Educating Dante: How it Impacted Me!

The fall of 2005 proved to be a challenge for me! I was teaching fourth grade, and that was the year a young man I will call Dante came to me.

Dante had been displaced due to Hurricane Katrina, and he ended up in Middle Tennessee because he had an aunt that lived in the area. Dante was an African-American that had spent his previous nine years growing up in the lower 9th ward in New Orleans. Needless to say, he really ‘stuck out’ in my virtually non-culturally diverse classroom. He talked different, acted different, and was mad at the world.

I am not sure if it was more of a challenge for me to get Dante to warm up to the other children, or to convince the other children to warm up to him. What an experience! In an attempt to make a long story short, I had to get creative. I basically had to let the standard curriculum go to the wayside and deal with the culture of our classroom first. It took me a few days to realize that I was going to have to forget about math, science, etc. and establish a climate that was conducive of learning.

Rather than making a huge deal about our new student, we made a big deal about everyone. We talked about accents, favorite foods, family, etc. I had to let my students see that Dante was like them in many ways and that although he was different in other ways that was not important.

Dante is one of those students that I will NEVER forget. He made me cry out of frustration, and he made me cry out of joy. He also taught me lessons that I now reflect on every school year. I never would have thought that anything good could have happened as a result of Hurricane Katrina, but it brought me Dante!