Taking It Personally

When Sekani Moyenda, an African American elementary school teacher, accepted an invitation to speak at a graduate education class, neither the students nor Ann Berlak, their professor, could guess that her presentation would spark an outpouring of emotion and a reexamination of race from everyone involved. The "encounter" as it was called was an expression of Moyenda's anger at the institutionalized racism of our educational system, a system whose foundations are reinforced and whose assumptions about race are reproduced in the graduate school classroom. Forcing everyone involved to rethink their own race consciousness, "Taking it Personally" is a chronicle of two teachers and their own educational progress.In processing their own responses to the encounter, along with their students', Berlak and Moyenda meditate not only on their own ideas on teaching and learning, but also redefine the obligation a teacher has to his or her students. Personal in its approach, yet grounded in significant currents of educational thought, "Taking it Personally" will be a must-read for any educator or educator-to-be who is committed to teaching in our diverse classrooms. Ann Berlak is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Elementary Education at San Francisco State University. Sekani Moyenda teaches reading and is the administrator for computer and network technology at Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco.