One of the consistent themes in Bronwyn Harris’s books about the challenges (and triumphs) of teaching underserved youths in Oakland is the school to prison pipeline. Whether or not you are in education, Harris will open your eyes to a school system that may only be blocks away, but is worlds apart. It’s hard to say “I love these books” when they depict a harsh, unfair reality that I despise, but in addition to reading Harris’s beautifully written, educational books, I’ve bought multiple copies to send to friends and relatives that teach.
Guest Blogger – Bronwyn Harris
“LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE is a wonderful, brilliant, moving, heartbreaking, inspiring, and sometimes funny book. I couldn’t put it down.” – Anne Lamott
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Bronwyn Harris began her teaching career in East Oakland. In the first five minutes of teaching, one student threw a book at her head and she realized she had no set curriculum with which to teach them. The students were incredible: creative, thoughtful, loving, angry, at-risk, misunderstood, valuable, and overlooked. During her time teaching, Harris would tell many of her middle-class white friends about what was going on at her school, and found that many of them didn’t believe her. She writes these true stories so that people would know this side of life in the Bay Area. Bronwyn Harris has published two non-fiction books: LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE: HOPE IN THE JOURNEY BEYOND CLASSROOM AND CELL and LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE: STORIES FROM AN EAST OAKLAND CLASSROOM. Both are available from Amazon and other retailers. |
Tell us a little about how you started the teaching career that you wrote about in both your books.
I was, almost literally, thrown into my teaching career. On my first day ever as a young teacher in East Oakland, I stepped into a class of first-graders who had been through one teacher and six substitutes in just four months. A student yelled, “We don’t need no more teachers!” and threw a book at my head. In addition, I found out that I was a roving teacher, meaning I didn’t have my own classroom, but moved classrooms every three weeks. Oh, and there was no set curriculum that year, so I just had to make it up. Not exactly a recipe for success.
Teaching there never got easier, but my students were incredible: talented, angry, troubled, valuable, loving, creative, misunderstood, and overlooked. My first book, LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE: STORIES FROM AN EAST OAKLAND CLASSROOM, tells the stories of our time together, my successes and failures as a teacher, and the major failures in the educational system that left so many of them behind.
I have kept in touch with many of them into adulthood, including “Jorge,” a former student now in prison. He read LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE and said that he had no idea there were people out there who didn’t know how hard life was for him. He asked if I thought anyone would be interested in his story. This led to us collaborating (and writing a book with your co-author in prison is no easy task) on a book about his time in prison: LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE: HOPE IN THE JOURNEY BEYOND CLASSROOM AND CELL.
Many teachers say, “Oh, I could write a book,” but you actually did! What prompted this? Did you go into teaching intending to write about it?
I had no intention of writing a book about my teaching experience when I started my teaching career. But teaching in a high-violence, low-income area was something none of us had been prepared for in our credentialing program. When I told my (mostly white, middle-class) friends about the conditions I taught in, they didn’t believe me. In fact, that’s where the title of my first book comes from. A friend said, “Look, we don’t think you’re a liar, but what you’re telling us is literally unbelievable.”
So I started writing down my stories in a blog. It took me a little over ten years from the first blog post to publishing the book. I’m really glad I did, because these kids deserve so much better, and nothing will ever change until people see the problems.
Were you nervous about your former students reading about themselves? Have you talked to any of them, and if so, what were their reactions?
I was SO nervous, and it was really important to me that I got this right in terms of respect in telling the stories of our time together. I changed all names for privacy, but I still got in touch with as many former students as possible to make sure what I was saying was OK with them. There was only one person who was hesitant, saying she didn’t want to be in the book at all, even with a pseudonym. So I took everything about her out.
The rest of the former students I talked to were really positive. One said, “Ms. Harris, I’ve been waiting my whole life for people to listen to us. Maybe this way we’ll be heard.” That’s all I want, is to amplify their voices.
I was most nervous about how Jorge, my former student in prison who is the co-author of LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE, would react, as I wrote very honestly about his struggles and some of the bad decisions he made. When I visited him in prison for the first time, he had just read LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE. He gave me a big hug and said, “I loved your book.”
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LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE: Bronwyn Harris was a new teacher thrust into a classroom mid-year in the part of Oakland, California that the police call the “Killing Zone.” This book chronicles the ups and downs of the students she taught, as well as the toll this work took on her personally. LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE is available in paperback, ebook, audio book, and Kindle Unlimited. LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE: Bronwyn Harris and her former student Jorge Ramirez, now incarcerated, share a captivating series of letters between a teacher and student. These letters reveal a glimpse of prison life that’s both tragic and mundane, as Jorge provides a raw glimpse of life behind bars in California. LETTERS FROM THE INSIDE is available in paperback and kindle ebook. |
Where can readers connect with you?
- Website: http://bronwynharris.com/
- Twitter: @BronwynAnn
- Facebook: BronwynHarrisAuthor
- Instagram: @bronwynann
- Blog: http://tigerthegecko.blogspot.com/
