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Personal Reflection/Anecdote

upon files of recorded memories. My brain search was in overdrive, accessing everything I had stored from
high school. What class could she be referencing? As we exited the ladies’ room and made our way back
into the main ballroom, she spotted a group chatting in the corner and posed the same line of questioning
to them as to whether they remembered the dummy class they had been forced to take. They all started
laughing and trashing the 3-hour class we were in every day of our junior and senior years. Each member
of this elite group recounted how the class was such a waste of time and provided no real-life benefit.
The realization of the class they were referencing hit me like a violent lightning bolt, unnerving the
little self-control I was trying to maintain. They were mocking the vocational class to instruct students
about the coming age of computers … a dummy class … no! I did not have the presence of mind to tell
them that class saved my life. The skills I was taught in the class funded all my college years. How could
I explain learning how to keypunch opened doors to job after job? As a non-reader, keypunching was
an avenue to exit out of my hopeless future. I lacked the skills of articulation to express how I was still
deeply and eternally grateful for that skill I learned in high school. I was, and still am, grateful for a school
district that had the foresight to give low-income students marketable skills to make a living and pursue a
career immediately out of high school.
My education story ends well because I did go to college. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science
degree in mathematics. I proved all those who did not believe in my abilities wrong! What in the world
motivated me to attend college? I was naïve, inexperienced, unrealistic, and lacking any kind of support.
It is not a mystery to me why so many students have never had a real desire to pursue higher education to
better their economic status in life, yet I defied the odds and did it.
As traumatic as my individual experiences were, they do not compare to what I have witnessed and
heard during my years of working with teens, the endless avalanche of obscenity and razor-sharp words
retching from the mouths of well-intentioned parents ripping to shreds the hearts, spirits, and wills of their
children. After more than 30 years in the classroom, I have learned this kind of assault upon children
crosses every social, ethnic, and economic distinction.
Teachers can become students of their students to gain insight into their individual proclivities and
decipher the unspoken messages and signals they send out daily. Teachers can become cautiously aware
of basing opinions and judgments on the brief time a student is in a classroom or a school. Focus can be
redirected to the smallest hint of potential in any area. Teachers can speak life, hope, and possibility into
each student’s life, beginning a transformation that may, in turn, transform the lives of others.

Naomi Molina de Wood joined DKG in 2015 and is the current president (2021–2024) of Delta Delta Chapter of Texas State Organization. She taught
30 years as a secondary mathematics teacher and an intervention specialist. A member of Rice University Mathematics Leadership Institute, she has
been a presenter at national and state conferences and guest panelist on various NPR talk shows. niasmyah@gmail.com

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