I taught computer science at a middle school in Jamaica Plain, a predominantly black and somewhat Hispanic neighborhood in Boston, in my first year of college. Teaching the actual computer science wasn’t all that hard, but it always got tough when my co-teacher and I called a break halfway through class and sat down to talk to the students.
I knew exactly one black kid in my overwhelmingly white and Asian high school. The only other black people I’d seen in the leafy suburban Northeast were those people you’d drive by extra quickly when you wanted to cut through the run-down neighborhoods one town over.
The black and Hispanic kids would ask me, “Do you speak Spanish?” I can’t say I look very Hispanic, but given that these kids probably — definitely — hadn’t seen an Indian person before, I don’t blame them. It was strange experience for everyone involved.
I would ask them what they thought of Imagine Dragons or what colleges they were looking at and they would give me blank stares. Usually they’d talk to their friends about rap artists I’d never heard of, but a few kids started talking to me. One of them told me he played basketball for two hours every day after school because he wanted to get a scholarship to play basketball at UMass. I was going to ask him what position he played until I realized I didn’t even know what positions there were in basketball.
He asked me one week what I thought about girls in college.
“They make life hard, man. Especially when there’s so much craziness already,” I said.
He nodded vigorously. “This one girl here — she doesn’t tell me anything straight and it stresses me out so bad.”
“Guess you gotta get used to it.” I laughed and shook my head. He gave me a wry smile.
I think I made a friend.