High School Teacher's Hardest Day

Video Transcript

"My name is Deanna Gutierrez and I'm a high school teacher in San Jose. One of my hardest days was in my twelfth grade English class. And I just presented them with the next novel that we're going to read, which was Fahrenheit Four Fifty One. And for those that don't know, this book is, was far ahead of its time. Challenging us to see how technology could possibly rule our world and how things as the human emotions and just the everyday interactions with each other are going to become obsolete someday. Well that particular day I had them read about twenty pages the night before for homework. And one of my students during one of our discussions stood up and was just really angry and in my face, and said "why do you treat us like this? Why do you treat us like we're in college? Some of us work. I can't take this anymore." And she got up and she slammed the door in our faces and left. And the whole class was quiet and all eyes were on me as to see, you know, what is she going to do? And I was just really quiet, and I just said "you know, I am treating you like college students because you're going to be going to college someday. And even if that's not in your plans you're going to have to learn how to think for yourself. And no matter what field you choose. And you're going to be presented with challenging material that maybe you don't agree with. So that's why I'm pushing you." And the whole class got kind of quiet and it led into an interesting discussion about how we see technology and how we see ourselves. And, you know, they kind of spit it back in my face to say you don't, you don't understand. You, you don't, you're not Latina. And I said "excuse me?" Said you talk like you're white and you dress like you're white and you are not from here and you don't know what it's like to just speak Spanish and have people think that you're stupid. And I said well that's an interesting perspective, let's talk about that. And so we broke down a lot of their reasons, and in the end we just had a really cool discussion on, on race and you know, the whole technology concept kind of went out the window. But at the end of the day I felt like we all respected each other more and they understood that I was there, not because of the money which a lot them thought I was. I'm like it's not about the money. And, you know, we finished the unit and a lot of them wrote papers on how they hoped that technology would increase our, our connection to one another instead of robbing us of it. So that was really hard, but we had to get through it. And I'm glad that we did. So, thank you Juana, for walking out. My name is Deanna Gutierrez and I'm a high school teacher in San Jose."