September 07, 2021

Historical Factors
Socio-Economic Factors
Identity Factors
Challenges During Work as a Teacher

HISTORICAL FACTORS: a broken family, disconnected from any substantial branches of blood relatives, no father in the picture, no memories of father, toxic and abusive female parental unit, no positive memories of a mother, and there was no support for me mentally, emotionally, when it came to helping with homework, or with my education while growing up. Endured a history of physical abuse and emotional neglect. The toxic and abusive female parental unit decided their only responsibilities were food, clothing, and roof. Due to essentially having to fend for myself, I turned to idolizing sports stars and heroes through highlights I would see on television. When I was younger, Ken Griffey, Jr. in baseball and Michael J. Jordan in basketball were my heroes. My education was a blur when I was younger, I received little academic support in a public elementary school that had widespread multicultural initiatives. When I was a student in high school, I only took a strong interest in sports, physical education, dating and connecting with females, and singing in choirs. I continued to struggle as a student in high school because no one worked on homework with me at home, and no one took an interest in helping me improve or to succeed. Outside of choir and sports, I really felt like just a number being pushed through the doors of the high school campus. I was held back and not allowed to walk my high school graduation. The high school choir I performed with, sang music at the graduation ceremony that I was not allowed to walk in. I was staring down at senior class members that I was supposed to graduate with. During the summer of the year that I was supposed to graduate high school, I was enrolled in summer English classes. At the end of four years of the high school campus, I was short English and History credits for graduating. I had to take and pass a history course at the local junior college before being able to apply for my high school general equivalency diploma.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS: surviving in a low-income household and experiencing poverty had its difficulties magnified with the parents divorcing when I was eight years old, the single parent that was left being toxic and abusive, one grandmother (dad’s side) passing away from colon cancer, and one grandfather (dad’s side) moving away from the local community (first the grandfather went to central California, and then across the country to Tennessee). There were no additional blood relatives available to help with my supervision as a young person growing up. The toxic parental unit went to her job, came back to the apartment, and continually told me to leave them alone. I had to walk on eggshells with everything in the apartment because, in the eyes of the abusive parental unit, everything I was doing was wrong, an annoyance, a burden, and agitating. This person made it very clear they never wanted to have children. To this abusive parental unit, having children destroyed their chances of doing anything they wanted to do with their life. They constantly brought up regret after regret and how angry and unhappy they were. I was regularly made to feel that I should never have been born, and I was to blame for everything wrong in the parental unit’s life. Due to socio-economic status, there was only one vacation that was memorable. When I was eleven years old, my grandfather (from dad’s side) drove me from southern California all the way out to Tennessee. Aside from that trip to Tennessee, there were no other trips with blood relatives. I have been in “extreme high alert survival mode” throughout my whole life. My existence has been fighting for everything and appreciating getting simple everyday things that most people usually have. I was under a roof where housing authority rent assistance, food stamps, counting the four quarters of every dollar, wearing the same clothes on most days, always having old shoes from discount stores, and not having any educational supplies or resources to help me at the apartment, were all commonplace and always needed. I was physically hit at home, physically hit by bullies at school, and singled out by kids for things like the toxic parental unit not helping me with personal hygiene products like antiperspirants. In junior high school and senior high school, I was constantly bullied due to my low SES and my impoverished class standing. I was ostracized, made fun of, picked on for always being the tallest student in my classes, bullied for not having newer-looking clothes, newer-looking shoes, and for not having the latest sports jerseys of professional sports stars.

IDENTITY FACTORS: when it comes to socio-economic status and other life circumstances, I have been continually isolated, ostracized, and excluded. I have never had a circle of friends, nor a large circle of friends, and no support systems from blood relatives or classmates in school. Out of necessity, I took on the role of the outsider and ended up living a nomadic journey, unable to find trust wherever I went. I traveled across the country when I was eleven with the since-deceased grandfather, and across the country alone for participating in basketball camps between ages 19-20. For the basketball camps, I traveled solo from California to Kansas and back, and on separate occasions from California to both of the Carolinas and back. Between ages 24 and 26, I got married and divorced once- which took me from California to Arizona and back. I moved at one point solo from California to Seattle Washington, attempted to survive in Washington, and out of survival was forced to go back to California with the toxic parental unit. While being forced to live under the same roof as the toxic relative again, at age 30, I went back to junior college with the intent of finishing a physical education associate’s degree. I took finishing junior college seriously, and 2012 was the year I started to do better in school. Two years or so later, at age 33, I approached an academic counselor’s office asking about what associate degree I was closest to completing. Without knowing it ahead of time, I found out the academic counselor I was asking about completing a degree with- surprised me that he also worked with a transfer achievement program (TAP) at the junior college. Mr. Pablo Diaz is the name of a counselor that works with the TAP program at Santa Barbara City College in southern California, located about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. During the 2014-2015 academic year, Mr. Diaz explained to me what courses I would need to pass during the spring semester of 2015. He indicated transfer requirements for math (Elementary Statistics Math 117) and for English (English 110-120 which was three credits plus a one-credit research module), and two separate three-unit History courses, would enable me to transfer to a four-year university as a History major. In conjunction with agreeing to these transfer courses for History, I was also trying really hard to complete the courses for the Physical Education associate degree I still wanted. I graduated with a “History for Transfer” associate degree, had been accepted to Humboldt State University, and I also came up short in regards to the physical education associate degree. I eventually ended up completing science courses at Humboldt State that transferred back to SBCC for awarding me the physical education associate degree. My identity became that of a survivor of extensive traumatic abuse that traveled looking for safety, security, and any sort of satisfaction or success I could achieve- or that I could even accept as valid. I am still a “work-in-progress.” To this day I am still engaged in “survival mode,” and the neglect and abuse, if as an entity personified, keeps sitting on my shoulder and telling me I will never be good enough.

CHALLENGES DURING WORK AS A TEACHER: For my students, I will look to boost, increase, provide, and seek additional resources for my students when I am unable to provide them. Due to having this mindset, I will over-stretch and spread myself thin. In my mission to give my students everything I did not have supports and resources-wise, I could exhaust myself. Explaining to students the utility of enlisting help and support from extended family members is important, and I will have challenges getting students on board with this. Office hours and academic support outside of class times are going to be necessary to help students get what I did not get. However, I must also be vigilant about protecting my own health, as office hours and outside health will also contribute to exhaustion. Another challenge as a teacher is going to be teaching, training, and advocating for positive and healthy ways to accomplish escapism from difficult life events and stressors. No one helping me or cheering me on at home regarding my education and development put all of the responsibility on me from a very young age. I was forced to grow up extremely quickly because of having no one in my corner. The challenge in helping students is going to be helping them develop independence and their own independent thought, while also being there to support them when they need it. Teachers can not do the work assignments for the students, and balancing that line is going to be difficult. As teachers and administrators, we also need to develop a newer curriculum, integrated with newer student performance monitoring methods. It is important to extend the training of teacher candidates so they can recognize, remediate, and refer sooner in the academic careers of students who are having and-or presenting with academic difficulties. A challenge as a teacher is being in the shoes of the adult this time around, and it is going to be important to decide how much to push energy-wise and when to push. A big and daunting task as a teacher is to come to peace with the fact that we will not be able to save every single student we come across. The personal experience of mine as a student in high school- and staring down from a stage at the senior class I was supposed to walk with- is something I would not want any of my students to have to go through. As a teacher, I know that helping low-income students is going to be limited by my own salary, the supplies the school has on hand for teachers to use, and that referring students and families towards resources in the community is going to be as far as I can take things in most cases. Personally being bullied in school on a regular basis for old clothes, same clothes, old shoes, lack of hygiene products at the start of puberty, and being picked on for my impoverished class standing, really opened my eyes to that teachers also have the challenge of guiding and coaching students through unfair, unjust, and un-called-for treatment from peers of similar age. Parents divorcing continues to happen to so many students and to so many families, and teachers have the challenge of resisting the feeling to attempt to fill a void for their students. Teachers have the challenge of grading fairly and with impartiality, even if there is awareness of difficult home life due to toxic or abusive relatives and housemates. Being told every day, multiple times per day, that “everything you [I] did was wrong, that is not good enough, you’re a quitter, and you will never amount to anything,” wore me down, and damaged me personally. Having “never good enough” engrained in my brain and my long-term memory will become a challenge while teaching my own students. I will consciously have to remind myself that I will not be able to hold students in my classes and my gymnasiums accountable for sky-high unrealistic expectations that no one can really ever meet. An enormous challenge for teaching will also be communicating an understanding of the mindset of “appreciating getting simple things,” and being aware that there are other mindsets about life that students will have. I had and continue to have someone keep a tally of things they paid for that I needed when I was younger. “You owe me this amount of money,” and “you owe me for everything I buy,” is something I heard all the way up from age nine onward. As an adult who is navigating through my own childhood abuse and trauma, I have a first-hand account of the short-term and long-term damage things said and done at home does, and of what the absence of positive supports from parents does to students and the after-effects that stay with them for life. My own personal identity is simultaneously a challenge and an asset for teaching my own classes of students. Due to socioeconomic status, I have been regularly bullied, isolated, ostracized, and excluded. Simultaneously being abused and manipulated at home, while being bullied and excluded at schools, led to never having support circles of friends or having any support systems from relatives. As a teacher, it is going to be a challenging task to make sure that I am helping everyone equitably and equally without showing favoritism. Personally, I had no one advocating for my education- I was alone at home and alone at schools. I had to find the energy and find the willpower to continue trudging along without needed school supports until I hit age thirty. In essence, I feel I “lost” twelve years of ground that I could have used to further my education and to get closer to my own dreams, because of my own traumatic childhood abuse. As a teacher, the challenge in my career and in life will be to figure out positive ways to help students comprehend and accept that every human being works on their own clock, on their own time. I am guilty of comparing myself to everyone else I see being successful in the fields I want to pursue. As a teacher, I plan to help combat unhealthy comparing of self to others- and to foster pride in students when they develop their own positive paths in life and go after completing their school, career, and life goals.