RCA teachers are more than teachers, they are authorities, award winners, and icons. The academy is an international magnet for teachers from the United States and around the world, who come to learn how to be better at their profession. Some school districts load all their teachers onto buses and planes and send them to RCA to participate in seminars and observe in classrooms, learning new ways of engaging students in learning. On social media, some RCA teachers are followed and fawned over like rock stars. Because they are. And here I was, a first-year teacher, with a skimpy résumé and no curriculum vitae. Yet I would soon be expected to teach thousands of seasoned educators how to do their jobs.
Many of my Black colleagues were HBCU grads. During our van ride to Myrtle Beach, they were comparing the advantages of a culturally centered education versus an Ivy League experience. This reminded me of the spirited conversations that Walter and I used to have, back in our grimy apartment, about Du Bois’s views of the education of Black folks. I saw it as a chance to jump in just as Camille was expressing her fierce loyalty to Spelman. I made the mistake of playing devil’s advocate. I learned one of life’s greatest lessons that day: you don’t fuck with a Black woman’s HBCU, or her sorority. Especially if you have the audacity to compare it with predominantly white institutions. Her face hardened and she glared at me. All I could think was Ah shit, I done fucked up. She came back at me with a verbal flamethrower and I retreated fast.
Obviously, I had flunked first impressions. So I shut up while the others talked. An hour or more passed before Camille swiveled in her seat to face me.
“How old are you again?” Camille asked. I hesitated because I couldn’t tell if she was really interested or just coming back to finish me off.
“I’m twenty-three,” I said.
“Wow,” she responded. Then she faced forward again, leaving me staring at the back of her head. What the hell is that supposed to mean? It did not sound like a good “wow,” so I added, “But I’ll be twenty-four soon,” hoping to sound older and wiser.
She turned toward me again and asked, “And you’ve been teaching for how long?”
“One year,” I said.
“Oh wow,” she responded again.
Then I added, “Well, two. Kinda.”
She kept probing this time. “And where did you teach?” she asked.
I saw where this was going. But I could not stop it. I was spread-eagled on the rails and a freight train was coming.
“Well, it’s kinda complicated,” I said. “I taught, but I wasn’t an official teacher.”
Camille’s face contorted. I explained that I had created my own classroom in an old warehouse. I told her that I had been teaching kids in the community, which only made me sound like a glorified tutor. I was reluctant to talk about the high school that fired me. I feared this would arouse even further suspicion.
“So you’re a first-year teacher?” she asked. It sounded even worse when she said it.
“Well… yes… technically,” I said.
“Wooooow.”
Mr. Clark’s instinctive decisions are legendary. He is a visionary and a seer. He’s grown famous by taking brave and radical risks. Members of his team didn’t always understand his choices, but everyone trusted him. This might have been the exception. Most of my colleagues knew nothing about me until moments before I showed up. It was as though Ron Clark went out of town and came back with an illegitimate son.
Camille continued her interrogation and asked if I had ever done student teaching. Already skeptical because I hardly had one year of experience, she’d be horrified to discover that I also lacked a license. “It’s a long story,” I said, hoping for mercy.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We have time.” And it was true. We had nothing but time. We were still hours away from our destination and she showed no sign of letting up. So I decided that exposing myself would be better than being exposed.
“No,” I said. “I’ve never done student teaching.” I wanted to rip the bandage off fast, so I immediately said, “I couldn’t pass the Praxis.”
The van fell silent and my embarrassment made the air feel too thick and steamy to breathe. They were like players on a winning varsity team who’ve just been told that a nameless freshman is now on the starting lineup. In their shoes, I would have felt no different. They were the dream team of education. They knew nothing about me, and my revelations in the van had surely made them wonder what the hell I was doing there. In my paranoia, I felt like a drama was brewing and my new colleagues were sipping it like tea. Maybe things would have been different if they’d seen me in action before Mr. Clark brought me in. But that was not the case.
Ron Clark had turned away applications from hundreds of qualified teachers. The faculty seemed eager to know why he instead hired an unlicensed, inexperienced twenty-three-year-old recent graduate of a conservative college to join a roster of revolutionaries who had been transforming education for decades. And they had the medals and the scars to prove it. My feet were barely wet. I did not have those years. I did not have those awards. But I, too, had scars that bore witness to my own fight. A fight that I’d survived. A fight that had prepared me for this position. I knew they wanted to know what qualified me. So I spoke my truth, starting from the beginning.
I told them how I’d suffered as a child. How I escaped the streets. How basketball saved my life. Then I told them how I failed.
I told them how I’d dropped out of college. How I tried to give up. How I tried to take my own life. How a miracle sent me back to school. Then I told them how I failed more.
I told them how I’d struggled to read. How I reinvented myself into an academic. How I competed in debate and failed some more. How I used debate to transform at-risk youth. How I started programs and events and movements. Then I told them how I failed again when I thought I was flying.
But Mr. Clark found me. He looked at my raggedy wings and picked me up anyway, because he believed that in this new place I would fly. I told them that my journey was storm-tossed but filled with second chances and reinvention and failing forward. That’s what qualified me to be in this van, with them. I told my story. I sang my song. And they sang theirs, too.
The sweet sounds of our songs softened our hearts. We each had our own struggles, our own triumphs, our own paths to this convergence. Our stories connected us in ways that academic credentials could not, and by the end of the van ride we were wrapping our arms around each other. We became family. I became the baby brother who was loved on consistently, occasionally teased for my inability to hold liquor, and assigned early-morning breakfast duty because no one else wanted to do it.
“I’m so proud of you, Black man,” Camille said. “People need to hear your story.” She was surprised to learn about the Saturday scholars program and the events I had created over the past couple of years. And she was stunned that I had walked away from it. Abandoning my own vision to help build another man’s must have seemed strange. But this was my dream: having my own classroom, being a real teacher in a place free from the conventions of regular school. I honestly never thought this dream would come true.
“Fleming,” Camille said, “you have a gift.” She shifted into big-sister mode, assuring me that my wildest dreams were yet ahead. But I couldn’t see that far. I laughed it off, but her face stayed serious. “Listen to me,” she said. “This is only the beginning.”
On the first day of school, I took a moment to look around and take it all in before the students arrived. I was standing in my own classroom. It was not borrowed; it was all mine. Even the design. An artist was in the process of spray-painting murals that I had chosen to bring my subjects to life. On the front wall was the profile of a young boy gazing at the American flag. The flag blended into MLK’s image on the right wall. His arm was outstretched across the Atlanta skyline as he delivered an impassioned speech. On the back wall was Captain America. Beside him was Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker. And next to it was a giant US P
residential Seal. On the left wall were all my books, my own canon for academic transformation. Rows of tables faced a stage at the front of the classroom. This is where I would teach.
I spotted a gaggle of little fifth-grade heads peeking into the doorway. Their eyes were anxious and hopeful.
“Come in!” I said. “Move quickly.” I gestured for them to hurry. At RCA, students were expected to move about with a sense of urgency.
Isaac and Keanen came in together, neither quite five feet tall. Isaac was confident. He was not afraid to introduce himself, with his thick southern accent and his old soul. Keanen was the opposite. He was fretful and timid and likely to take refuge under his desk when he was especially stressed. Anxiety had already caused the poor kid to throw up in his previous class.
Different as they were, both rushed in and took seats in the front row. A loud thud startled the students when I hopped onto the tabletop. My feet were level with Keanen’s eyes. He examined my hard-bottomed shoes and gazed up at me towering over him.
“Good morning, scholars,” I said. “My name is Mr. Fleming. I will be your philosophy teacher this year.” The students stared back at me in silence. Their empty expressions indicated that they had never heard the word. Isaac was not afraid to break the silence.
“Excuse me, Mr. Fleming,” Isaac said, raising his hand. “What is philosophy?”
“Glad you asked,” I said, smiling down from my elevated position. “Philosophy is everything. Everything is philosophy. Let me explain.”
RCA is known for exposing middle schoolers to material typically reserved for high school. Mr. Clark had said that I could teach whatever I wanted, and when I revealed that I wanted to teach philosophy to fifth graders, he didn’t balk. Looking back, I realize I had no idea how hard it would be for ten-year-olds to comprehend Confucianism or Plato’s Theory of Forms. Debate had helped me get these ideas across in the past, but I wanted to try something new. Although every RCA teacher had their own unique way of teaching, they all turned academic content into songs. This was a common thread in the school’s pedagogy and I desperately wanted to fit in. Besides, this gave me an opportunity to resurrect Killa B from my teenage rapping days. But this time minus the real nigga shit.
I created songs for every unit in the semester, setting a high-energy tempo for class. I wrote a song about the Greek philosophers and I dressed up like Socrates with a long gray beard, a white toga, a fake hunchback, and a cane. The students glimpsed me from the door window and I could hear their loud gasps as they waited to be invited in. As soon as they entered, I hopped on the stage and stretched my cane to press the play button on my Smart Board. The “Knuck If You Buck” instrumental blared through the sound system as the kids cheered and danced into the room. We all jumped on top of the tables and started singing the words on the screen:
Socrates started from the bottom, came to the top,
Only way we know about him from the students he taught.
He questioned everything,
Call it interrogating.
But the government officials thought it was irritating.
What is wisdom, justice, life, and beauty?
What is love, compassion, morality, and duty?
He knew by questioning you can discover the truth,
So they sentenced him to death for corrupting the youth!
During the chorus we whipped from side to side chanting, “Greek philosophy! Greek philosophy! Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, let’s go! Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, let’s go!”
Their enthusiasm was so electric that it reverberated through the building. My colleagues bopped past in the hallway or they barged in and joined the fun.
During my unit on the ancient Eastern era of philosophy, I made songs about Confucius and Sun Tzu and the Chinese dynasties using the “Nae Nae” song that was currently trending. During my unit on the European Age of Enlightenment, I made songs about John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and Sir Francis Bacon.
When we arrived at the American Revolution, I wrote lyrics explaining the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I decided to use “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” to teach the branches of government, but I wasn’t satisfied with my first draft. I listened to the song over and over during my planning period and finally focused on the part of the chorus where you put your hands up on the handlebars of an imaginary motorcycle and say, “Youuuuu, crank dat Soulja Boy! Youuuuu, crank dat Soulja Boy!” A lightbulb went on when I heard “Youuuu” and thought US government. I scrambled for a piece of paper and began jotting down lyrics of the chorus:
First is legislative branch,
Then is the judicial branch,
Last is the executive, which is the US president,
Youuu S government, Youuu S government, Youuu S government.
I looked at the slides I had prepared and decided to scrap them. Instead, I turned each bullet point into a line that matched the beat. I wrote lines and struck through them and balled up pieces of paper. But by the end of the day, I had written a full verse for all three branches of government. It started out:
First is legislative branch,
Watch me lean and watch me rock.
They’re the branch of government in charge of making all the laws.
Congress has 535 members,
4-3-5 in the House and a hundred in the Senate.
The House of Representatives is based on population,
And the Senate has two from each state representin’.
We debate and we regulate the budget and laws,
We can override a veto if we find that it is flawed.
There’s a limit on the terms till we get someone new.
The Senate serves six years, the House serves two.
Through checks and balances we make sure there’s no hypocrisy,
So now you see,
Without a Congress there is no democracy!
The kids loved it. I loved it. The hundreds of visiting teachers who observed my classes loved it. But I went home feeling incomplete. There was something missing. It was fun, but it was not fulfilling. It was sensational, but it did not feel transformative. I was happy, but I was not satisfied: my students could sing about concepts that they could not intelligently debate.
Without question, music belongs in schools. It belongs in the classroom. I would not want to teach in a place that did not share this belief. I fought for it at the previous school that fired me. I used it to lure students in and connect with them in ways that only culture allows. But after drawing them in, I felt responsible for taking them deeper. I felt responsible for showing them how to do more than regurgitate facts to a beat. I saw the consequences of this when I asked questions in class like “Who can name every US president?” and a sea of hands shot skyward. But when I went deeper and asked, “Now who can compare and critique the ideologies of self-described conservatives and liberals in present-day America?” those hands dropped like deadweights.
I was learning the difference between teaching content and skills, facts and utility, what you know versus what you can do. I wanted to equip students with tools they could take with them into college and the workforce, into boardrooms and public forums. “The mere imparting of information is not education,” Carter Woodson wrote in The Mis-Education of the Negro. And I could not shake the famous words of Socrates, who argued that weak minds discuss people and average minds discuss events, but strong minds discuss ideas. I wanted my students to have strong minds. I wanted them to understand how ideas are created and how they can be challenged. This is how they would change the world. This is how they would liberate and mobilize our people. This is how they would shift the balance of power. And this is what is learned through debate.
I was becoming steadfast in my philosophy of education and regaining my confidence in debate as my strongest game. Meanwhile, videos of my classroom songs were already circulating online. These reached local politicians who invited us to be part of the program at the Atlanta mayor’s annual ball. The invitation t
o this glittery event made me ecstatic, imagining that this would be like the symposia I used to organize, except this time with even more people listening to young Black voices. My first thought was which students would deliver the speeches. Then I realized that these people did not want speeches from us. The students were invited to perform a song and dance.
It was a generous request but it made me profoundly uneasy. Still, I accepted. My class is about politics, so how could I pass up an opportunity to expose my students to a major political event? But I could hardly watch when our turn came on the big night. I stood in the wings, and beyond the footlights I could see smiles and white teeth and hands clapping for the cute little Black kids singing and dancing. And it made my stomach turn, because I knew that my students were more than that. I would have been fine if they were a step team or a chorus. Our class focused on the ideas instrumental to democracy, yet we were not called upon to educate; we were summoned to entertain.
It was a campaign season, so more invitations followed. This time, we were invited to the Democratic Party of Georgia’s statewide convention. Once again, we were not asked to speak. We were asked to sing. We were asked to dance. And this occasion gave me even more angst, because this audience would be much whiter than the event honoring our Black mayor. The white people showed nothing but kindness toward the kids and me, but I still hated the spectacle of little Black kids amusing a white crowd like some sort of minstrel show. This is how I saw it, no matter what others thought. One person stopped my student mid-conversation and asked them to demonstrate a dance move. Countless people patted my students on the back and said, “Wow, you’re so articulate,” as if they did not expect sophistication from Black children. I hated it. From that day forward, I was hell-bent on ripping the seam of that stereotype. If people were going to watch my class, if we were going to have a public platform, I was committed to showcasing Black intelligence.
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