Reading, writing and arithmetic ain’t what it used to be a decade ago—or even a few months ago. There are an overwhelming number of issues that students, educators and parents are facing.

The Doe unpacks education in as complicated an era as any. And if you’re reading this while you’re supposed to be remote learning, you can close your browser window. We’ll still be here when class is over.

From college scandals to homeschooling to public school issues, read anonymous narratives and real stories from verified writers at The Doe.

Education Narratives by Anonymous Writers - The Doe

Reading, writing and arithmetic ain’t what it used to be a decade ago—or even a few months ago.

Education

High school is the milestone of a teenager’s life: the adventures, the classmates, homecoming, prom, football games, all that. But the experience is different from those of us who don’t blend into the all-white crowds at schools like mine. Students with perfect white skin will never know what it’s like to be the only brown person in the packed bleachers of a football game. They won’t know what it’s like being the only Hispanic in a class of 30 students. They’ll never feel the anxiety of having to pick and choose what they should and shouldn’t talk about in front of a room of white students for fear of being judged. 

I’ve sat in classrooms with my hand raised, but I always seemed to blend into the background. I never heard my name being called. It was always someone with a bright white hand. Now, I’ve been called on. It’s my turn to speak. It’s my brown hands that are writing. I’m no longer “the Mexican girl" in the back of a classroom. I’m just a girl, and I’ve made my way up to the front.

The first day of school is always nerve-wracking. It’s a new year, a clean slate and you never know what to expect. The only thing I can be sure of is that there won’t be many other people who look like me. My school is predominantly white. Every year I walk in assuming I’ll be the only Hispanic there. If I’m lucky I’ll be one of three. This is the image to keep in your head: 30 students, one classroom and a girl who looks nothing like everyone else. 

The beginning of the school year always includes a period of getting to know our classmates and learning everyone's names. For me, it always goes one of two ways. I might go in and say my Spanish name as my classmates stare at me, then at each other. Or they’ll ignore me and not bother to try to remember my name or face. Either way, I’ll have to hear my name constantly mispronounced, even when I’ve said it correctly day after day. 

Sophomore year: My first period was geometry. It was good. I considered myself lucky because there were two Hispanics including myself. My teacher was nice. I was happy. 

Second period came and again I felt lucky because I was one of three Hispanics. I love English: It's where I do what I enjoy the most, which is writing, even though it’s also the scariest, because we’re required to share our writing with the whole class.

Classroom 642, where I had history in the fourth period, is where everything went downhill. For me, history is the most daunting class after English. This time I was the only Hispanic in the room. As an icebreaker exercise the teacher assigned us partners to exchange information about our lives, and then we’d go around and introduce each other. I mentioned to my partner that I’m Mexican-American and that’s how he decided to introduce me: He stood up and said, “This is the Mexican girl.” 

Everyone stared, giggled and whispered to one another. I, on the other hand, felt embarrassed. I put my head down on my desk and felt a tear fall onto its surface. I felt disrespected. Walking into that class as the only Hispanic was already hard enough. My partner’s introduction just made it worse. 

I wasn’t embarrassed about people knowing my ethnicity, because that’s the thing about me that I'm most proud of. I was embarrassed by the fact that out of everything I told my partner, this is what he remembered. This is how he wanted to introduce me. Even if he didn’t mean to, it doesn’t change the fact that he hurt me. I’ll never forget it.

Every year I try to walk into school with an open mind, but it really is difficult. Not everyone likes having to share a room with a “Mexican girl,” let alone becoming friends with one. Believe me when I say it’s hard to make friends with a white boy or girl when you are clearly not one yourself. We don’t share the same lifestyle, and half my history is different from theirs. 

Some white students would talk to me in class, but outside of it, when they were around their friends, I couldn’t even get a smile back from them. I guess it’s only okay to talk to one of us Hispanics when we're reading Romeo and Juliet, but not when we’re doing something else.  

I’ve always believed that Hispanic students have to work twice as hard as white ones. For us, not everything is set. College isn’t always a choice on the table. It’s not something we feel promised. If we need scholarships, we have to look for them. We have to learn ourselves, because we aren’t every teacher's priority. We can’t ever forget that our white classmates come before us—they’re first and we’re second, always. That’s just what most teachers were taught to do. 

But we can’t complain, because at least we’re able to attend a predominantly white high school, right? At least we are getting not only an education but the school activities, right? 

The truth is, all school activities are run by white kids. Hispanics aren’t encouraged to be a part of them. I bet they don’t even notice if there are no brown kids on the bleachers at school games, or on the dance floor of homecoming and prom. All they care about is that their high school experience goes as planned.

After 13 years of school, speaking in front of my class frightens me. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t speak at all for the whole eight hours—not because I don’t have anything intelligent to say but because my white classmates don’t understand. They couldn’t care less what a “Mexican girl” has to say. 

I always have the same conversations with my teachers when it comes to presentations. They always say that it’ll get easier if I start doing it more, but will it? I’ve been told the same thing since third grade. I'm now a junior in high school and it’s still not easy. If I get up from my seat in the back and stand in front of the students with white skin, will I actually be talking to them? Will they actually listen and think about what I’m saying? Or will they go blind and deaf as soon as I step up there?

Here’s the thing: I can't blame my classmates for it. They have been trained to only look at what is white; the same thing goes for some teachers. To this day, I haven’t convinced my teachers to offer me alternatives to giving presentations. I always end up in front of the class anyhow. 

But every time before a project that involves speaking, I have to look hard at the topics and choose something that doesn’t involve much from me. I always pray that we aren't asked to speak about personal stories. I can’t simply go up there and start talking about my family’s history, or who they are and where they come from. Anything I say can be misunderstood. Anything I say can be used against me.

I wish it were different. I wish my Hispanic classmates could get as excited as my white classmates when big dates came around. I wish the whole school could enjoy our high school years as a united student body. I wish that when I opened my school yearbook I saw pictures of all kinds of students—not just the beautiful white ones but the ones with beautiful colors. But it’s still just a wish upon a star, one that hasn’t yet become true. 

Don’t be fooled by what schoolboards say. They like hearing the word “diversity” next to their school name, but don’t like actually showing diversity inside the school’s walls. The powers that be still don’t realize that it’s okay to look past the white hands raised in the front. If they did, teachers would call on us who sit in the back. If they knew true diversity, I wouldn’t be the only Hispanic in their classrooms. I would be more comfortable speaking to my white classmates without fearing their judgment. High school should be a place where we can all create memories, not develop fears. It should be the best four years for every student's life—even the ones who aren’t white.

Being a Brown Student Doesn’t Define Me

Right when life was starting to look up, a global pandemic decided to shit on the parade. But the parade hadn't even started yet.

For my entire educational life, I worked my ass off for a supposed “American rite of passage." Then, one day, it all came crashing down.

I couldn't savor the last three months of high school.

I have two immigrant parents, an autistic brother, and a try-hard persona that always gets the better of me. Ever since I could crawl, I was instilled with the goal of being number one. My dad would always tell me about his hopes and dreams.

“Ay princess,” he’d say, “One day we're going to have the cleanest lawn, and you’re going to help me.” Or sometimes the plan would be to start a band called Soldados de Cristo. He’s had a lot of dreams.

My dad’s a man of faith, so he always “left it up to God,” but I secretly felt that he had too many great ideas and not enough focus to ever accomplish one. So for the past four years, the pressure to actually accomplish one of my dad’s dreams of being number one has rested on my shoulders.

Don't even get me started with this whole, “Well, that's life—it's unfair and unpredictable,” or, “At least you're not dead." Because, trust me, I’ve heard it all.

Yes, I'm eternally grateful to be breathing another day, and I thank God daily for those blessings, but that doesn't mean my feelings toward losing everything I worked so hard for aren't valid.

I deserve to be sad, mad, furious, heated, pissed off and hurt.

I planned to start writing my speech in April, so that by June it would be perfect. I would open with a dumb joke or quote: "A great philosopher once said 'Started from the bottom and now we're here.’” People would laugh, or maybe just my friends, because they know who Drake is. I would recall the life-altering moments I’ve had with teachers and staff. I’d slip in a joke about how I won’t miss the school lunch, but I might miss the lunch ladies.

I would say something about how, traditionally, people say that life begins right after high school—but that I think this whole time I've been living, breathing, savoring, experiencing existence. Then I’d get all riled up and say that we beat the statistic, the one that says little brown kids won’t get further than their sophomore year of high school. Or won't make it to a four-year university. Or will get shot before turning 17.

I'd start to tear up as I ask my parents to stand in front of the crowd and just say, “Gracias por todo, te amo.” Lastly, I’d talk about all the amazing, crazy, cry-laughing moments I got to experience with such a spectacular group of human beings.

Then I’d throw my cap in the air and take in as much of the moment as I could: my friends and the look of adrenaline rushing through their bodies; families and the pure joy in their eyes; teachers and their smug look of, “Yeah I helped do that”; random uncles who probably can't wait to get drunk at the grad party.

I would have taken a mental picture—click—of the unforgettable moment of feeling like you accomplished a huge dream that’s not only yours but also your dad's, your mom’s, your grandma’s, your tia's: The feeling that you could take on the world.

All the "I would's” have turned into “I won’t’s” or “I can’t’s. I’m stuck in this endless cycle of pitiful self-loathing with no way out. I’m sorry mami, papi, tia, abuela, random uncle, beautiful brown kids—I wanted to do this for you. For us. And, most importantly, for me.

For the Class of 2020, this American rite of passage remains just this: an American dream.

It Was Only a Dream: My Valediction for the Class of 2020

When The Doe approached me to write this story, the founder told me he had approached others who had been wrapped up in the California admissions scandal. They declined. I didn’t ask why, because I know. I know what they’re going through.

We all wanted to get into great schools, we all felt the pressure to impress and we all live in the shadow of successful parents. I hope I do our stories justice.

I don’t want this to be a pity party. The majority of what I get are comments like: “You piece of shit” and “So, do you cheat on everything or just the SATs?” But, I don’t want your pity. That’s not why I’m doing this. I’m writing this to offer my perspective and, hopefully, help change a broken system. So that this doesn’t happen again. Because, as long as it’s important to go to a prestigious university, parents will do whatever they can to “buy” their kids in.

Until the hammer came down, things were going the way you would expect them to when you’re living in a state of ignorance. I didn’t realize my parents were pulling strings like a fucking puppet.

You spend years working hard in high school, working your ass off to make the grades, studying for the SAT, taking the standardized tests, applying to the schools, and, finally, after all the hard work, you’re rewarded by getting into your first-choice school.

I felt the excitement. All of my work had paid off. I earned this. I deserved this. Or so I thought.

It’s not a feeling you get to feel often when you’re born into a world of wealth. Anything you do tends to be dismissed given your high-achieving parents. Nobody would believe you accomplished anything on your own. Why would they? Stories like the scandal make it almost impossible to believe a rich kid could have merit of his or her own.

The exception to this tends to be college. Unless you’ve got your name on a building or you’re a legacy, you can’t buy your way in—not really anyhow. Or so we believed. So, when a year later, I found out I didn’t earn shit, I lost the one thing that was mine. The one thing that I believed I had actually worked hard for and earned. To make matters worse, my parents had gone around telling all of our friends and family how I did this on my own, how they didn’t get me a tutor, how they didn’t help with my applications: no SAT help, none of it.

I didn’t know. I didn’t plan to cheat the system with my parents. I didn’t know. To this day, I still don’t know how much my parents knew or when they found out that they had been caught. I assume they figured it would blow over or they could buy their way out of it because they didn’t let me know what was happening. It would’ve meant admitting that they had been lying to me the entire time.

Once the news broke, our first phone call went something like this: “Dad, what the fuck is happening? Is what they’re saying true?” His response was, “Let’s talk in person.” I can only assume it’s because he figured the phones were being tapped. So, when we got together, I was hoping for him to say it was all a misunderstanding and untrue. Not only was that obviously not true, but it was the day I realized my parents care more about themselves than me. And I won’t make you read to the end to tell you: My sentiments haven’t changed.

Why do I say this? Well, for starters, when we sat down to talk about it, a lawyer was present and my parents wouldn’t speak. The lawyer was the only one talking. And, as I write this, my parents won’t give me details. They say that if I want to ask questions I have to talk to the lawyer again. I was assured my parents love me but I didn’t get an apology for the lying. I didn’t get an apology for cheating. And I sure as hell didn’t get an apology for all of the mental struggles I’ve gone through. They knew how much I cared about going through this process on my own, without their help. 

The fallout mentally was worse than the fear of my parents going to prison, getting kicked out of school or the thought of never getting a job.

It was like that little devil from the cartoons on your shoulder telling you, "You're exactly what everyone else said you were: the rich kid who never worked for anything in his life. You think any of your friends would ever trust you again? You think a girl would ever love a cheater?”

Growing up in an affluent area isn’t like everyone thinks it is. Yes, we have the massive parties and the trips to the Bahamas (with the butler). But we have our own shit to navigate, too. There isn’t a healthy relationship for miles, the competition to be better than one another is cutthroat, your achievements aren’t respected because you had money behind them, and, worst of all, the rest of the world despises you for being rich. If you’re born into it, nothing you ever do will outshine your parents.

I feared that my parents were going to prison. I had two remaining friends. And, with that, I returned to college after spring break knowing the storm would be waiting for me.

People spit on me. They laughed at me as I walked around campus. They slid unimaginable threats under my door and, even, drawings of my family being abused. I had professors tell me they’d rather I not take their class: “I won’t call on you. You’re not welcome to my office hours, and your assessments will need to be privately supervised by me.” I took a two-hour test with a professor sitting directly in front of me as we looked face-to-face at one another. The campus library rejected me when I applied for a job because others refused to work with me. I had classes where students wouldn't work with me on group projects.

I dreamt of going to this school, and my parents knew that. They did what they could to help me reach my dreams—and while I’ll never forgive them for this—I, in part, understand why they did what they did. Those of us who go to college are quite lucky to be able to do so in the first place. But, we (and our parents) ended up doing senseless things to get into prestigious schools all for the purpose of a better—probably just wealthier—future.

So what I ask, and I don’t know that I’m in a place to ask anything, is this: If you’re a parent, don’t put these unattainable expectations on your kid. You could end up ruining his or her life. If you’re an employer, stop looking for name-brand schools. Pick people for their abilities, whether that’s an actual skill, someone’s personality or a capacity to learn on the job. Finally, to the universities: Your damn process needs to change. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it might start with actually considering applicants based on their inherent values.

Founder's Picks

Insiders

The College Admissions Scandal Ruined My Life

Unlike other minorities, who are heavily recruited and fawned over by campus administrators, my presence on campus is viewed very differently. People like me, you see, have been all but banished—our presence thought to be a cancer to the “inclusive” environment of higher education. After all, to be anything other than a political progressive on a modern college campus brings with it the risk of exposure and the penalty of ostracization—or worse, career death.

Not even the 1960s-style liberals are safe anymore. Their commitment to free speech and academic freedom having faltered under the “progressive” ideals of identity politics, mandated support for diversity agendas and a level of groupthink typically seen only in religious cults.

So, if those affable 1960s liberals and their quaint notions of freedom can be intimidated into silence, imagine what it’s like to be a political conservative—the arch-nemesis of progressives—working on a progressive campus.

My career started like most others who earn a doctorate in the social sciences and humanities. I took a job at a respectable state school and started learning the ins-and-outs of teaching, conducting research and campus politics. After lots of work and some success, I was lucky to be hired by a top social science program in the United States. Indeed, the first half of my career was hardly unusual. I taught my classes, published one paper after another and eventually was recognized as a serious scholar. I served on editorial boards of scientific journals, reviewed grants for various funding agencies and was invited to be on the boards of academic societies.

I was on an upward arc. I had friends and colleagues I liked. I attended parties, socials and meetings where we enjoyed each other’s company—laughed and told academic war stories. But I held a secret from them. After years as a political liberal, I doubted the route American liberalism was taking, broadly, but much more so on university campuses. I could no longer pretend that I supported the left’s headlong rush into identity politics, and I began to see more clearly how progressives had used the institution of science to push claims that were too often overstated or even fabricated. Thus, after much reading and soul searching, I reevaluated my views—finding them better aligned with classical liberalism and Burkean conservatism than the new dogma.

Then I made the mistake of letting people know.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Left-wing activism, sponsored by the growing presence of “grievance studies” programs and newly-minted diversity czars, realigned campus politics and class syllabi. The environment became increasingly policed by the new regressive left, many of whom exercised considerable campus power. Conservatives, classical liberals, libertarians and even other progressives became targets.

It was in this environment where the assault on Charles Murray occurred, where conservative voices were routinely attacked and silenced, and where anonymous complaints landed many in the crosshairs of Title IX inquisitors. Universities poured millions of dollars into rooting out academic deviants, often under the banner of preventing or responding to “bias”—and the regressive left was put in charge of the efforts.

Few really understand how well-policed modern campuses have become and how many faculty are fearful of saying anything that could bring them unwanted attention.

For me, the results were immediate. Almost overnight, offers to write and to conduct research evaporated. Most of my friends stopped talking to me. I was no longer invited out for drinks, or over to the homes of colleagues, or even greeted when I entered the office. My clout and intellectual legitimacy were gone, replaced by growing suspicion about my morals and my motives. Rumors swirled. Everything in my life, it seemed, was opened to scrutiny and reinterpretation.

Charges of being a racist came first, followed by other unseemly and patently hollow allegations. Students circulated a petition demanding my job. My graduate students were harassed and, eventually, none would work with me for fear they wouldn’t be employable when they graduated.

I’ve had students placed in my classes to act like snitches, been cursed at while attending professional meetings, been disinvited from giving talks at other universities and had a formal complaint lodged against me because of what someone at another university said to someone else about me. 

There is a price to pay for academic work that sometimes confronts progressive narratives, but that price pales in comparison to coming out as a scholar with politically right leanings. You see, I’m not for gun control, affirmative action, abortion or nationalized healthcare. That said, I’m also not opposed to reasonable efforts to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the seriously mentally ill, nor am I opposed to making every effort to ensure a diverse hiring pool is achieved. I don’t want abortion banned, just regulated, and I realize people need healthcare—I’m just not sure nationalization is the best route.

These views hardly qualify me as “right-wing,” except on campus, where dissent qualifies one to wear the label. Labels, too, matter. Every profession has its coded language—that is, words used that mean something very different to those inside the profession. For academics, calling someone “conservative” is tantamount to calling them a racist, sexist, homophobic and stupid—simultaneously.

It is a term of derision, contempt and mockery, the use of which is reserved for individuals and groups they hate. If “hate” sounds hyperbolic, I can assure you that hate is exactly the level of emotional intensity that typically accompanies use of the term. Quite literally, I’ve listened to colleagues openly proclaim their hatred of “conservatives,” often with the qualifier “fucking” used for emphasis. Never have I witnessed anyone correct them or dissent or even suggest that such comments might be unwelcome or unnecessarily abrasive.

Malice often slips into other academic areas, such as hiring. To be certain, I’ve never witnessed any direct exclusion of applicants based only on their politics. What I have witnessed are hiring committees examining the social media accounts of applicants to verify their race and gender, and to see if there are any indicators of political affiliation.

Belong to a group they don’t like—especially the NRA—and your chances drop considerably. Belonging to the ACLU won’t necessarily get you the job, but it certainly won’t disqualify you.

If discrimination is to be found, it comes by way of race and gender. Here, they no longer try to hide it. In open meetings, for example, it is not uncommon to hear colleagues defame white men or to push for hiring only blacks or women. Either way, they don’t define their actions as discriminatory, but as moral. This is one reason I’m convinced that most liberal faculty don’t see the biases that benefit only them and that harm others. When bias is seamless and unchecked, it is invisible.

I wish I could tell you that I was strong throughout all of this, but I wasn’t. I felt the cold sting of rejection, especially from those I once considered friends and colleagues. I felt helpless as my character was assailed by cowards who hide in the shadows casting aspersions, and I felt anger, followed by despair, knowing any protest would intensify their cruelty. I’ve felt alone and alienated from a career I once loved, but above all else, it has been the loneliness that has been most difficult to endure. Scholarship, for me, was also very social.

Despite my experiences, I still believe in the promise and mission of higher education. A healthy and vibrant university system is a net positive for any country, but especially for one that places so much weight on educational credentials and scientific knowledge. However, the long-term vibrancy of our system is no longer guaranteed: cracks in support are already showing. No institution, much less an educational institution, can survive when captured by partisan zealots. While political conservatives have already been marginalized or purged from most campuses, there is every indication the zealots have turned their eyes towards other liberal and progressive faculty who do not walk in lockstep. If you care about higher education, you should care that the necessary ingredients of freedom of thought, speech and dissent are waning under the corrosive agitation of progressive activism.

There are good people in academia, many of them, but the zealotry of charlatans creates awkward sets of incentives that silence the majority. Precious few are willing to risk their careers and reputations standing up for their beliefs. They go along because they are rightfully afraid they will become targets and that their lives and careers will be negatively affected. Why, after all, would professors, many of whom enjoy tenure protections, elect to remain silent? Because they have seen what happens to those who don’t.

Being a Conservative College Professor Makes Me Toxic

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

I was 8 years old when I had my first glimpse of the American dream. High School Musical aired on the Disney Channel for the first time in Latin America in 2006. The combination of music, Gabriella and Troy’s love story and the showcasing of life of students in a developed country marked me. The musical became a safe haven that projected my ideal life as a young woman and as a student. I learned the choreography, the songs and dialogue. For some people, exercise puts them in a good mood; for me, the musical worked in a similar way. I watched the movies often, as if it were my religion and my source of endorphins.

Back then, English was a strange language to my ears. The High School Musical soundtrack wasn’t dubbed into Spanish, so when I had to sing along, I wouldn’t feel super confident pronouncing, “We’re all in this together.” By the end of the movie, though, I knew I wanted to study in the United States, for three reasons: to speak English like in the songs, to have decent classrooms and to find myself a Troy Bolton.

Dreaming of high school in the U.S. wasn’t enough. Hollywood made me want to pursue higher education in America too. Having watched Legally Blonde and Accepted, I knew university in America would be more prestigious than in my home country. By the time High School Musical 2 was released the following year, I felt confident about my English proficiency. This time around, I challenged myself to watch the movie in English without subtitles. In my heart, I felt as if I was getting closer to making my dream come true. However, my high school graduation date was fast approaching, and I had yet to finalize any paperwork to transfer to the U.S. 

I thought that dream was over when my parents told me they could not afford an education in the U.S. After all, my parents' salaries were $1,000 a month, which did not even cover our expenses. And they didn’t want to send me on a tourist visa. As the oldest child, I have always had to give a good example and abide by the rules. I was not going to get a tourist visa that I would overstay. Neither did I continue asking for a dream that my parents couldn’t afford. In my heart, I felt as if higher education was my last opportunity to study abroad. Moreover, I had done plenty of research about scholarships for Latin American students. 

One TOEFL exam and over 20 scholarship applications later, I put my dream on pause. Every single scholarship application was rejected. I felt as if no one believed in my skills and goals. However, I got an admission letter from a local college that had some American professors on campus. It was not exactly my dream, but it was the closest thing. 

I met my college sweetheart at the beginning of my junior year—a not-so-tall Latin American guy who went to the gym more often than he went to class. I knew he was no Troy Bolton, but I felt in a rush to get over having the first boyfriend, as if it were a box I had to check off before graduation. Right before winter break, I saw a flyer hanging on the monthly bulletin that said, “Apply to study abroad in Florida.” I didn’t need to continue reading. I was sold on the headline alone. 

Three weeks later, I received an email from the provost of my university at home congratulating me on my application. A few tears dropped down my cheek as I read the letter of acceptance. In December, I packed my bags and flew to West Palm Beach. 

Almost 12 years after seeing my first American movie, I had finally made it to American soil as an exchange student. I was walking in the same hallways I had seen in movies. Everything from the cafeteria to the classrooms looked as marvelous as it did on-screen. I had the option to choose what I wanted to have for lunch: It could be a salad, a burger or both, because the cafeteria served buffet-style. Oh, Americans go big or don’t go at all. The amount of food served daily was insane. My school cafeteria could have fed a city back home. 

Three weeks into the spring semester, I had met eyes with an Australian who would later become my Troy Bolton. I had this weird connection whenever we crossed looks. One day, he sat down next to me at the cafe, and we quickly started chatting. After our conversation, I called my then-boyfriend who studied back home and broke up with him. I knew our relationship had been deteriorating, and distance was taking its toll on him. Plus, I was looking forward to further exploring my connection with the Australian student.

Life in America was not always as it was shown in the movies. For one, my roommates suffered from weird mood swings and craved drama 24/7. Drama was a trend that I dare say applied to all American students. Right before midterms, my roommate was tased in the mouth by her best friend. The police came to my campus multiple times. The normality of life is something that was impossible to not miss. At home, people were warmer, welcoming and good-hearted. If I could merge the hospitality of my people with the American facilities, real life would be like in High School Musical.

By the end of the semester, I had high grades, an American bank account, friends from all over the world and an Australian boyfriend. It had been the best six months I have ever lived thus far. I felt the urge to stay in West Palm Beach with the love of my life. For the first time, I developed the feeling of belonging to a magical place filled with love from those close to me. I could not believe my dream would only last six months. One semester was not enough. I longed for a lifetime. 

I wish I could live in the spring of 2017 forever. To this date, I still look back to that period of time that encompassed my happiest memories. I lived my own version of High School Musical, except my version was a college edition with a Spotify playlist entitled “West Palm Beach Feels,” featuring music by Lostboycrow and LANY. I became enamored with the city; for that reason, leaving was tough. My scholarship only covered a semester. I had to go back home and finish school there.

Although my body was physically in Latin America, a piece of me stayed in West Palm Beach. I graduated at home and maintained a four-year long-distance relationship. I revisited the city with my Australian boyfriend in 2020 before the pandemic hit. Needless to say, my love for the place was still intact. 

My American Dream Was College Life in the States

People love to hate teachers’ unions. “They protect lazy teachers! They don’t care about kids! They strike willy-nilly over minor issues, like teacher pay and safety. And when they’re on strike, who is going to teach the students?!”

That’s why, supposedly, charter schools are awesome; they’re not unionized, so teachers can’t strike. They have to be bright-eyed and put their bushy tails to the grindstone or they’re fired.

My daughter attended one of those utopian, under-unionized charter high schools, where the administration set the standard to flood every inch of the school with excellence. But by her senior year, the promise of excellence did not flood. In fact, it oozed like the brown gunk from the broken water fountains. And the only standards met were high levels of misery. With weak unions in place, the administration could do as they wished—ruining the academic year in their wake.

The charter school divided its day between academic and art instruction. Academic teachers were unionized, but arts instructors were not and were paid quite poorly. Turnover numbers were brutally high.

Nonetheless, the teachers were dedicated, and my daughter learned a lot in her art program. She also benefited from her teachers’ connections. With the help of her instructors, she was even awarded a prestigious grant to create art.

All the great things about her program were orchestrated by the department head, who was a beacon of light. She was supportive, kind, engaged, accessible and a tireless advocate. She pushed the reluctant administration to open gender-neutral bathrooms for trans kids. She encouraged students to write and perform material that resonated with them, even if it included the occasional curse word. She was adept and appreciated.

But midway through the year, the administration fired her. 

Why would they do that? We all wanted to know but, legally, they were not supposed to discuss it. One admin, however, tried to justify the situation to a bunch of angry parents. The best they could come up with was a vague explanation that the department head allowed the students too much creative freedom. How? She let them put on a performance that included a (pretend) exploding penis. 

My daughter saw the performance and thought it was pretty funny. The exploding penis didn’t frighten or offend her. Young, creative students at an arts high school should be allowed to talk and laugh about exploding penises! The administration thought differently. Creative input from students was a danger, they decided. 

When she was fired, morale sank—and then, it sank some more. Other teachers left. Replacements weren’t qualified to teach the classes. Classroom instruction ground to a halt. Whole days went by when my daughter sat in class with substitutes, doing nothing, learning nothing, watching her life drain away like the sludge from the water fountain (which the administration was also not fixing). 

Their abrupt decision to sack a beloved teacher and uproot an entire department was shocking. But if you are a person who has ever worked anywhere, it should have a familiar ring.

Authority figures in the workplace sometimes treat their staff with arbitrary, callous cruelty. They change things just to change things. They try to manage appearances in an effort to feel like they’re useful, even when putting their two cents in impedes the workflow. A work environment where those at the top can do whatever they want is often one where those at the top do a lot of egregiously foolish things.

Toxic workplaces are bad in and of themselves, but they’re even worse when they’re supposed to be safe and welcoming for students.

My daughter’s charter school is supposed to encourage kids to be creative and model respect for artists and art. Instead, in this last year, students saw every day that their art mentors were paid poorly, overworked and clearly disrespected. Their creativity and expertise were discounted and their ideas and input were trivialized. The administration couldn’t have made it clearer that they saw artists as a barrier and impediment to arts education.

There has been pushback at the school. Both parents and students were horrified. The administration, which somehow hadn’t anticipated retaliation for randomly firing one of the most-loved figures in the school, scrambled. Some key staff was forced out. Many promises were made to parents and students about improved accountability.

But the most important change was that the art teachers voted to unionize.

It’s unclear what will happen with the school going forward. Most of the administrators who ruined my daughter’s senior year are still in place. The teaching staff is still in chaos. Many of my daughters’ favorite instructors may not come back to the school. Rebuilding will probably take years, at least, and the department may well never be what it once was. 

But a union can at least force the administration to treat teachers with a modicum of respect. It can get better pay and reduce turnover. It can force the administration to be transparent in its hiring and firing decisions. It can create a more stable school environment.

Young people need to see that their ideas, their individuality and their labor are valued. Students don’t benefit when the people responsible for teaching them and mentoring them are treated like disposable cogs. A regimented environment, in which those at the top have absolute discretion and those at the bottom live in constant fear, doesn’t build character or creativity.

At the very least, teachers’ unions show students that workers can and should have power and dignity. The presence of a union is not enough in itself to create a strong, healthy school environment, but it's a start.

Teachers' Unions Are Necessary: What We Learned at My Daughter's Charter School After a Firing

“But you want to go to college, right?” I asked my daughter.

Somewhere, my ancestors quietly exploded in indignation. Ghostly fingers may have wagged. Ghostly harrumphs may have been harrumphed. 

Not all Jewish families are obsessed with education in a stereotypical Jewish manner, but mine certainly was. My maternal grandfather took advantage of the GI bill to study engineering and law and became a very successful patent attorney. My father’s family sent him to lots and lots of school, so he ended up with a history Ph.D. My generation was also expected to do lots of schooling and do it well. I was valedictorian of my high school class. My brother was “only” third in his year but went on to get a Ph.D. of his own, while I was a relatively disappointing grad school dropout (I got a master’s). My cousin is the one person in our immediate family not to finish college; she’s a successful television and film producer, and my parents haven’t really ever forgiven her.

Education; we were good at it. The ancestral ashes set up a ragged cheer at our accomplishments before going back to study for whatever degrees you can get when you’re dead.

At first, our daughter seemed to be well on her way to similar academic overachievement and ghostly accolades. She started reading in line with developmental milestones and didn’t stop. She blew through YA and science-fiction novels, declared Moby Dick her favorite book in middle school and, by high school, had moved on to light reading like Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies and Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions. She was so far ahead of her class in school that she barely needed to pay attention to get As and Bs. She told her AP Government teacher he was an ignorant stooge whenever he called on her. So he stopped calling on her.

You probably noticed that, somewhere in that paragraph, the educational march of progress went subtly awry.

Our daughter is thoroughly bored in school. So bored that being in school fills her with despair and misery. So bored that, in fact, she occasionally has literal panic attacks because she feels like her life is passing her by and that the teachers and administration are deliberately wasting her time. So bored that it’s almost impossible to get her up in the morning without the dire threat of her father coming downstairs and briefly existing in her room. (This is, apparently, a humiliation barely to be born.)  

That makes it sound like we’ve been fighting our daughter to get her to school. And certainly, there’s an impulse to do that. All those ancestors in general, and my parents in particular, have been telling me my whole life that school is the vital path to life success and virtue. You go to school; you do well in school; you go to more school and do well there; and then you come out with success and happiness. That’s how life is supposed to work. As a parent, therefore, your primary job is to get the kid in the classroom.

School is certainly important. Among other things, there are legal consequences if your child doesn’t show up. But your child’s mental and physical health is important, too. The isolation, fear and anxiety during the pandemic have made that clear, if we hadn’t been aware of it already.

Remote learning was a nightmare. Zoom classes badly exacerbated our daughter’s anxiety and dysphoria. This year, we kept our daughter home during the worst of the Omicron spike because we wanted to prevent her from getting sick, even though the government and school administration didn’t seem to care. And when she says she is so depressed she can’t face going into school, I tend to let her sleep in. I’d rather have a happy, healthy kid who isn’t at school than a miserable, anxious, depressed one sitting in class not learning anything useful about the U.S. government. 

We’re not fighting with our daughter to get her to school so much as we’re all trying to figure out a way to stagger over the finish line to graduation with as little damage to her mental health as possible. If that means missing a few days or coming in late or leaving early—well, you do what you have to.

“What you have to” may include not sending her to college if she doesn’t want to go to college. She’s a talented actor and playwright and has applied to a bunch of theater schools. But at this point, she’s so burned out and sick of the classroom that she’s not exactly looking forward to it. She’s got a number of opportunities lined up, so she’s going to take a gap year and see where her career goes.

When you do the normal, expected thing in line with your ancestor’s expectations, it’s nerve-racking to watch your child seriously contemplate going full artsy-fartsy. You think about all the opportunities she may miss out on without a college degree. Will she be able to get a job? What happens if, at some point, she wants to teach theater and doesn’t have the credentials? What happens if the theater career doesn’t work out?

But there are also options she’ll miss out on if she goes to school. And spending another four years in a classroom learning the ins and outs of misery doesn’t sound great either. Education should be a means to do what you want to do with your life, not a barrier to doing it. I know my grandfather would disapprove. I know my parents will be horrified (my wife laughed somewhat hysterically at what they’d say if our daughter tells them she’s not going to college). But not everyone wants to be a patent attorney. And what’s the point of learning and learning and learning if you never learn how to be happy?

I’m proud my daughter knows what she wants to do and what she doesn’t and isn’t afraid to tell us which is which. I just wish that having gotten what she has to get out of high school, she could stop. But that’s not how it works. A few more months to go before she’s free to defy the ancestors and their spectral grumbling and starts to live. And learn, too.

My Daughter Refuses to Go to School

I scrolled through the text messages, each one more explicit than the last, as my husband played computer games in his study next door. As married teachers, we often answered each other’s phones, looking for school emails or gossip. 

I can’t wait to hold you in my arms again.

The text messages were playful, detailing sexual acts and hinting at past escapades. Cutesy nicknames popped up among allusions to trysts and inside jokes. 

They were exactly the kind of messages my husband and I would send each other.

Except they weren’t between my husband and me. They were between my husband and an 18-year-old female student at the high school where he taught.

My heart thudded to a stop as I sat on the couch, gripping my husband’s phone. After a few minutes, the distant rumble of computer game gunfire drifting from his office stopped. My husband stepped out, smiled, then reached out to touch my cheek. I swatted his hand away and glared at him. His eyes met mine, then traveled to the phone in my hand. Understanding flashed across his face, followed by anger. Before I could speak, he grabbed his car keys from the table by the door, then stalked to the garage.

Two hours later, I heard the garage door open and his car pull in. The door connecting the garage to the house swung open. I waited in the bedroom, fists clenched at my side. 

“I know about her,” I snapped when he walked into the bedroom.

He denied it at first. But the proof blinked up at us both from the screen in my hand.

“You’re not dumb. I knew you’d find out eventually,” he finally said.

“I knew that’s what you'd be most upset about,” he said.

My husband’s affair began eight months after I became suddenly ill with a severe brain infection. Within a month, my mind devolved to the level of a small child’s. I couldn’t walk, dress myself, read anything longer than a sentence or have simple conversations. Delusions and psychosis sprang from my broken mind, twisting reality like images in a funhouse mirror.

It would be half a year before I finally shuffled to the living room couch after a month of trying every day for weeks. It would be eight months before my first solo drive to the pharmacy. It would be three years before the part of my brain that controlled memory and decision-making recovered enough to allow me to teach full-time or make life decisions. But in those first six months, I lay like a lump in bed, suspended between life and death.

By the time I discovered my husband’s infidelity, I'd been sick for eight months. I'd started relearning to walk. I could read and write short articles, and some of my memories had returned. But I struggled every day with severe depression and psychosis because of chemical changes in my brain. My mind hadn’t recovered from my illness, and I was gullible like a child. It wouldn't have been difficult for someone to convince me that mermaids existed or that pigs really could fly.

After I discovered the affair, my husband spoke to the girl privately. There would be no more sex, he told her. 

“But can I still see and talk to you?” he told me she had asked. She didn’t come from a family that supported her goals and ambitions. My husband helped her with her college applications and encouraged her to aim for a top-tier school. Years after my recovery, I would recognize his actions as “grooming,” or earning a child’s trust with the intent of abusing them. But at the time, I saw a lonely girl who needed adults who believed in her. I was determined that speaking unkind words to a teenager would not be one more unhinged behavior to remember when I healed and the psychosis subsided. 

The student spent the next three months in our hometown before leaving the state for college. When she asked to see my husband, I reluctantly accompanied him to restaurants or outdoor parks. The fatigue and pain of my illness confined me to bed for 12 hours or more each day and left me feeling as if I was wading through quicksand the other 12 hours. I couldn’t walk long distances without stopping to rest. “Brain burnout” left me tongue-tied and foggy after a few hours in the deafening sound and light of the world outside. Despite his promises and despite my best efforts to monitor them, my husband and his student always seemed to find opportunities to meet behind my back. I hated feeling like I was constantly babysitting a grown man.

My husband would continue texting this student suggestive messages, hooking up with her off-campus in his car and inviting her back to our house when he knew I wouldn’t be home. During this time, I frequently jerked awake in the middle of the night, picturing news crews trampling the grass on our front lawn. In nightmare after nightmare, he was fired and I lost my health insurance. When I woke up, the nightmare was still there waiting for me.

I confided in a friend, who called Child Protective Services anonymously. Citing no clear evidence of abuse, CPS declined to intervene. When my friend called the local police precinct, they gave a similar answer.

Over the next several months before the high school girl left for college, my husband’s behavior grew increasingly erratic and childlike. He began to come home from work with an expression I didn’t recognize on his face but grew to fear. I sat motionless on the couch as he screamed at me for “trying to control” him. He ripped the doors off the pantry, punched walls and slammed my set of weights into a wire shelf so hard that the metal twisted. On his 30th birthday, I lay in bed with a virus that my pulverized immune system couldn't fight off. My husband had caught the flu from the high school girl, then passed it on to me. Pain radiated throughout my body. I didn’t leave my bed for days, eating just a bag of figs because my husband often forgot to feed me. I genuinely thought I was going to die. My husband spent his birthday at a cafe with four of his high school students, including the girl, playing a card game called Dirty Minds. 

My husband didn’t argue when I demanded we go to marriage counseling. 

“He may not have hit you,” the marriage counselor said when I told her, “but you’re acting like a battered woman.” She suggested I pack up my things and leave—an impossible task I was not physically strong enough to do nor mentally capable of organizing. Her comments felt like a door closing between me and safety. I became even more determined to recover.

I don’t remember when I discovered my husband had used money from our joint account to purchase a plane ticket to visit the student, now a freshman at a college hundreds of miles away. I saw the excited text messages and string of emojis she sent him when he suggested the trip. I simply remember the jolt of electricity shooting through my veins, followed by the sudden realization that I would never be safe in this relationship.

A year and a half after I discovered my husband’s affair, I finally grew mentally and physically strong enough to leave him. I returned to a heavier work schedule when I was well enough, then moved into an apartment.

The student with whom my husband was involved, now suffering from depression, reported him to the school district. My ex was asked to resign and forfeit his teaching license. Had his victim not yet been 18, he would have gone to jail. 

For years after my separation from my husband, I struggled with depression and with my identity as an educator. Teachers are taught to sacrifice endlessly for our students. Almost all teachers buy classroom supplies with their own money and work far more hours than they're paid. Any teacher would step in front of a bullet for their students. I felt deep shame at not being able to protect the student my ex-husband hurt. Had I been healthy, leaving my husband and reporting him would have been a no-brainer. But trapped in a broken body and mind, even walking wasn't simple.

Most people never quite return to normal after brain injury. I still have trouble remembering dates and events from my life before my brain infection. The pain of not being able to stop my husband from hurting a student will be one more thing I’ll always struggle with.

Love

Health

Lessons in Betrayal: I Discovered My Husband’s Affair While I Was Recovering From a Brain Infection

Growing up, I was asthmatic, poorly dressed, scared of girls and obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons at a time and a place where that was not in any way a social boost. Still, even the saddest social disaster has dreams of becoming less disastrous. It didn’t really happen in my teens (because of the scared of girls thing). Nor did it happen in early adulthood, as my artistic efforts of various sorts failed to impress anyone in particular. But even so, I thought my time was coming. If I couldn’t be a cool kid, or a cool young man, maybe, just maybe, I could come into my own as a cool dad.

And I did! I am the cool dad. I am Crispin Glover at the end of Back to the Future, but cooler because that movie thought being rich is what makes you cool, and since we are not rich, we know that’s not true. 

There’s only one problem: Being a cool dad, it turns out, isn’t that cool. It’s kind of like being an uncool kid, in fact. You hang out over here, while over there someone has interesting parties to which you aren’t invited.

My wife and I ended up as the cool parents via a few easy steps. First, though our house is tiny, our daughter’s room in the basement is large, so there is space to entertain. Second, we somehow, through the miracle of genetic recombination, created a daughter who is, in fact, cool and magnetic and beloved by her peers. All the cool queer kids (of which there are many) want to be wherever she is.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, we’re very committed to allowing our daughter her own space and privacy. This practically means we’re not closely policing either romance or cannabis use. 

No doubt some (uncool!) parents will be shocked. (We can only speculate since we don’t hang out with uncool parents.) But in general, we figure that, especially for queer youth, encounters with the police are likely to be a lot more dangerous than encounters with a spliff. (My daughter was, in fact, the target of homophobic comments from police at least once.) It’s also easier to make sure everyone is vaccinated and tested if you’re holding a kickback at home than if you’re going out to bigger parties.

Along the same lines, sexual activity is probably safer in your own space where you can prepare than if you’re forced into inconvenient nooks and crannies and automobiles. When my daughter has a guest or guests, they know they’re safe while they’re here, and they know that they can get a ride home from me in a pinch. It’s safe. It’s the home of the cool parents. That’s us!

My daughter appreciates that her parents are cool. Her friends appreciate it too. Or so she tells us. We are dependent on her reports because we don’t have a lot of contact with her friends. Even when it’s just one or two guests, they don’t generally eat with us. Instead, my daughter surfaces like a skittish pizza badger, grabs the pizza and descends once more, amidst distant cries of “pizza!” We have been told the friends make much of the various fuzzy cats that visit. But again, this occurs out of sight, and the cats generally keep it to themselves, as cats will. 

There are a couple of cheerful, extroverted acquaintances who will chat at us if forced by circumstance. “Thank you for welcoming me to your home again!” one said with impressive courtesy. Then they were gone, not so much like a thief in the night as like a teen who doesn’t really want to talk to parents.

My daughter praised my musical taste when I was dropping a load of chattering punk musicians at various homes and public transport intersections after punk band practice. There was general acknowledgment that the Sinéad O’Connor album I was playing was OK. Maybe they all really liked the dad alternapop. Maybe they were just making fun of me. Maybe they were humoring my daughter because they like her. There’s no way to know because (again), they all pretty much avoid talking to me or my wife if at all possible. 

The cool kids didn’t talk to me when I was an uncool kid and—with the exception of my own daughter, who, just by virtue of proximity, can’t avoid me entirely—they don’t talk to me now that I’m a cool dad. This is not exactly the cool dad fate I had imagined. I had visions of chatting with the youth about—well, Sinéad O’Connor. Or The Green Knight. Or the state of contemporary theater. And I have, in fact, talked to the youth about those things. Very occasionally.

For the most part, though, being a cool dad means specifically not forcing your child or their friends to deal with you. Parents have a lot of power in relation to young people. We’ve got the houses; we’ve got the cars; we’ve got the money and the ability to call in other, even scarier authority figures. If parents want to force kids to interact with them, they can. Parents can make kids eat at the table. They can search them for cannabis or alcohol or condoms. They can go down into the basement and stomp around and demand that you, and you, and you, pay attention to them for some period of time. And there are some parents who do all of those things.

My wife and I try not to, though, because we are aware that teens don’t want to hang out with parents. They do not want to sit seriously in some sort of sitcom plot and listen to elders dispense wisdom. Instead, they just want a little space to call their own in which they can be left alone. I’m a cool dad because I don’t force anyone to interact with dad (cool or otherwise) unless and until they want to know where to find snacks in the kitchen or whether they can get a ride home. In the meantime, I sit in my room reading, much as I sat in my room reading when I was a teen. Now my wife is there with me, though. We roll our eyes together when the ambient noise from the guests spikes and wave at our daughter when she every so often checks in. Which is, admittedly, kind of cool.

Follow Us