I write about what I experience which means sharing about navigating my way through the last couple of years in my twenties as an ever evolving dope black woman who is married and making traction in her career.

Kids aren’t really a part of that equation.
Not ones of my own anyway.

Being a literacy coordinator means I get to engage with everyone else’s kids from 7am-5pm Monday through Friday.

If my teachers are the parents, I am the cool aunt.

The one who is constantly in your life, but rarely has to discipline you. The one who buys you all the cool stuff your mom can’t/won’t because she’s busy making sure you are clothed, fed, and have a roof over your head. (And by buying cool stuff in this metaphor, I really mean letting kids borrow great books to read).

Yup, that’s me.
And I’m not mad about it in the least.
In this moment, my life is extremely full without children because I spend my days with them.

And I know when the time is right, God will expand the fullness of our hearts and lives with children we can’t give back at dismissal.

But lately, work has made me reflect on some of the decisions Shamar and I will have to make one day about our children and their educational experience.

And it has reminded me that while children are one of God’s greatest gifts, this world has placed a great cost to parenting, teaching, and learning while Black.

Learning While Black:

From kindergarten to fourth grade I was the only.
The only black kid in my class.
The only black person in my grade.

From fifth grade to ninth grade I was one of the few.
One of a few black girls in my grade.
One of the few black students in the honors classes.
One of a few black friends in my social circle.

Then came tenth grade and a transition to a new school. My life went from being the only or one of the few to being in a school with shades of brown from every inhabitable continent. Black kids from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Dade, Duvall, and every place in between.

I walked through a cafeteria where there were more languages spoken than soda flavors.

And then came college, where all the other black kids who were made fun of because of high SAT scores and noun verb agreement but could still rap every Plies song found each other and were like:

And then became a forever tribe (do yall see all this melanated excellence?!):

My students are living a complete 180 of the educational experience I had.

Teaching While Black

My kids have spent more of their k-8 experience than not surrounded by black teachers and black classmates who have nurtured and appreciated their blackness. And when that blackness was mocked or scoffed at, us adults decide to show kids just how beautiful they are and where those damaging and unoriginal ideas come from. We teach them the dog whistles they should listen out for, comfort them when they hear them, and celebrate them in ways that no one can do but black folks.

And now, my babies are getting ready to graduate from our unapologetically, overwhelmingly black safe space and begin their lives at boarding and day schools that look very different from what they’re used to.

And I wish I could say that I have faith in the world my kids are going out into. I wish I could say that children with very different upbringings and skin tones won’t subject my students to the same jokes, names, and looks that I was subjected to as “the only” or “one of the few”.

But being called a nigger once is enough to keep you from being a fool.

Looking at articles like this one where a white college student poisoned her black roommate terrifies me…and while these children are not my flesh and blood, I would fight a war for them.

And I can’t protect them after this year.

So I’ve started having lunch with my kids. Taking their orders for something off campus, ordering it, and asking them to meet me in my office to talk to me about their thoughts about these incredible and different educational opportunities they will soon begin to journey into. And as they talk and I listen, without fail they always bring up the apprehension they feel about becoming “the only” or “one of the few”.

And my beautiful friends, coworkers, and colleagues with beautiful black children are having to grapple with this reality in a way that has impact beyond just their homes.

Parenting While Black

I didn’t realize how many staff members have children starting kindergarten within the organization I work.

And most of these staff members want their kids to attend our schools.

This decision is the ultimate “educator smell test”. That real honest, real private gut check that asks you as an educator to evaluate whether or not you would send your child to the school at which you teach.

And if I’m truly honest, if the only thing I had to consider was the academic program within our network of schools, my answer would be no.

There are schools with academic programs with which I more closely identify with when it comes to the way I would want our children to learn.

But as I listen to my friends, mentors, and colleagues all in a season of choosing schools for the most precious little people in their lives I hear:

“While the academics concern me, I know that we will continue to pour into him at home. We work with him every single night, it’s what we do. I can guarantee he will continue to be advanced intellectually. What I cannot guarantee is that he will be seen and loved  in part because of his blackness at any other school.”

And some of my friends have already found opportunities for their children to flourish in spaces that celebrate their blackness. Dance classes that are lead by black women for young black girls matched with gymnastics classes with young girls from all backgrounds are one way a sweet friend has begun to navigate this dynamic.

She knows that later in her life, this foundation will set her daughter up for success, when she is sent to a school with even more academic opportunities, but perhaps lesser cultural ones.

The reality is also by choosing to educate, counsel, and coach other people’s children, we said “no” to job opportunities that would make it economically feasible to pay $18,000 or more for a year of kindergarten tuition.

We make too much to qualify for financial aid, but not enough that our kids wouldn’t need it.

Some colleagues with partners who work more lucrative jobs are able to still swing this…but y’all. Shamar and I are both in education. And while I’m not out here trying to paint an unrealistic picture of us warming up cans of beans for dinner each night, $162,000 in tuition BEFORE high school just aint it for us–unless God has an outrageous part of the plan I just can’t see yet (and my God is faithful so he just might ::starts to shout::).

I don’t have the answers to these struggles.

I’m not even in a place where I have to figure them out myself yet.
But what I do know, is as I share my current and future seasons with you all, I know others are grappling with these same situations.

And you aren’t alone.

But if it’s out here, I’ve yet to find many places that will love and see my future children while also educating them excellently.

There’s magic in our musings (and our blackness),
Nicole