2. Read Aloud and Active Engagement
We sat in the meeting area, the students on the linoleum and me on a child’s chair up front. “How many of you know who Christopher Columbus is?” I asked, holding a picture book.
“He discovered America,” five voices chirped in unison. The light from outside shone into the classroom, brightening the space. The students’ hair glowed in the light; it looked like each was crowned with a halo. I was so happy to be in front of the class.
Cardo, the smallest student in the class, wore a shirt with a parrot and “Puerto Rico” in red, white, and blue. He stood up and said, “He discovered Puerto Rico! That’s where my daddy comes from!” Shorter than the other six-year-olds, he sang as he spoke. Cardo, himself, was birdlike—delicate with a singsong voice.
“Well, there were already people here when he ‘discovered’ the Americas. Do you think that someone could ‘discover’ something when there is already someone who lives there?” I asked. The students looked around at each other. “Today we are going to learn about Christopher Columbus by reading a book called Encounter by Jane Yolen.”
“Yay!” came a cheer from Nicole. This felt good, loosening the knot in my stomach on my first day of teaching. I was flitting about, not sure if I would make it. One student had already pissed himself. I felt as though I might do the same.
“Let’s sit crisscross applesauce and fold our hands in our laps,” I said as though I were leading a guided meditation. “Let’s look at the picture on the cover. What do you see?”
“A man and a boy.” Amanda was very bright with her dark Dominican curls and wide eyes.
“Yes, and what is the man doing?”
Amanda now got to her knees and didn’t bother raising her hand. “It’s a man who looks like he is mean in a big hat and the boy is half-naked and he wants to hug the man.”
“Very good, Amanda! Can you show me how we are supposed to sit in the meeting area? How do you think the boy is feeling?” I wanted to see what others thought, too. “Victor?”
“He is feeling happy. When my dad comes home, I like to hug him,” Victor was a skinny child with swagger.
“Well, let’s see what the boy is feeling as we read the book,” I began as I opened the picture book and began to read. It concerned Christopher Columbus first arriving in Guanahani—the island where the little boy lives. Everyone in his tribe is happy to greet Columbus, but this little boy dreams that his zemi tells him to beware. He soon learns that Christopher Columbus is a gold-hungry demon and he kidnaps the boy to go back with him to Spain. The boy escapes from the boat by jumping overboard and goes to other islands to warn Native groups that invaders are coming and that they should be on guard against their deceit and greed.
The wide eyes of the twelve second-graders were sparkling planets. I could see the cognitive dissonance fogging the room. I wondered, Am I going overboard? Can these kids handle this truth? I was afraid of what the students’ parents would say about their new teacher. I had pulled these students out of their former classrooms where they were taught by middle-aged straight women and they were now in mine—a brown queer teaching radical history in ESL class.
“Okay, please turn to your partners and talk about this book: what happened? How do you think the boy feels about Columbus after reading it?” The students each sat next to someone who would become their reading workshop partner. I counted out three minutes, watching the clock and overhearing snippets of conversation.
“… mean and evil … scare … monster … brown … Puerto Rico …” Good, I thought, they are making connections between colonization and their own histories.
“One two three all eyes on me,” I said.
“One two three all eyes on me,” the students chanted in unison.
“Nicole and Natalia, what do you think the boy is feeling in the picture?” I asked.
“He is feeling sad because Columbus stole his family away and he will never see them again and he wanted gold and hurt the people,” Natalia’s voice quivered, brown pigtails bouncing as she moved her head. Her hands motioned as she spoke, flapping like a fledgling testing out her wings. I felt pride tightening in my throat.
“Yes, very good—”
“My daddy is from Puerto Rico and says that Columbus came to our home,” Cardo interrupted.
My heart sank like a ship. Was I doing something wrong by teaching this boy whose last name was Colón—Columbus’ Spanish name—that this “explorer” was evil?
“What do you think the boy is feeling, Cardo?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from a brewing maelstrom. Did Cardo’s family identify as Spaniards who happen to live in Puerto Rico?
Cardo put his forefinger to his chin. He was the fairest student in the class—most other teachers read him as white. The teacher in the classroom next to mine commented on him in the morning: “He’s so handsome,” she said as she greeted her students into the classroom.
Cardo looked at me and said, “I think he is scared. But my daddy says that Puerto Rico people are nice, and he doesn’t understand why people are so scared of him.” He got to his feet and approached the picture book. “He also said that Puerto Rico is not bad, but this book makes it look bad.”
I had to say something. I looked at my hands. I knew what it was like to be profiled for how I looked—understood as a threat for no reason and unable to change it. I looked into his brown eyes. Maybe Cardo’s father had been racially profiled in the city and communicated his frustration to his son. “Sometimes people like Christopher Columbus do bad things, but that doesn’t mean that in Puerto Rico people are bad.”
“But why are you saying that he was a monster?” Cardo was clearly distressed. I hadn’t told them about Christopher Columbus’s blood-thirst: the way he chopped off brown hands from brown bodies if they didn’t bring him enough gold.
I thought back to when I flew to New York City as I left Orlando International Airport—how the TSA agent relished patting me down, placing his fingers in my underwear band, questioning me about my carry-on luggage that held a laptop and a few books on radical pedagogy. When I landed, I found the official slips in my luggage that told me that airport security had rifled through my bags. They’d seen my last name and read me as a threat of terror. The agent searched me because he saw my skin. I wanted to affirm Cardo, to tell him that he was beautiful—not for his fair skin but for something deeper—and so was his father, and it was the American imperialism, the social realities that were distorted, messed up, and evil. I didn’t know yet how to translate this into language a second-grader would understand.
“Your dad sounds like a very smart man.” I looked at the clock. We had to move on. Reading workshop was almost done. The principal wandered the halls making sure that all the teachers in the grade were moving at the same pace to the next lessons for the day. I looked at the class and asked, “Would you want to celebrate a man like Columbus?”
3. Student Practice
Part of the writing lesson was to make protest signs against celebrating Columbus Day. I came to school prepared with ten packets of markers, poster board, and sentence strips for the students to write their slogans on.
“Today we are going to make posters about Christopher Columbus based on Jane Yolen’s book Encounter. What words do you want to write? Tell me so I can write them on the board.” I picked up a piece of chalk.
“Evil,” came one voice. “Monster,” cried another. “Guanahani,” “Columbus,” and “Taíno” were words that the students called out. I wrote them all, excited by the sound of chalk on a fresh board: new knowledge on a young mind.
I split up the class in mixed writing and reading levels and had them come up with a slogan and write it on their sentence strips. Some students wrote Columbus this is NOT your land! or Columbus was greedy for gold and Celebrate Taíno memory not Columbus’s greed, asking for my help spelling words that I did not have written on the board. My heart sang like a parrot freed from its cage.
/> “Now on your poster boards please illustrate parts of the book that you liked,” I instructed. Cardo drew a picture of the zemi, the Taino god; Nicole’s group drew Columbus’s ship that landed in Guanahani. Natalia drew a picture of a gold sovereign with the scene of Columbus’s men behind it. I was surprised, as I floated about, that these students were talking about the story.
When they were done, I called the students to gather back at the meeting area. We needed to review our work and practice retelling the story. I took out chart paper as the students obediently crossed their legs, their marker-colored hands folded in their laps.
“Let’s tell the story of Encounter,” I said, “but let’s tell it in ten syllables,” I repeated, clapping with every beat. The students had practiced phonemic awareness with their previous teacher.
Cardo called out, “Do not welcome them, my dream’s a warning.” He was a poet, composing so quickly. I wrote in blue marker on the chart paper.
“Very good.” I looked around. “The next line should be six syllables,” I said. “Turn to your partner and come up with a line.”
Amanda raised her hand. “They want to steal our spice, they want all of our gold.”
“Very good, Amanda,” I said as I wrote They want spice, they want gold on the paper. “I’ve changed what you said but only a little. Is this okay?”
Amanda looked at me, pleased with herself and nodded. The lesson continued until I elicited responses from the students. I wrote down the words:
Do not welcome them, my dream’s a warning.
They want spice. They want gold.
Christopher Columbus
Enslaved the Taínos
and stole their land, stole their land.
When I told the students that they could sing this song to the tune of “Frère Jacques” they gasped in excitement.
4. Share Out
“Now,” I said with a full grin, “it’s time to go and let everyone know what we’ve done.”
The students lined up and marched down the hall into the main office holding their signs high in the air, singing the song that we had written based on the summary of Encounter. We took over the main office and interrupted classrooms along the way, stopping in to sing our song and to share our signs. The students taught the other teachers and the other students in various grades the story of Christopher Columbus and why we shouldn’t be celebrating Columbus Day—that instead we should celebrate Taíno heritage and memory. Columbus Day was fast approaching, and the students didn’t want any part of it. This is critical pedagogy, I thought, satisfied with myself.
5. Reflection
The next night was parent-teacher night. I learned phrases in Spanish like Tu hija se comporta bien en la clase; tu hijo necesita practicar de lectura. I wanted the parents to trust me, to see me as an ally in their student’s education in a racist system. I dressed up for the event in khaki pants, Timberland boots, a gray button-up shirt with a yellow paisley tie. I wanted to look a little older than twenty-five.
It was strange being at school at night. No light crept past the bars and into the windows. The classroom was illuminated only by the fluorescent lights that hummed their halogen glow overhead. Cardo ran into the classroom. “Mister Javier?” A deep voice boomed behind him. Cardo sat in the meeting area and picked out a book about the parrots of Brooklyn to read.
“Mister Colón,” I held out my hand to shake his. He grabbed my hand and nodded slightly without a smile. He was a broad man with a full head of brown hair, his skin as fair as Cardo’s. He was striking and attractive. I felt a little giddy. I wanted to seem trustworthy. I wondered if he read my queerness. I had worried about this for a while—what would the parents think if they met me and were disappointed, not wanting their students to be in my class?
I directed Mr. Colón to sit in a chair where the students sat. I sat opposite of him with a notepad and pen ready to take notes on anything he wanted me to find out for him.
“Mister Javier,” he began. “Is that your name? You Dominican?” His strong jawline and lips did not betray his thoughts.
“Oh, it’s actually Mohabir. My family is South Asian and not Dominican. But in fact, my parents and grandparents are from South America.”
He let out a humph and folded his arms across his chest. I looked out the window. There were no birds, only bars. The streetlights bled their jaundiced yellow onto the pavement. “You’re the one teaching my child about Christopher Columbus?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows.
My heart beat out of my chest. My mouth dried and my palms sweat. My leg started to shake. Maybe my leftist politics and penchant for critical pedagogy seemed extreme. I mean, what second-grader is ready to hear the story of the destructive hurricane that Columbus and the Europeans brought into this hemisphere?
I took a deep breath. I had to tell him my plans for this class; he would find out anyway. I planted my feet on the ground and blurted out, “Yes, I taught Cardo about Christopher Columbus. It’s part of a larger unit where I trace the invasion of the Americas by the Europeans and end up looking at immigration in Brooklyn today. I want the students to understand the connections between anti-immigrant sentiments and an anti-Native feeling all over the country.”
Mr. Colón sat back in his chair. It creaked under his weight. He raised his eyebrows. I was sure that I had angered him. I was certain that he would demand that his son be sent back to Mrs. Rossi’s classroom where the students were writing thank you letters to Christopher Columbus for “discovering” America.
He motioned to the posters pinned to the chalkboard with dinosaur magnets. “Which one is Cardo’s?” he asked. I pointed to the zemi. “He’s been singing that song nonstop since yesterday,” he said as he relaxed his eyebrows and leaned forward in his chair.
“It’s based on the book Encounter by Jane Yolen,” I said, emphasizing that I was working from the state-approved curriculum.
Mr. Colón put his face in his hands. Was he crying? He took a deep breath. The lights flickered with a tinkle.
“Thank you so much Mister Javier for teaching my son my history,” he said, drawing back upright. There were tear streaks on his cheeks. “Since I moved to this country, I have had to forget so much of where I’m from. I am worried that Cardo would not learn about where he’s from, about his people. Even though there are no Taíno people around anymore, I have Taíno blood—we all do who come from Puerto Rico. The Taíno didn’t disappear, they are us. We live in cages here in New York. We are no longer allowed to be free.”
My arms were stiff. Was he really thanking me for teaching his son this history? It never occurred to me that there would be parents who would feel affirmed by what we did in our second-grade classroom. But it made sense. So many of my students were Mexican or from the Caribbean—so many had indigenous lineage. Traditionally the American school was the place that sought to un-Indian the Indian. I wondered about how many parents must have feared that in order for their children to succeed in school that they would be forced to abandon their identities as Native.
I looked at Mr. Colón and then at Cardo sitting in the meeting area by himself. Were my parents afraid like this for me when my brother, my sister, and I went to school? Was this why they didn’t want us to speak Creole? Was this why they had resisted learning Guyanese Bhojpuri from their parents? Were their parents afraid, too?
Mr. Colón looked like he could have been my age. I wanted to reach across the table and give him a hug and tell him that I understood what he was saying and promise to do my best to teach honestly and reflectively. I wanted to assure him that my classroom was a safe space. I wanted to give him back his wings so he could fly. I reached out and placed my hand on Mr. Colón’s shoulder.
Islamophobic Misreadings: Some Queens Definitions
Islamophobia - (n) from:
Islam – Arabic: surrender to the will of God
Phobia – Greek: an irrational fear
Islamophobia is the irrational fear, prejudice against,
hatred for Islam or Muslims: a contemptuous way of viewing Islam or Muslims that existed before the crusades, endured past World War II, and was reimagined in country songs after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001.
Misreading – (n) from:
Mis – Old French: prefix to denote wrongness
Reading – Old English rædan: to advise or interpret
Misreading is the basing of judgement of a person on preconceived notions: literally to read incorrectly: a way of racially profiling brown bodies.
Islamophobic Misreading is when a parent of one of your former students approaches you outside the schoolyard and emulates their version of what Arabic sounds like and talks to you in Ecuadorian Spanish saying, “Mahalahama, pareces uno de los hombres del once de Septiembre que atacaron las torres.”
She laughs and tells your friend standing next to you not to translate. She continues, “Para esto tu ves gordo.”
You catch gordo and you ask your friend to translate.
She says, “Some people are so ignorant. She said that you look like one of the bombers from September eleventh and she asked me not to tell you.”
You say, “And she called me fat.”
Islamophobic Misreading is outside on the cul-de-sac in Chuluota. The white neighbor woman asks your sister, “What will God think about a brown girl with Islamic writing on her arm?”
Your sister replies, “First of all there is no such thing as Islamic writing, and this is Hindi. And I’m pretty sure that God loves this little brown girl with or without tattoos.”
Islamophobic Misreading is a Facebook post on a photo of you with a beard.
Comments from a high school classmate: Wow! That beard puts the Arabs to shame over here. R … You remind me of a character from a movie. It might be Aladdin or another Disney movie. That facial expression is hilarious. I can’t place it yet, but it will come to me.
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