Why I Teach for America!

I got the j-o-b! My dream has come true, I will be teaching English to the masses. I will begin teaching high school English in Newark, NJ this coming fall. My mom asked me if I had my bullet proof vest…*moms always trying to be a comedian.

But hell yea…I go tmy vest, mase, and everything else…j/k

I am utterly excited to be in a position in which I can truly effect change the way I want. TFA only accepts about 2,000 of the 20,000 top graduates that apply. And they usually don’t have alot of education majors…so kudos to me.

My student teaching is almost over…I’m am also overly excited for this! It might have been when one of my students made the comment that my pearl necklace looked like a noose! Of course pearls look like a noose on Miss Swinton, right!? Yup, that was definitely my breaking point, but no fears Miss Swinton politely ignored the student and keep it moving. It could have been a lesson learned for this student but I realized, its Snyder County, he is a product of his environment, just like me. So when they are offended that I don’t carry stuffed dead animals in the back of my pick up, I don’t get in a debacle either…..

Dana will be  here in two weeks, I graduate in 4, and I go to TFA training in 7!

On a lighter note, I got a man! Yay… for Miss Swinton…He’s good to me ya’ll, but I haven’t made my Taiisha demands yet….so I’ll keep you all posted. Things are looking up though.

This goes out to you…

While I was never the sorority girl type, on February 18, 2007 I became a chartering member of the Rho Theta chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc. Court, Liz, and Dana were all the closest friends in my life at the time and we did it. We chartered the first historically African American organization on our 93 percent white campus.

Who would have guessed that I would end up in a sorority? I never knew about sororities until college when I saw all the kappa deltas and sigma kappas with their permanent smiles and popped collars. I later learned how vastly different BGLOs are from their white counterparts.

Since our freshmen year, Courtney wanted a sorority on campus. In our junior year, it was finally happening.

In Sigma Gamma Rho I have found myself refined and refreshed pledging my life to a common motto of “Greater Service, Greater Progress.”

What I learned soon after my crossing into Sigma Land was how divisive BGLOs are with one another. I mean think about how DST was founded by an ex-member of AKA. It’s almost like the different denominations of religion. Someone got mad and left and created their variation of what the organization should be.

While I will not admit that WE are all the same, we do seem to have the same mission of giving back to the community and exemplifying strong sisterly bonds. We just do it in different colors, calls, and signs.

Well anyway, I love my blue and gold. I love my sorors. I love the chartering members of Rho Theta.  

…My Life

So on January 1, I met this guy. Tall, dark, and handsome according to Dana, because I can only remember the tall and dark part. He asked for my number and I obliged. We have been talking on the phone for a while. I haven’t been home since Jan 3, so I have not seen him since we first met. 

He’s a nice guy. Much older than me, 27 to be exact. He has a job. College graduate. His own apartment, so he says. And two kids. Yup, two. Plus two baby mothers. Nonetheless, the optimist inside of me was willing to take the many risks already apparent.  

 Just recently, I have become so overwhelmed with life. Student teaching, SGRHO, Head Resident stuff, job application process, death in my family, and keeping my eyes on graduation has all pulled me in so many directions that I have little time for the free spirited things that my new love interest is interested in persuing. I like him; I just don’t have time for him.

Sometimes I feel like I may be alone forever because I get so worked up and intensely involved in everything I do, the people closest to me suffer. I haven’t called my fav grandmother in a month, and I often have to pencil my mother in. Its not like I come home, eat dinner, watch TV, and chill after school. 

After student teaching, I go directly into another realm of responsibilities I have on my campus, and by midnight, I am drained and don’t want to talk with anyone but my pillow and God. 

I just hope that this guy and any other man that I get involved with can understand where my priorities are right now at 21. I have so many dreams and places I want to be in another 10 years. I have little time for any tomfoolery that will deter me from my dreams.

So, in essence, I really do want form a meaningful intimate relationship with someone, someday. Now, today, but it is doesn’t seem feasible unless the love interest is willing to sacrifice ALOT. I’m not sure that I would want to request this of someone because it is selfish. 

So anyway, I haven’t spoken to my unofficial beau for three days. 

in all my virtue….

Life is good!  

Student Teaching is a lot of work but nothing that I am not prepared for. The only difficult part is waking up at 7 am everyday and not being able to take a nap. My typical day, as soon as I get back on campus from school, I have to put out a couple of fires and then the nonstop meetings begin. I suppose its the life of a busy person. I purposely let go of most of my obligations to free up time for student teaching but it seems that I am still the president of everything and in charge of all.

I AM EVERYTHING TO EVERYBODY!

And I do it so gracefully, might I add. Well, Thursday is  Teach for America final interview. I can’t say that I am ready, but I am not scared. Fear is the enemy of success in my eyes. So I’ll just walk and do my thing, like you all know I am capable of doing…and drive my happy butt back to Selinsgrove. I am really excited to graduate, live on my own (without the parentals), have a regular paycheck, and buy a shih-poo! O yea and live with LaDana, this will be round 2. Lets see who survives this one. Anyway, I think that on graduation, I will be really emotional about leaving Susquehanna because of the important people that I will be leaving behind but I have to keep in mind that its not the end, its a new beginning. I really didn’t feel that way about leaving my high school because I hadn’t developed real friendship until college. So, I’m going to miss my ladies (SGRHO and muriel…haha), Armenta, my boys (312), and my favs since freshmen year West Basement Hottness and the Mod Squad 05-06 (girls and boys lax, esp. JD). I may miss Court since she thinks she going to grad school, but I think I can find time to harass her from states away! I def will miss the Smith Staff because we have been through a lot!

(I’m not done, but I have to go teach….eastside….to be continued) 

on my student teacher flow…call me Ms. Swinton…

Yesterday was my first day student teaching! Who would have thought 3 1/2 years ago that I would be teaching English to the masses? Not me. I left my sick mother, my father, little brother, and sister on a long drive to Selinsgrove, PA. I left New York with a diploma in mind at the end of my journey. Now as I anticipate my graduation, there is so much more that I have gained beside my diploma. I gained a DEEPER love for my people, a bigger concern for low-income families, and a bigger heart for everyone on the fringes and not just people that look like me.

In this case, I suppose coming to Selinsgrove was the best thing that could ever happen to me. I won’t admit to many though. Now as a senior I really want to move on and make a change in the world. (How cliche?) It is true though.

My first step is through the public education system, next step, no one knows, but what I do know is that it will be an unselfish destination fully equipped to FIGHT THE POWER! 

Instead of going to law school in Fall 08, I hope to be in a classroom where I will be a diamond in the rough as a highly-qualified teacher. 

So many people ask me why would I want to be a teacher when my fortitude and ambition could put me at any top-ranking law school. It’s simple for me…the classroom that I hope to be in is the biggest dilemma in America in my eyes. There is no greater injustice than to deny a child the best possible education based on racial or socioeconomic status. The lack of a good public education perpetuates the daunting gap between the have and the have nots. This unjustly dynamic is at the foundation of the everyday struggle of the working class people. 

Of course, I will not enter a classroom with a false hope in changing the world in two or three years, but I know there is work to be done and I am willing to sacrifice much. I’m sure my story will not be as romanticized as “Freedom Writers” or “Dangerous Minds,” I know it will be much harder than the Hollywood depiction of the inner city classroom. But I am always ready for a fight. My motto is taken from the late great Malcolm X,

“By any means necessary!”

Peace.Love.Soul. 

Why I’m not a Republican or Democrat!

So, as long as I can remember African Americans hold a great alligance to the Democratic party. For what, I don’t know. In my 21 years, I have consistently seen African Americans and Latinos systematically left out of most, if not all, national movements, even the Democratic, the one to which African Americans vote by virtue of being black. Well I choose to be neither based on the fact that neither party can give two nickels about me and my people. 

I love when African Americans praise Bill Clinton as the first black president! It makes me wonder…we love being the happy negroes don’t we?

According to Miss Toni Morrison, “Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

I hope by 2008 or even 1998 when Morrison made her statement, all of the characteristics by which she gave Clinton his black card are not the basis to which African Americans are African Americans!

Despite the fact that African American imprisonment grew at an alarming rate during his administration, he didn’t blink an eye at the genocide in Rwanda, and higher poverty rates were the major result of his welfare reform…

 yet and still, African American love them some Bill Clinton!

So while I can agree that “George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Neither does anyone that has step foot in the White House since our glorious independence.

Does Obama care? I suppose, but I am frightened that someone will take his life before he can make a difference. 

 I’m Out….<3 Taiisha 

  

 

 

…poison of Black America….

I was watching BET last night, although “Hip Hop vs America” has been on before, I paid close attention this time. BET tries, but their superficial coverage of such an issue of the state of hip hop has only angered me more. More than the current state of hip hop itself. I usually resort to such an atrocity as BET when there is absolutely nothing on TV, or only when there is anything of substance to look at on the network promoting black star power (hehe), which is few and far between. So anyway, Nelly, TI, Mike Jones…WHO!?, Melissa Ford and all the creditable social critics did a good job in passing social responsibility around until no one knew who to hold responsible for the current tragedy in the black community. As it stands, when I hear or see any form of rap music, all I can look forward to seeing is scantily clad, big booty women and gat-toting, used to be thugs rapping about all the hoes they have and all the money they have stacked. Don’t get me wrong, “I Get Money” (50 Cent) is my joint. I enjoy the sample more than the lyrics but thats neither here nor there.  

The problem that I come across with rap music is social responsibility. Nelly brought up a good point, he said that not everyone wants to be preached to in music- this is true. However, I am not sure how much Black America can afford not to be preached to and educated. 

I had an epiphany when everyone was ranting about Don Imus! Don Imus was talking about New York aka Tiffany from “I Love New York” when he said nappy headed hoes and jiggaboo!

I swear.

I disagreed with who he directed his comments to but I am a firm believer that there are some nappy headed hoes in America, and “New York” is one of them in my opinion! Everyone got they draws in a bunch when Imus made his comment, and I too was a bit perturbed but I realized that in some sense he was mirroring everything that rappers uphold in their videos or the reality shows programmed by popular networks.

Right or Wrong. It doesn’t matter now, he said it!

I wish that there were more positive images of black women in America. We went from being the maid with actresses such as Hattie McDaniel (My soRHOr….EE-YIP) in “Gone with the Wind,” and Aunt Jemima to New York and video vixens. None of which represent me and all my virtue.  It is true that there are a lot of social constructs that contribute to the downfall of Black America, but because I am such a fan of real hip-hop, it pains me more to see hip-hop play such a enormous role in the detriment of my people.  

I can’t watch rap videos or listen to current rappers’ albums because for one, they are all saying the same thing and second they are perpetuating the same stereotype that I am trying to defy every time I walk out of my dorm room. A party song every now and then is good for the soul but I am often annoyed with formulaic songs like “crank dat soulja boy” when it is followed by “crank dat everything you can imagine.” Youtube it, it’s there!

I don’t live in the hood anymore, my mother is not a single parent anymore, my pops is no longer a hood pharmacist, and my grandmother don’t work as a maid no more! My struggles aren’t over, they just got a lot more complicated. Why can’t the music that I love reflect such a progression? All these rappers are stuck in the hood mentality, rapping about what goes on in every ghetto across America, but we seem to be stagnant in such discourse. 

Let’s start talking about AIDS, abortion, prison, war, self-hatred, interracial dating, homosexuality, race relations and all the other pertinent issues often sweeped under the rug! I do undertsand that we can’t pop, lock, and drop it to my music proposal, but my people, haven’t we danced enough? We danced our way to the big house! Enough said…

So in conclusion, my rant for this week is about a better balance between party music and music that addresses the daunting statistics that follow every black person in America.

I love my people. I love hip-hop. I love you.

<3 Taiisha 

it’s Christmas time in the city…..

Even though I live in the suburbs…but anywho….now that I have gotten off of my rant about black men….it’s time for the good stuff…. I have been home for almost a week. I have been to church, to the nursing home, to an elementary school xmas concert and tomorrow I’m probably going out with my girls. A perfect balance eh? Yup! Well my break is going well so far. I have not done a lot of thinking this past week. That’s my goal for xmas break. As the person that is responsible for everyone and everything, sometimes I need me time. THIS IS MY TIME! So, don’t ask me for anything, if I don’t call you, no worries, I’ll catch you in January. Aside from my routine badgering of Courtney and Dana, thats the best you will get for now.  I got  my grades and I did well in all of my classes considering the circumstances (near death experiences, fo real). I still got my 3.3. It will do, I suppose. I am really anxious about teaching next semester. I am so pro-black, I am scared that the only thing my kids will learn is African American history. I’m an English teacher. I have been working on unit plans and I only seem to get excited about teaching when I am teaching African American literature. Is that bad? Hope not. I have so many goals for 08 and my new motto is “More selfish in the 08.” I discovered this after I was asked to ship a laptop from state to state and an estranged acquantince requested my services after not merely blinking an eye in everyday passing. I realized any time someone wants something, they call me. Why!? Because as hard as my outside shell may be, I’m dependable, generous, and thoughtful when it counts, sometimes too much! So from now on I’ll keep my favors limited. I love when Mary’s song comes on the radio.  I be in my mini-van singing and shouting…JUST FINE, FINE, FINE, FINE, FINE, FINE, ew! (pardon the ebonics, if you don’t understand) I am just fine. Through all my inner battles I’m just fine. I still need work but I could be worst. Well, I suppose I done with my rambling. until next time…I’m out. P.S. My fav bro ever is coming home tomorrow from Jaimaica and were definitely gonna get it poppin.  <3 Taiisha  

 

I bought a new phone….I know….I know….I just bought one…..but this one is so cuter…

and ya don’t stop….

Courtney said that [black men] don’t care about racial issues. Umm…since when did a black man not have to think about race in America. I’m sorry but as a black woman in America, I don’t have that privilege but when I do….    I’ll let you know!         So I was recently in a conversation about apathetic black men and I was not shocked to hear one young man explain that he does not have time to dedicate to racial issues on our campus. Baffled to say the least but also a bit perturbed. So without furthering the conversation with the young man, who might I add, is my friend. I thought long and hard about what he said.Now everyone that knows me also knows that when it comes to race in America, I have a lot to say and so many plans of things to do…..I came to the conclusion that while the African American women on my campus are marginalized by white men and women, and African American men, we have no other choice but to fight.Every time someone murmurs that we are only here because of affirmative action…Or having separate water fountains on campus would be funny…Or the hanging man drawn in the bathrooms….Or the yearbook picture of a fraternity dressed as the KKKWe, the black women, are the first to take action…However, the last to be appreciated….. African American young men find their way into the “big house” through the side door. [Generalization coming] These white women come to college ready to explore and do all the things that their parents prohibited them from doing while at home .  What is the common rebellion I see? White women wide-eyed over the “mandingo” men. Ha! While the black men seem to think that they are exploiting these women and just having a good time. It gets deeper. Now if its as easy as they say. Are black men going after white women because they don’t have to be “on point.” Being black is good enough… But they know when they talk to a sista, they can’t come at her any type of way, they already what is going to happen. I am not against interracial dating… The interracial relation that I have seen seem to only be based on dominance, exploration and lust. The men on my campus are not dating these white women, they are exploiting them. They do not take these women home. They don’t even introduce them to the family on homecoming weekend. So is it just a having a good time for the moment? I wonder…Well, if this is such the case, this leaves black women stranded in academia with dreams and ambitions that one day [far from now] the black man will see the beauty in her.That her virtue shines brighter than the lip gloss Becky got on.  my rant for the moment…. 

Defoe, Oh No!

So, I have this ten pager due in less then 12 hours and I definitely have not begun. I’m trying to do research but I am just not moved!

My entire college career has been dedicated to writing about dead white men that society has acclaimed as the rich foundation of literary society. Mid-terms and finals are always the moments of my semester when I feel like telling my professors that this all bores me because it will never speak to me like it does to them. The foundation of my soon to be English degree is based on literature that I hate. Not because its by dead white men but because I can never relate. I’ve tried!

They say I have to learn how to function in a society that is not my own but its so hard! I go to my literature classes hoping that the professor starts a discussion that I can relate to, that sparks interest in me, but it never happens. Instead, I feel isolated and ostracized from the very text that my English degree stands on.

Do you relate?