Author: Marlena Little

It has been almost 10 years since I became a teacher.  I didn’t have many expectations when I began. All I knew was that I wanted to provide the tools students needed to change their life because education had done just that for me.

A poor black girl from inner-city Chicago, I was bused to a gifted center from 3rd grade to 8th grade, where I was one of seven black kids in the entire grade. It was there I learned what I needed to excel, not just in the classroom but in life. Even though we were in a gifted school with students from all over Chicago, we still took the state tests. I recall those being the worst days of the school year.

It’s true that our perceptions are a collection of experiences lived through our concepts of reality.  What we “see” can vary from person to person, even in the same family. Perception is the reason why two siblings can have the same parents but have very different experiences. Perceptions are also the lenses in which we see others and how we treat them. Saying that, I wrote a short letter to white teachers who work in “the hood”.

Being a mother of a Black pre-teen is more than a notion. In wanting to validate the greatness within my daughter, and even in others, I have often said the phrase “Black Girl Magic.”

I’m tired of people throwing stones and then hiding their hands. Especially white people.

Yep, I said it!

BBQ Becky. Rosanne Barr and now Permit Patty.

Honestly, education wasn’t my first career.

It was 2007 and I was 7 months pregnant with my now 10-year old daughter. Hustling, walking and grinding as a realtor didn’t seem appealing anymore, especially with an infant. I wondered, “What could I do to have summers off with my daughter as she grew up?”