You know, boys, it's back and reoded all in your mind. Yeah, not deep throating. This is for the streets, the reel, the railroading, the distant franchise, the truth escape building, and they ain't knowing we speak the truth, so they ain't quoted because we wrote it. The North South East coat g be my twe keeping your head bothering, it ain't no stopping and wants to be drops head by. And then the system is so corrupt they throw the rock out of their heads and then blame it on us.
Don't get it twisted on code and we danced for no frontament biscuits. It's Willie d y'all scar faces not in the building, but I got his back. Collectively we are the ghetto Boys. Reloaded with another episode of information and instructions to help you navigate through this wild, crazy, beautiful world. In the studio, Dctor Chandra Richardson that afternoon, you got one of those names that the people gotta be mindful. It's it's Chandra, not Chandra. Yes, sir, yeah,
that's correct. How you feel. I'm great. Thank you for allowing me to have the opportunity to be here and to meet you and to share what may be important to some and not so much to others. Uh huh. I like how you said that this is this is about to be very very interesting. You have a very interesting life. Some would say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're a Houston native born in the trade. I always tell my students Third War to the day I die.
Raised in Sunnyside. What's so special about the third Ward Sunny Side? It's it's home um Home Street, Baptist Church, a little kid, the big tree on the corner, my my uncle playing dominoes. My grandfather had an auto mechanic shop in the neighborhood. My father in law didn't know it was going to be my father in law. He also had an auto mechanic shop in the neighborhood. They were actually best friends. And of course Jackie's high school. Okay, so you raised with your mother and father. It was
my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather your grandfather. Okay, now where's your father? Going on to glory that way what I'm saying, where was your father? I never knew it was growing up. In actuality, I didn't find out until right about three years ago who my father was. M hmm. He was never in the scene. So did
you find out before he died? No, I was the secret child, and I actually was okay with it as an adult, but somewhere in the back of my mind there was always that I wonder, I want to know who My mother took the identity of my father to her grave. She died, it'll be it will actually be three years in May, and um, I just wanted to know. So I stepped out and did what you see people
do on TV. I did ANCESTR DNA and next thing you know, someone was reaching out to me and it was a female and I said, well, she's definitely not my dad. But we communicated and we talked, and she said, what do you have any family in Beaumont? I said no. She said, well what about Louisiana. No. Keep in mind, I only know my mother's side, so all the people
in places she was naming meant nothing to me. And I said, I'm looking for a male and obviously he's going to have to be somewhere close to my mother's eight each and my mother's not telling me anything. At that particular time, my mother was still alive, but it was never a subject that she wanted to discuss. So the young lady that I kept talking to, she said, well, let me do some more research. Well, she was really into ancestry DNA, and she dug deeper and deeper and deeper.
She said, okay, I got some names. And I was like, okay, that means nothing because I I have nothing. My birth certificate says I know. So she said, well there's this person that again nothing and I said, uh, well, my birthday October nineteen fifty nine, and surely they would have to be older than me. So the dates that she was coming up with were within a year or two of me. And I said, well, definitely not my dad. No, no, no relationship. So she said, well, let me ask my
mom to do the DNA test. She actually asked her mother, and her mother did the DNA test and it came back that we were half siblings, and she asked her aunt. Test came back, we were half siblings. She asked her other aunt. Test came back, we're half siblings. She said, well that means you're my aunt and my grandfather was your father. So she actually set everything up. We had a meeting right during the Christmas holidays. As I said, this was almost three years ago, and my half sisters
and the half brother all showed up. All of our parents were deceased, and I look like them. M I looked exactly like them. And then uh, my niece named Michelle, she said, what about the little toe? Was like, what about the little toe? She said, let's see your little toe. These people are must be crazy. Okay, I showed him a little too. That's Grandpa's told that's the toe. Yes,
she is ours, she is ours. So I found out I have these half sisters and a half brother and lots of nieces and nephews, and uh, everyone was very welcoming. But I told him up front, I said, please understand, I want nothing from you. I am whole, I am healed, I know who I am, but I wanted to find out who the unknown was and ancestor. DNA has the disclaimer that says, please be prepared because the results that you received may not be the ones that you expect.
So I got what I did not expect, which was a lot of siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews. And it's okay, but we're very friendly. Every now and then we'll get together. But I was raised as an only child. So for me, I'm good. I don't get on the phone and call a lot. We make text every now and then just to say hi or how are you doing? But it's nice to be able to fill in the blank and know who unknown was. I mean, blens do you have but wherever you my father? The
four half sisters and one half brother. One half brothers deceased and one half sister is deceased, and it's good. Now is it fair to call them half brothers and half sisters like you know, like biologically? Yes? Well, for example, like I have four sisters and brothers and we have three. Daddy is between us and we. I've never called them my half brother my half sisters. Why do we say that if, like if the dad have like we have kids, Like, if you have a sibling, that's by where of your
dad will say half? But if it's mama, we just say that's my siblings, right exactly? Is that fair? I think all is fair in love and war. But nevertheless, I could have come up with any number of names referred to my father, my biological father, and my story was always centered around I don't know who my earthly father is, but I know who my heavenly father is. So I found out who my earthly father was, and I'll still say my father. The best part is I'm
not angry. I wasn't angry then and I'm still not angry now. Um I can't say that for some of the members who were upset to find out that I existed, and I said, well, I'll just call it what it is. I was the bastard child. I was the one who was kept the secret. I was the one who was literally poor. But I was never made to feel that way with my mother and my my grandmother and grandfather. How did you feel growing up like not knowing who your father was. Do you think that that affected your
childhood at all? I didn't miss. It's kind of hard to miss what you didn't have because my my grandfather, oh my god, she was amazing. He was the best grandfather ever. But the flip side of the story is I found out through doing ancestor DNA he was not my biological grandfather. He was not my mother's father. He was someone that married my grandmother when she was fourteen or fifteen years old because my grandmother had had a baby and her parents told her she needed someone to
help take care of her and her baby. And how old was he when he married your grandmother in his thirties? M but he loved me beyond measure. Your great grandparents told your grandmother she needs she got pregnant by your biological daddy and grandfather, right, they subsequently had gotten killed. They told a fifteen year old girl she needs to marry this thirty year old guy so he can take
care of the baby exactly. You know, that wouldn't fly today, But that was a different time, that was a different show that that definitely that definitely would not fly today. So you are a military woman, you are educator, you um an activist. That's fair. Where does all this come from? Yeah? I say there's a an inner spirit where being. And only many times you don't have anybody to talk for you. You don't have anybody to talk up for you. And I said that it seems like I just kind of
stumbled my way into blessings. They weren't just there on the table for me to say, oh, let me get that or let me pick that one up. It wasn't like that. I just knew I was cared for by my grandmother and my grandfather, and that if I didn't speak up, I wouldn't get anything. Sometimes if I didn't open my mouth, going back to the scriptures, a close mouth doesn't get fed. So I had to start learning
because that wasn't at the beginning. But as I got older, I had to open up and say I want to, I need to, I have to, I must, And more times than not, I did and also received whatever it was I was asking for. But if I didn't say anything, well I got nothing or I didn't get what I want or what I expected. Mm hmm. So walked me into the moment that you decided that the military was your calling. I was a student at Houston Community College.
I had to actually decided that I wanted to be a surgical technologist, and I was going to school for that, and I was doing pretty decently. I had one instructor who sailf Honey, you'll never make it in this profession. You're too slow. You don't know what you're doing. And she was not a person of African American descent, I'll put it that way. And we just called her the dragon Lady because she was. She cut people. I mean,
she cut you in your mind. She knew how to say things to you to be offensive and make you want to quit and make you want to drop out, and literally used that h worth to hate words. Oh my god, this lady. What is wrong with her? Something that's wrong world. You don't talk to people like that. You don't treat people like that. And I wasn't good at what I was doing, and it was hard for me, but I was determined she was not going to make me quit. If I wanted to quit, that was me.
But I wasn't going to let her, a person, make me quit. So I just started working harder. And one day she came in she said, oh, y'all, guess what I did. And we're like what she said, I signed up for the Navy. Oh, and I'm gonna have these cute little uniforms and I'm gonna make all this extra money and I'm gonna do this a lot extra money. That that sounds kind of good to me. So next thing you know, I finished the program and I got certified and I was actually working in the hospital scrubbing
as a surgical tech. My favorite was labor and delivery, and I could do cardiovascular surgery without blinking an eye because I had grown into it. I learned to love it. So you got your PhD before you went to No, no, no, this is the last. This was on the last leg of the career. So I actually went to a recruiter and said, well, my teacher says she was enlisting and I wanted to find out about doing that. And the guy said, okay, uh, what do you do? And I
told him. He said you have certification. I said yes. He said you have a degree, and said yeah, I have associates degree and my associate's degree was in biology. I wanted to have a medical field, so he said, okay, sign here, and I said, well, do I have to do all the stuff that everybody else has to do. He said, well, we'll write that in so you don't have to do a lot of the initial things. And I said okay, So I signed up. That was all
she wrote and I was in for a minute. And next thing you know, came there as a storm and I was supposed to ship out, and at that time I had gone to the what we used to have facilities on OST. I went to OST to pick up my sea bag and I had to do all the medical tests to go out. That's the Green Military Duffel bag where you put everything, that's the value, your whole life is in there, right. I still have mine, So yeah, don't have my tags. I don't know where they are.
But I got my bag. I got my bag. So um I went and they called me into another area and so, okay, we're doing some tests and we're not sure about these tests. We need to do some more tests they're talking about. And they said, oh, you're not gonna ship out. You need to go over to this other room. What the heck? Why? Why? I don't understand what's going on. Well, I was pregnant and didn't know I was pregnant. My grandmother subsequently, right about that time,
had passed away. She has to come to breast cancer and I've been with her all my life. And I started to feel bad, really really bad. Need to send. My grandfather passed away when I was about nine or ten years old, but my grandmother that was that was my rock, and I just I just couldn't shake the funk. I just I couldn't stop crying. I was feeling bad, and it's like, Okay, it's the it's the death. I know it's the death. But when the Navy people said, and I say, oh, I know that can't be true.
So I went to the doctor, who actually was the doctor that I was working with on a lot of the surgeries, and she said, okay, we're gonna do the test and uh, congratulations. No y'all are in the wrong room. That's no, no, that's that's not mean, that's and no, that is you. And I started crying. She said, what are you crying for? You know what you did. What you're crying for? I said, well that she was a very wonderful woman, needless to say, and I thought, oh,
this wasn't what I was expecting. She said, well, you need to get yourself together and decide what you're going to do. If we're going to have a baby, I will help you and we will have a help healthy, happy baby. If you're not going to have the baby, I don't do that, but I will send you somewhere where they take care of that. And then I started crying even more. She said, Okay, I'm gonna give you about two more minutes to get it together and stop crying.
I said, do I have to make up my mind today? Because at that time, my daughter's father and I we were not together. I had discovered right about the time that my grandmother had passed away, that he was a kind of person that I don't want to spend the rest of my life with. And he was doing things that I was not agreeing with, and he was an habitual liar. And I started catching him more and more and more right about that time, and I said, you know it's over. We're done. I can't do this with
you anymore. And he was like, oh, it's it's just your emotions. Your home a little that I know it was my emotions, that my hormones was still the veil had been pulled away, and I realized, he's a idiot. I cannot do this, I cannot knowingly do this, so so I'll just be on my own. And his family was adamant that if I chose not to with him, they would not help me. When I said, okay, that's fine, I'll be all right because I had a job, and I had a career and I had a degree, so
Navy it was on whole. I went back to working in the hospital. I worked all the way up until it was time to have my baby. Had my baby there in the hospital, my mom was there to support me and my baby was ill and I was ill. I stayed in the hospital maybe about a week. When we came home, she was very jaundice and my blood pressure was through the roof. Never had blood pressure problems, and just for whatever reason, things were not going as
well as we had thought. Next thing, you know, um, about a week or two later, baby and I are out and we're going to visit the nurse who helped deliver my daughter, because till this day that's over thirty years, were still very good friends, and someone rear ended me, at which point I went back up in the hospital, staying there another two weeks, and my baby was home. So I was going through it all kinds of ways because I couldn't see her, I couldn't be around her.
I wanted to bond with her, so my friends would bring her for me to see her. And obviously I've recovered, because here I am, but I was not necessarily in the best of physical shape. And I was told because of the car accident that I could not go back into the career that I've had, which was surgery. And if you see the TV shows, people are standing, they're not sitting doing surgery. So they said well, no, that that wouldn't be good for you. And I thought, oh
my god, what am I supposed to do? I never thought about not doing that, and now I've got a baby to take care of. So my military connections said, well, you know, you got a lot of college hours. Have you ever thought about teaching? Teaching? Teaching? What? That's not what I planned on doing. I don't even know how to do that. And they said, well, we got g I money, got military benefits. We'll pay for you to go to school. And are you still enjoying the benefits
of military in a roundabout way? Not? Because he was right, So that's that's a work in progress. I'm sorry. Where how long were you in the military? I got credit for eight years honorable discharge. H But I see, well that's more than what a few people I know that's eating good off off their military benefits. I mean they should. Oh that's the that's next. If you need some help to I know somebody who's very very good and get you. Remember what I said about the clothes mouth doesn't get fed.
So I'll say it right now. I need some help. I got and I'm ready to receive it. Absolutely. We shall talk after this agree boys reloaded podcast will be right back after the pot Let's go back to the military. While serving in the military, did you ever experience any type of sexual harassment in the military, Because I know it's a big deal. That scares me about women in the military, because I have family members who are in the military or female, and that always scared the hell
out of me about that. How pervasive it is. You ever experienced something like that, um to the degree of where it was flirtatious, only no one ever put their hands on me. I was never in an area where I was isolated or secluded where I had to concerned about my safety. Yeah, so I was blessed in that aspect that didn't happen to me. But as far as quote unquote hitting on me, oh heck, yeah, that was all the time and perverse conversations or just inappropriate language. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. Are you familiar with the case of Levina Johnson. Vina Johnson, she's a black woman who was found murdered in two thousand and five. She was found murdered in a tent that was owned by UM was a k KBR you know, Ronnie Route who at the time it was a it was a time, Yeah, it was at the time. It was a subsidiary of had A buried. Yeah, so she her death was rude a suicide. But checked this out. The autopsy found that she First of all, they said that she committed suicide with the with the
M sixteen rifle. She's a right handed woman. The bullet wound was on the left side of her head. She's a right handed woman. The bullet wounds on the left side of her head. And they said she killed herself for the rifle. They found lacerations on a you know, on a private areas. They found on her face, they found they somebody put some type of flammable liquid on her body. They burned her. Uh, they poured died on her vagina. Uh. They did a bad They did a
real bad and they told the parents. They told the family that it was suicide. And as far as I know, the families still don't have justice. And uh and then recently here uh fort Hood. Uh, they had the case of Vanessa Yea who you know, was murdered and they tried they she was brutally murdered, decapitated, and they uh just totally ignored the evidence. And that was people are saying like this, God, right here is a suspect held, you should talk to him, and they just totally ignored it.
It's like and I and and that's just that's just uh two cases. But I see it's very very rare. But I remember reading something where it said that it was like out of the like it was like ninety nine six women who was murdered who died like in in in in Iraq, uh and Afghanistan. It was like, uh, thirty six of those women something around that number, like about thirty six of those women were uh, we're murdered. Uh, we're murdered outside of combat, so it was unco it
was non combat related. So and almost all of them were raped. There was some type of rape involved. You know, America, I'll say America has a major problem with rape. I mean day one, we could go all the way back to slavery, but even today, people get excited when certain people get convicted or accused of rape or whatever. They want to bring them down or whatever. But I would dare say that this country really don't care about victims of rape because, uh, last I check, of all rape
kits in America are sitting in evidence rooms. Untested. So I was just curious about that when I first when I found out that, you know, you had that military background. Uh do you have any uh any any of your your friends or your fellow soldiers female soldiers experienced something like that. I don't know anyone exees me personally, but I belonged to some women veteran programs where I know it's there, but it does not get discussed openly. What trips me is like, if you can't be protected on
your base, your home, your home, think about it. This is your base, this is ground this is ground zero for protection. These the people that you're amongst your co workers and all these people, these are the This is the US military, and they're supposed to be the first line of defense for US as citizens. But to take it further, you actually are employed directly by the military, being the military from you employed to go out and
serve the country. And you're supposed to be going out here to get justice for other people and free other lands and all this stuff, But you can't get justice for yourself right here. You know, how do you reconcile that? Like when you know knowing that you know, like I'm I'm I'm serving I'm serving my country, but my country ain't necessarily serving me. It's to her for excuse me, it's a hurtful thought to know that. UM. I participate
with Dress for Success Houston. They also have a veterans portion, so tons of women every branch of the military that you could think of, and sometimes and now more so because of COVID, and we do a lot of things virtually, so we don't get to do the relational building that
we were previously. But when you hear other women saying their PTSD, you know, or they're having some kind of a psychotic or psychosis that they're having to deal with, and just like you say, it's not necessarily military related, it's about something else that occurred while they were in the military. Yes, people on the base sometimes their personal relationships, their spouses who may also be in the military, or they're married to a military spouse, and the way they
have to handle the stress. I have no answers. I have no answers. I don't know how to UM excuse it. But it's just the idea that they experienced it. And as you have said, the help, the help is there, but some people are so afraid, just so afraid to come up against powers that they feel are bigger than them. Yeah, that that was the case definitely with Vanessa gil Yam. You know she gil Ya and she uh told her
family that she had she was going through something. This guy had sexually assaulted her and she was scared to debt. And then it got out of something happened where dude thought that he was going to be found out, so he murdered and then like the cowardy he was, he killed him. Two boys revoting podcast will be right back after the point. M So you take your military uh background, and you kind of like, uh you you move on, you move forward, and you because you can't do the
military thing anymore, you get into education. What brought you into education? Well, when I was given that offer, my first thought, as I says, I don't know how to do that? A little did I know? I knew a lot more than I had actually given myself credit for. So it was easier than your thought. Like actually teaching, and I'd had an instructor who was a history teacher. Prior to that. I had the medical background and the
biology because that was the career that I wanted. But this one particular history teacher and I went back to a c C. And she did something. It was like sprinkling fairy dust on a person. And I loved the stories. I fell in love with the stories. I want to do that. I want to tell stories. She made everything that you saw in a book come alive, where if you close your eyes you could see yourself there. And I thought, oh my gosh, how did I do that? I want to do that. I really want to do that.
She was amazing. What's her name, would you believe? I don't remember Diana. Diana was the first name, but the last name I don't remember because it was quite some time ago. But she was an awesome teacher, and I didn't like her. I didn't like her. I thought she had something against me in the beginning, because every paper its history class. You're gonna write. Every paper that I turned in came back just blooded up. She just read all over. And I thought, oh my gosh. I said, oh,
she hates me because I'm black. That was my first thought because of it's like, surely i know I'm doing everything right. And she said, oh, I'm gonna give this paper back to you, fix it, turn it back in. She gave her I said, well, I don't know what's wrong with her. It was perfectly paper as far as I was concerned. I'm literate, I know how to write. I don't know what she's talking about. So I went and I changed some things around. Keep in mind I
had iff at first. I turned it back in and I got a d about, Oh what is wrong something it's wrong with this woman? And she said, okay, I'm gonna give you one more chance. Take it, fix it, turn it back in. She hates me. I know she hates me, because now there's nothing wrong with this paper. Did you try to get any help from anybody else? Did you act? I'll just look at it, look at it. I couldn't. I was the only person in my family
who had graduated from high school, so I couldn't. And I went and did some more stuff, and I turned it back in again. But I'm thinking, I'm a genius and I know these things. So I turned it in and she said, let me talk to you. Oh my god, what does she want now? Is I can't get away from her now? But she told good stories, and that's what I liked. And she said, I see in you me, I see you making the same mistakes that I used to make, and it wasn't until somebody stopped me that
I was able to fix it. I'm stopping you now because I want you to fix it, because you have a great opportunity. But if you don't get this writing part, it's not going to be all that you wanted to be. At that point, my whole outlook about her changed tremendously, respectfully, and I was so appreciated because no one had ever said that they would just take the works. Oh yeah, you did, you turned in here's a So of course I thought I knew what I was doing. I was
a really good student in high school. I could look at something, learned, take the test, make a but I didn't know how to study. So when I first graduated from high school, I went to the University of Houston as a part of my testimony to my students and the parents that I had a full scholarship got in the University of Houston. Keeping mind, this girl had nobody
in her background. This she could ask about school. So here I am in a place that was far into my family, and in my first year of college, I ended up with a point seven five g P A. Yes, that is an F that is the grandfather of f's. And it was so bad that University of Houston said, do not enroll here anymore. Like ever, it's so bad. And I thought, okay, so I went and got a dead in gonna wear a job. The lady on the job, wonderful older lady, Mr Do Lories, who said, baby, why
are you here? And I said, because I have a car note and I need a job. She said, no, I don't mean that. I mean why are you here in this place? Why are you doing this job? I was filing papers. That was my job to file papers. And um, I said, well, I got bills and I failed in college. How do you make a point seven? Easy? Come to class, don't go a class on time, don't study. And I parted like nobody's business. And I had a good time because but I should have got an eight
for pardon when I said, sister, did that? I did that? And I cannot lie. I have to own my truth, and that is my truth because that's what makes me be who I am now. And then what campus was this central campus? The third ward the day downtown? Oh well, yeah, well I don't even know if they had downtown. Write about them. But nevertheless, uh, they said, they put me out. And that's how the circle. Literally it was like the children in the desert wandering. That's how the circle started.
You know, I do this, and so that's not working. Let me do that. Oh that's not working. That's how military peace came up. That's how all of these things came up. Because I failed out of high school. I graduated wonderful, but at that point eighteen, I lost my mind, didn't know what I was doing, didn't know how to do it, and had nobody to ask, and didn't have sense enough to know I needed to ask. So what did that teacher say to you specifically that turned you around?
She saw me, and so when she said that, that was all the motivation you need. You felt like she cared about you. She cared right, absolutely. Okay, So, so I mean almost freshman high school and I go into my homeroom teacher who happens to be my science teacher. Also, I go into a room, me and my buddy, and we got on trench coach and gangstads and we walk in singing, singing slave walking down the street watching ladies. Right, We just jamming. So she just sat back and just
watching the class erupts going crazy. They're loving it, laughing Nick, get it. We finished, she said, okay, you come sit right here. So she made me sit up in the front since she made me sit sit in front of class. And then um, she tells me to write the daily objective on the board the next day. Now, up until that point, I always thought that right in the daily objective on the board. Objective on the board was for the smart kids. I never I never particularly considered myself
smart because I didn't make the grades. But when she when she delegated authority to me, it gave me a sense of pride. And I'm writing the daily objective, I'm heah, you know, stipid chest out something right. And then next thing she does is she tells me to keep names when she leave her room, she tells me to keep the name. That's huge. Well, I didn't understand what she was doing to me, but she really made me out
out of a rat. But I didn't have to rat on nobody because she understood if I can get him under control, I can get my whole class room under control. So every time she came back into the room, the room was quieter than it was before she exited the room. And so again I did not figure out what she was had done to me until a few years later. But I made straight a's in her class when I started.
When I made an A in science, I thought I could make an A in anything, because you know, blowing up you think you think of science is something difficult to do because people tell you it's difficult, right, so you're think in your mind it's difficult. But she worked with me. She showed me, you know, the science, you know, of of of studying and learning. And I aced her classroom. So I was like, well, I'm gonna try to with the other classes. So I ace math, I aced history, everything.
I just as everything. So out of nowhere, I go from you know, bees and seeds and d's two straight a's. And back then, they used to announce your name on the on the intercom if you made the honor roll. So when they announced my name, everybody started looking around it. I mean, what you do is threatened to teach you what you beat up to teaching something and all that stuff, and and so I had to deal with that every time after I would make the honor roll, you know,
uh yeah, after I would make the honor roll. I have to deal with that all the time. But I said, I just say, you know, you get the right teacher in your life. They could change life. And this is why I respect teachers so much. I respect educators. You get the right one and they can change your life. If it was not for Mrs Oliver at Forest Brook High School, I probably would be a different man. I think she saved my life, you know, because I mean she she sold it to me. She took the time.
She could have easily said, get out of my room, you know, go to the principal's office like everybody else did. But she understood. She's like, okay, we got us right here. We got a class clown basically, uh yeah, class ground. But you know, hey, you know I can work with him. You know he you know, I'm gonna work with this kid. And it was because she took a chance on me. I took I take chances on people all the time because I see I can see me in a lot
of these youngsters. And you know, I think all of us, whether we want admit it or not, everybody likes to be acknowledged. And you're going to either get some attention to good way or the bad way, good or bad. People like to be acknowledged. People likes to be acknowledged. So at that time I was doing getting it a bad way by being a class clown. But she's taught me how to get it a good way. And so uh again, shots, ms, I gotta not. This ain't no
shot at right now. That's salute to Miss Oliver, Mrs Oliver, salute, salute, salute, shot, Shout out to the first one. My first grade teacher, Mrs Eppel Route Wilson Reynolds Elementary School. You know she owed school ethel my first great teacher who I know all day long, I was teacher's pet, and she would take me home in the car. I wrote in the teacher's car on the front seat. She would give me books and tell me, now you take this book home when you better learn how to read it. In kindergarten,
I didn't know how to spell my name. And again I tell that because that's a part of my journey. She would always tell me you're gonna be my sister one day? Can I be her sister? She I don't know how that's gonna happen. Till this day, I am her sister. We're in the same sorority. She made sure I didn't get to look in any other direction. Was Zeta far Beta Sorority Incorporated? And I'm in Lamba Zeta chapter.
I've been her sister since that little boy that you've got to meet at the time, he was right about six months old. No regrets, Taylor. At some point in your educational career, you became the dean of discipline at Milby High School. What exactly is a dean of discipline?
What are your task? What are you task to do? Well, as the title says discipline, I dealt with everything that students did that were violations or infractions according to the Student Code of Conduct, and more times than not, anything that involves sending students to j j a P, which is the Juvenile Justice Alternative Education program the county, sending them to ABC East or West, which is for students who commit violations but they also have some sort of
a mental disorder that may cause them to do these quote unquote violent acts. It seemed like a bad guy type job, like you know, like you know, it's like the guess the dr Doom, you know, like you come and see me bad things happening. You know, you only come to see me still hand out the punishment at the same time. Yeah, I had a student once who had a traumatic brain brain injury. He had been hit
by a car. Young, Hispanic male, but because of the brain injury, it caused him to have a very dangerous side to him. That was a part of his effect. He literally took a baseball bat and beat his grandfather. He didn't kill him, but he beat his grandfather. And he would come to school and he was very intimidating, very frightening. And students like that. You can't just send
them away or send them to an alternative setting. You have to go through a process which is with special education and make sure that you're not violating their rights. And it's called an m DR Manifestation determination review, which shows that what the student did is or is not
related to their illness for their disorder. I was so engaged into that that I just recently got another credential or certification as an educational diagnostician because I wanted to be able to ensure that students who were having mental or psychological disorders were being diagnosed properly. But how do you not violate their rights and keep the greater student body safe. Sometimes the students have to be in a contained area where they're not mixing with the general population.
And then there are other times that is a part of their UM i e P. Their educational plan, their individual educational plan that they do mix, but they may have to have a co teacher with them. Um they may only have two or three courses out in the general population, and then others they have to be in
a more contained area. It just depends on the situation. Yeah, can you share that story that you were telling me about where the kid came up to you one day, I think it was after school or something that he wanted you to leave the school stop staying so late, and share that story. UM. I was at an alternative school on the West Side and I was the principle over this particular section. We had elementary, middle, and high
school all under the same roof. And this particular student he was tatted up, he had his gang signs on him, he had a little tear drop by his eye and everything. And one day he came to he say, miss uh, you need to stop staying late. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I know you're here. I know you he at the school. It gets late. Stop staying here. I need you to go home. I said, how do you know that I'm here? He said, I know. I got people watching. But I told him she's okay,
don't bother her. Let's stop staying because one time I might not be able to stop somebody. M hmm. Thank you. That let me know that he liked me because he didn't have to warn me and I stopped staying. How come YEA, I don't have security after iurs when teachers are standing putting in over time. Well, UM, as far as H I. S D Is concerned, we do have security now. Even our security guards. They generally clock out at five o'clock. So if you're staying after that, then
more times than not, that's your choice. Is not something that you have to do. And if it's not an event, then you may not have security there for that event, which is I I do not um advice for myself or even the individuals who work under me, that they stay late, especially when it starts getting dark, leave at a decent amount of time and don't stay by yourself or don't walk out alone in regards to respect. You know,
I cover a lot of stories where kids challenge teachers. Today, they will swing on teachers, call them all kinds of names, everything but a child of God. Sir, what are some particular challenges that you have faced when trying to rank order and in the schools that you have worked there? Well, my first school, and I'll never forget, I was a green teacher like the curtains on the wall, and I had a student who was kind of acting up. Nothing
two unusual. Generally my classes were pretty decent, but this one particular day, a young man was very agitated and he said he was leaving. And I'm four ft ten and I stood in front of the door like wonder woman. I said, you are not boy, said that you're not leaving. You're gonna stay. And he said, Miss, you need to move and I said, no, I need you to sit down. You're you're not leaving today. I need you here in
this room with me. I need you to stay. And he said, Miss, I'm telling you I don't want to hurt you. And that was the first time I've ever had a student to say something like that to me. And I thought, Okay, this is not a drill, this is real. And I refused to move. I was going to be stoic and stand there, and I say, no, I need you to stay in the room. He politely came up. He grabbed me by my elbows and moved me over to the side and said, I told you I don't want to hurt you. And he walked out
the room. Needles to say, I was traumatized, and the kids in the room they were like, miss are you okay? And I was like, okay, I gotta hold it together because they're watching me. And I said, uh, somebody pushed the button. Just somebody just pushed the button, the emergency button, and nobody came. And I said, okay, y'all sit down. Don't you move. I cannot protect you if you leave the room. You stay in the room. I'm going to get help. So I went to get my own help.
And at that time, when I share what had happened, they said, well, that's the straw. I said, what do you mean that's the straw? We needed one more thing for that student to move him out of the school. He touched you. I was like, wow. I felt sorry for him, but I was so scared. I was more afraid than I was sorry for him at that moment, and then that's when they told me that he had a psychological imbalance and he has seen his mother's boyfriend blow her brains out and it affected him and there
were psychotic disorders in his family. Steve tuned for part two of the Sharne Richardson episode of the Gettle Boys We Vote Podcast. This episode was produced by A King and brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network at i Heart Radio