoolwork. Then, Debbie really opened my eyes when she said that she knows very well about how poverty and race and gender (amongst other social factors) affects students’ performance but as a district, we cannot expect less from these students because they are “poor inner city kids.” Our standards for these kids should not change because they are on free lunch programs or because they go to a school with a 99% black population.

Even though I knew that our country is still segregated, seeing it for myself in elementary schools was frustrating. Most of the highest need schools have high percentage of students of color and almost all of the students receive free lunch programs. On the other hand, schools that are receiving a consistent grade of an A have small percentages of students of color and the number of students receiving free or reduced lunch was significantly lower. Schools are not receiving a D or an F because the students are black; a lot of it is because the system they are a part of is not set up to benefit them. School-to-prison pipeline is a very apparent reality for a lot these students. The school grading system is created by the largely right-wing Florida state legislative and as a result, most of their agenda hurts a very specific demographic: the poor students of color.

I learned that we need more social studies and civic engagement in our schools. Few students have seen someone who looks like me, an Asian, so they asked me if I was Chinese or if I came from Tokyo. Teaching elementary students about social (justice) issues is a dream of mine, so I decided to use the students’ unawareness as an opportunity to teach the students about the history of race in the U.S. to explain why these stereotypes exist and are harmful. It is about really believing that the third grader in my class wearing a shirt that reads, “Harvard Class of ?” will not only get accepted into Harvard but will also have other wonderful options to choose from. It is about experiencing eight weeks in Florida, doing what I love and growing so much as an activist, an educator and a human being. It is about taking that experience, recognizing my own privileges and feeling neither guilty nor ashamed but using it as a tool, as much as I can and as best as I can.