The Student Who Challenged My Teaching On Race

What My Students Taught Me

At first, the Philadelphia high-school student Valentina Love Salas was not exactly excited about taking African American history, a required course for graduation. She had heard that the class was depressing. She had also suffered from racist taunts and bullying in the past—painful experiences that made her reluctant to speak her mind in a class focused on issues of race and identity. Her teacher, Ismael Jimenez, was accustomed to at least some amount of student disinterest or reticence. “A lot of the students you … can kind of see the glaze over their eyes,” he said. But as the school year continued, and Jimenez incorporated videos, music, and texts that intrigued Valentina, the student found herself growing more and more engaged. “Music really resonates with me, and every chance he got he put a song on or a music video that really explained what he was trying to teach us,” Valentina recalled. Before the school year ended, however, a classroom blow-up over one student’s incendiary comment would create a schism in the class, including between Valentina and her teacher, testing the strong relationship they had slowly built.