Reflection Essay

As a student in middle school, I used to joke about living in the principal’s office. Not a week went by where I not put out of class because of “my mouth”. Frustrated, I remember leaving the classroom with my head held low, referral in hand. I can still picture those frequent journeys, passing staff members on the way who’d often ask me if I was on my way to “my homeroom”—the main office.

“That mouth is going to get you in trouble!”

In those days, I never comprehended how my actions warranted my removal. Raised by a successful Black single mother, she taught me at an early age what it meant to be a Black woman in today’s American society. The daughter of sharecroppers from Mississippi, education was always important to my mother.

At that time the demographics of our city in the then majority White Montgomery County, Maryland were expeditiously changing. Although the student body at our middle school became less and less White, the diversity of our teachers had not shifted. I wonder now if my inquisitiveness and strong-mindedness activated my teachers’ conscious or subconscious biases about their cultural and racial constructs of femininity. Whatever caused it, it came with the rewarded of exclusion. By the time I got to high school, my voice was completely stifled. Despite what my mother taught me, I finally learned to “be quiet and do my work”. I remember my days in class as miserable ones, counting own to the last bell. During my sophomore year, I joined the drama club. There I got to be myself—a chance to be seen; a chance to be heard. It was not until the summer of 2014 that I grasped how much my middle school experience shaped my self-identity. That summer I attended a seminar at Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Poverty and Inequality’s on school discipline. I sat on the edge of my seat listening to scholar and activist Dr. Monique Morris’ presentation as she revealed the disproportionality in school suspension rates for Black girls. As she went over the reason why many Black girls she surveyed said they were suspended—talking back, insubordination, having “an attitude” and other subjective offenses—Dr. Morris boldly