How Being Sent to the Hallway Inspired Me to Teach

Our stories and experiences shape the way we teach & lead.

I felt trapped by the florecent lights and rigid policy when I was a student. The lash of the teachers tongue to jump over each testing hurdle. Left feeling broken, inadequate and wanting nothing more than to escape the education system.

Once I was out, I realized I wasn’t the only child that felt that way. It became my personal mission to ensure every child knows they belong.

So grab your favorite cup of whatever it is you love to drink. (There’s definitely coffee in my mug.) And join me as I discuss my history of education.

I started preschool at the age of four. My parents worked full time, very long hours. My father often worked from 6am to midnight. School was really about having a place for me to go while they provided for the family.

My parents were very active in their church. I went to a religious school for preschool. A lot of the teachers that I worked with were friends of the family. They valued and appreciated me because they knew who I was. All of my creativity and my wonder they thought made me special.

The specific memory I have is playing on the playground outside of the church. And I was playing packrats, something that I had seen on PBS. My at home babysitter. I was hiding under the stairs and sneaking out and taking things in hiding it. My teacher thought that it was innovative. She valued that I had created my own world.

Through preschool, I felt accepted and encouraged to be myself, to show up with all of my creativity and eccentricities.

I was not the little girl who was into Barbies and dresses. I wanted to wear sweatpants because jeans made a noise when I walked. I wore a lot of oversized T-shirts and sweatpants. I just wanted to be comfortable and didn’t really care what I looked like.

When first grade came around, my parents put me in public school. My class was larger than my whole K-12 private school. First grade was a big shock to my system. I had never been required to sit in a chair for long periods of time, never expected to repeat what I was told & not encouraged to create.

The teacher gave us all of these cutting tasks. Which I now understand was to work on our fine motor skills. I remember doing one for each letter of the alphabet. We would out an animal with a name that started with the same letter we were studying. Plus additional words would go into little pockets we would glue onto the animal.

It was a rote task I despised, with no creativity or thinking. The goal was to recreate from a template and make a project that looked just like everyone else. There was one that I loved. The seahorse. Because the seahorse actually has a pouch where they store their babies. I was very excited to create that one.

At the end of the year, my mother came to clean out my desk. It was one of those old wooden desks with a little cubby built in. I had all of these papers pushed to the back of my desk. Every assignment I’d never done.

Needless to say, I did not spend a lot of time inside the classroom,

I was not the child that my teacher expected. I ended up spending a lot of time in the hallway. Doing my work separated from my peers. I also don’t remember what I did to get sent into the hall. I am sure it was something irritating, but not disrespectful.

My time in the hallway felt more like time for the teacher to calm down. There wasn’t a single restorative conversation or even a follow-up chat with the teacher. Not that they didn’t happen, but they certainly didn’t have an impact on me enough to remember. I certainly wasn’t taught any self regulation or emotional coping strategies.

I was sent to the principal’s office often. When the principal asked for an explanation was clueless, and there was never any more consequence than being sent back to class. As an adult, I found out my mother was never notified.

Another adult realization is that my only hallway friend was the only student of color in my class, a young Black boy. We’ll call him Elijah. But our school trajectories were very different.

By the time I got to third grade, the teachers had realized that there was something more going on with me. Something they just couldn’t figure out. I was assessed for a learning disability. What they found was that the difference between my highest and lowest test scores qualified me for what’s called twice-exceptional.

I qualified for gifted and talented services, but I also needed pullout support.

The way it was explained to my family was that I had just so much going on in my head that I couldn’t get it all out through my head.

I struggle to articulate everything I am thinking about. The creativity that my preschool teacher really valued was seen as a distraction. The time I needed to process was holding up the class. I had several teachers complain that I could no longer be pulled from their class, as I was already “too far behind.” I was penalized for getting the help I needed, and so what I internalized was to not ask for help.

I was the problem.

What of my hallway friend? By the time we were in third grade, he had started to have serious referrals to the office. No added support. Just discipline.

There was a time he reported a high school student attempting to sell him drugs on the playground. I remember the teacher being skeptical, and the incident was never reported to the school. Even as a child, I could tell the adult thought he was lying. His disciplinary incidents continued to escalate until finally, he brought bullets to school, and he was suspended. After that, his family moved schools.

I got away with being strange and eccentric. He was seen as a liar and a threat. I was able to hide myself and my difference behind my white mask. He didn’t have the same privilege.

As I got older, the divide between myself and my peers felt like a chasm that grew wider and wider with each passing year. By middle school, there was real tension in how others perceived me vs. how I perceived myself.

My gender expression and learning differences altered the way I saw the world. But I was warped in the same white skin as everyone else in my affluent suburban school. The assumption was that I should know all of the unspoken rules of social engagement. Yet, my family wasn’t in a financial position to give me access to what other kids expected and took for granted.

In seventh grade, I was unstaffed. Or exited from special education services. As a part of this process, I had to defend myself to a conference room full of adults. I had to defend that I should just be a regular kid in one of the highest stress events I could have imagined. It felt like being given the label of “normal” by a panel of elders was the acceptance that would finally make the world right. That somehow it would be like a blessing from a fairy godmother, and magically I would fit in.

This was when I believed my disability was something I had to overcome in true American Dream style. It was a part of myself that I needed to conquer. That by being accepted by others would lead me to my true self. What I’ve come to understand is that my Twice-Exceptional status is actually part of what makes me unique and gives me insight into the world

What I hoped would be a magic spell of external validation didn’t change anything about how I felt on the inside. So I retreated further and further into hiding behind the mask of fitting in. I learned to hide who I was and to stay off the radar so as to not draw attention to being different.

• Being me meant being mocked by teachers for needing extra support. Different meant lack of opportunities.
• Being me meant being barked at like I was a dog by other students. Different was less than
• Being me meant being abandoned by old friends who wanted to be part of the in-crowd. Different was unsafe.

The only way to be safe was to pretend to not be me. To study other people and learn to be like them. The mask of whiteness became my costume for the performance of gender and self denial.

I learned to go under the perceptions of others, to blend in with the crowd. If no one looked at me, it meant no one was mocking me. Being a ghost of myself was better than being seen.

By the time I was in high school, my parents realized that I was not going to thrive in a traditional high school. My neighborhood school had over 4000 kids. It was a traditional comprehensive high school. With all the sit and get learning you could dream of. But not having a group of people that I was really close to or connected to, my family decided to look into other options.

Private schools were not a financial option for us. At the time, charters didn’t exist. Which left us with specialized arts schools and alternative schools. Most of which were programs offered by the district as a last chance support for struggling youth.

I ended up in an expeditionary learning and Outward Bound school that was an experiment between several districts. And it was exactly what I needed.

The cross content alignment allowed me to apply what I was learning to the real world. The teachers were creative and excited by my innovative spirit.

There were no tests or grades. Which means there wasn’t any kind of ranking. The challenge was always against your own personal best. Instead, we put together portfolios to demonstrate our learning, and any project could be revised until it showed our best work.

It was one of the first times in my life I felt like I belonged, on the isle of misfits. Youth that had been expelled from other programs or who were between home situations. Those that had also found themselves on the outskirts of society. I found my people.

All of these lived experiences are why I became an educator and the impact of these events shaped how I lead. It has been my personal mission to ensure youth feel they belong and that all of who they are is valued.

Key Takeaways

It is time to own the power of your life experiences. Our stories are the most powerful thing we have to share with the world

• Belonging is the foundation of learning
• Embrace all of who you are and you encourage kids to be their most authentic

I’d love to hear your story. Send me a DM to share a formative experience you had that shapes your mission as teacher.