Jasmine Nicole

I’m passionate about black students being able to be black in the classroom. Now what I mean is that the educational field has always pushed the agenda that Eurocentric standards are the only acceptable way of being in the classroom. It’s the only way that students can be successful academically and behaviorally. And because of the deeply rooted racism that has and still runs throughout this country, education professionals have gotten away with it. They have gotten away with forcing giving black students to either assimilate to white culture or be punished in the classroom.

I did my master’s project on this topic and I intend on making it a career agenda to study this more and get this message out in the world. Black students deserve to have their culture integrated into the classroom. They deserve to be able to be themselves in the classroom and still have the opportunities and support to achieve greatness.

Some teachers tend to think that if they put a lot of attention into Black History Month bulletin boards or hang up pictures of Dr. King then they have done their due diligence. But it goes so much deeper than that. There are social situations that black students are often penalized for that have everything to do with blackness and the perception of the teacher towards that blackness.

For example, black students get in trouble for the way that they talk. Using African- American vernacular English or Ebonics in the classroom is often grounds for punishment because many will argue that it is not “proper English” when it’s simply another one of the many dialects in the English language. However, the perception of the teachers determines largely if that dialect is met with intolerance or acceptance. Also, black students can be loud and expressive and I see daily how these behaviors, perceived by educators who aren’t a part of the black culture, deem these behaviors as noncompliant, defiant, and unruly. My very own students are victims of this narrative where their natural behaviors that can be traced back to the African roots are the same behaviors that non-black teachers fail to understand and punish them for.

Since I became an educator, my passion has been to be a voice for black students. I want to leave a legacy that lets my students know that they don’t have to change their blackness to achieve greatness.