Failing Public Schools and Predominantly White Institutions: An Educational and Biographical History

By: Paul Mikel Watts-Offret

I attended high school in Yuma, Arizona, a border town where my family has roots that predate both the U.S. and Mexican governments. Young people from all along the border were bussed to school in Yuma, so my high school had nearly 6,000 students when I attended, 91% of them Latinx. Only 19% of those kids passed the state test in Reading, and only 14% passed in Math. Despite the large student body, only one honors or AP class was offered in each subject area, and the majority of the students in those honors/AP classes were White. My junior year, the school had to maintain police officers on campus to break up fights, and students were not permitted to brandish the colors of the Mexican flag. I graduated never having to read a book, write a paper, or do a day of homework. 

I struggled early in my college career, but I ended up in an American literature course where I read Frederick Douglass’s narrative of his life as a slave. His story served as a counter-story to American meritocratic ideas on why the poor are poor and the rich are rich. I came to realize that the racism I witnessed in high school was an extension of centuries old White supremacy. I majored in English and took all the African American and Latinx literature courses offered. A productive anger grew inside me, and I wanted to fight racism on the front lines: failing public schools.   

I applied to the program Teach for America (TFA) so I could teach in one of the most help needed schools in the country, but I wasn’t accepted. Undeterred, I earned an MA in Teaching for English in Secondary Education with a focus on low-income schools. I applied to TFA again and was successful. I became a middle school English Language Arts (ELA) teacher in the Mississippi Delta at a school in the Black community that had just been taken over by the state for seven consecutive years of failing test scores. I blended a curriculum heavy in creative writing and personal narrative with the test prep administration required. A local African American woman named Miskia Davis was hired on as the new principal to lead the school’s turn-around, and she had a dream of turning that school into one of the best in the state. After three years, our middle school was one of only six in the state awarded a blue ribbon distinguished school award, and Miskia Davis went on to become the superintendent of the school district. I discovered that real academic growth comes from students being able to tell their own stories and see themselves in their work at school.   

I knew I wanted to be a writer even before I became a teacher, but in my first year teaching I realized I wanted to write stories for young people that developed their social consciousness and inspired them to succeed despite the public institutions failing them. I wrote a short story with my students about a good kid who was pressured into making a really bad decision. That short story grew into my first novel. By the time I finished the novel, I was teaching middle school ELA in the Latinx and Vietnamese communities of East San Jose, CA. I printed out class sets of my novel and delivered an entire novel study, incorporating non-fiction reading on slavery, Jim Crow, and the school-to-prison pipeline. I experienced my writing with my intended audience in real time, and my students’ enthusiasm inspired me to imagine my writing in classroom libraries all over the country. I wanted to be as good a writer AND as good a teacher as any in the world, and I wanted to serve historically oppressed communities.

I decided to pursue an MFA in fiction and was accepted into a fully-funded program. I got to work with talented and inspiring people, and I felt lucky to be in my MFA program. At the same time, I realized I was in a predominantly White institution for the first time. Colleges in the U.S. are labeled according to the racial demographics of the students: Predominantly White Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges, ect... Student tracking, segregation, and low-expectations are so strong at the K-12 level, that the communities I identified with and served were not adequately represented in my post-secondary institution. While many people I worked with were socially conscious and inspired, many other kind and generous people had never had to consider the role of racism in education because they hadn’t worked intimately outside their own communities. My instincts as a teacher for social justice were ignited, and I wanted to add a perspective into academia that meaningfully accounted for systemic racism. I know I am not alone in wanting more representation within higher education. My desire to develop an inclusive, anti-racist teaching pedagogy led me to the organizations Herstory and the Coalition for Community Writing. Currently, I am privileged to be a Herstory/ Coalition for Community Writing Graduate Fellowship: Teaching for Justice and Peace Fall 2020 Graduate Fellow.