Learning to Not Try Hard

Maybe because I don't have their faces to remind me that everything is okay, that I'm a different person now than I was before. Right. And you know, and I do, I always want to make sure that my students understand. It's like, look, yes I'm Dr. Bruce Hoskins now, but I wasn't always this person.

And so when I experienced the trauma that I did in the third grade in regards to my educational experience, and yes folks, I am talking about something that goes all the way back to me for to the third grade, 40 years ago, I remember the series of events almost like it was yesterday. I kid you not. And so for me that lets me know that this is definitely one of those traumatic events that happens that literally stamps your on your heart, on your soul even, right?

And let me get something real straight right now. And that is, I know that stuff like this happens to people all the time. Okay? And so I don't want to make this into a Yo what was me or something like that. What I want to make sure that you understand is that when you come from a historically marginalized group or groups like myself, then all of a sudden one series of events doesn't define you as a person, right?

Because that one series of events, it could be fixed to whatever degree or you can be re socialized and you can be socialized in other spaces that that's not who you are.

But when you come from a historically marginalized space like myself or like I said historically spaces like myself, what you find out is that, oh no , you may have this one experience but is also reinforced culturally and socially and an iMedia and you know, through your families and stuff like that as so it's reinforced in other spaces. So I really want to make sure people understand, it's like, look, this is not just one story of one person.

This is a story about how historically marginalized people are. There's no other word for it, oppressed through the traditional k through 12 system. Okay. And so that's where I want to kind of pick this up and just talking about how in the third grade, so I need you to give you a little bit of context here is that I am black just in case I haven't made that clear before or in case you haven't visited my website.

I am black even though my mom is black and Jay or excuse me, even though my mom is Japanese now I know that that's really hard for some of Y'all to digest, but for real on black and yes, my mom's Japanese and so when I tell you stuff like you know, my mom barely spoke English and stuff like that, then hopefully you have a context for that. There's plenty of room for people to have a multiracial identity now. But back then really you had to , I'm going to just say choose sides if you would.

And so for me it was actually really easy for me to choose a side. Actually I didn't really choose the side to side chose me. It was black. And um, for whatever reason people didn't question whether I was black my whole life. And so just kind of live with that one for folks. I'll talk about that, you know , in latest basis . But right now that's not the focus, right? And so here I am, I'm a black kid. I am interpreted as black. That's really important to understand.

But then also is that I was actually a very disruptive student in class. And look, this is no st story, right? It was like I'm , I'm not a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but what I want to make sure people are questioning as I'm telling you this story, it's like is why was I disruptive?

And I'm going to tell you why I was disruptive and I truly believed that any teacher who is paying attention to their students and sees their students, all of them, right, sees them as students, sees them as people that they could have saw this. I promise you this, the reason why I was so disruptive in class quite simply was because I was bored. But I don't mean bored like bored with the work. I was bored because I would complete my work faster than everyone else.

And then I would start talking to the students around me. That's who I was as a student. Right? It's like all day. That is me all day folks. Right? And so then I really believe that if a teacher is really paying attention to their students, that this is a really easy thing to actually see. And that what I needed, I would argue is that I needed to be challenged more, but we'll wait for that punchline closer towards the end here. Right.

The other thing that you need to understand about me is that I grew up poor, right ? My father wasn't around, my mother barely spoke English. So there's , there's some help there. And she always worked at a very, you know, manufacturing , low level assembly line, manufacturing jobs or restaurant jobs and things like that. And so understand this, this is a phrase that I don't think happens anymore. Well, it definitely happens.

It just doesn't happen the way that it was back when I was young and that is, I was a latch key kid. Okay. And so a latchkey kid for the people who don't know a latchkey kid is , is a kid who has a key tied around their neck, right? It was like in some way, shape or form. It's like you got a key, you got a kid and that's your house key. Right?

And the reason why you have this house key is because your school doesn't have any afterschool programs for your parents to put you in of because I was poor and my school was underfunded and so yes, we didn't have any after school programs and things like that. And so what I had to do is I had to walk home and I had to open the door to my house and I knew that there was going to be no one there to watch me. Right.

My older brother and my oldest sister, they got home later of , they got let out of school later on. And so then I never had any, you know, for rental supervision when I got home. Period. Right. And even if my brother and sister were there, my brother's only two years older than me. And I mean, I'm talking about the third grade and said, what am I eight my brothers would be, would've been like, what? 10 and my sister, she's five years older, so she would've been man 13 or something like that.

And so even if they were home, that would be still weird. Right? And probably honestly illegal today. Right? And so be that as it may, right. One of the things that my mom, right, the poor, you know, background and all of this stuff and my mom, she had to work her behind off in order to make ends meet. Right. As a , one of the things that was just a completely understood for me was that I needed to know how to stay out of trouble.

Okay. So that when I came home, when my mom came home that I didn't add more stress to her already super stressful life. And I really valued that as a child. And so when I came home, I came home and I would stay out of trouble. But the way that I did this, and so here's, here's the beginning of all the trauma. Now, it's not that any of that wasn't traumatic enough, but let me, let me say, it's like now I'm starting with the trauma part of this and the education system.

And so what I would do in order to stay outta trouble is I would do these math problems. It's like my teacher, she gave us this math book in the third grade and she never assigned any work out of it. I mean literally she gave it to us and we took it home and we never used it. Right. And I know that might sound weird to some folks, but that is exactly what happened. And so when I got home right there , there was no assignments out of this book.

And so when I would get home, I would actually just do math problems. I know that that actually sounds like really sick and twisted to some of y'all , especially if your mouth phobics right. It's like, look, I'm doing math problems on my own volition. Like straight up. I'm just doing them. But part of it was because I needed to stay out of trouble. The other part, I was bored but, and the other part is that there wasn't no cartoon network back in my day.

Back in my day, it wasn't no cartoon network and so no 24 hour, you know, a day cartoon station and stuff like that. And so literally I had to figure out a way to entertain myself. I chose to do math problems and the same way that I would do Sudoku puzzles and stuff like that now. Right? And so here I am literally just plugging away at these problems in this mouth book. And it took me about a month. It took me about a month for me to be done with the math book.

I'm literally, I'm being dead serious. It's like, so I had all these papers and I was just doing problems out of the math book and, and it was this big old stack of papers and I remember turning in those stack of papers into my third grade teacher, right. I gave them , gave her that stack of papers and she kind of looked at me weird. Right? I would think that that's the normal response.

You kind of look at a kid weird when they used to hand you a big old stack of papers that you weren't expecting to get. And she was like, so what is this? And I told her, it's the math book, right? I wasn't articulate. I was a third grade kid. I'm like eight years old. So don't expect a whole bunch of good stuff from this side of the story from me. Folks. Don't, don't, don't try to come at me with Bruce . You should have used your agency better. I was in the third grade, so chill with that.

But anyway, so I told her it's the book and then I kinda walked away. I really didn't have any expectations of the space. I mean, like I said, kid you, I'll come and keep on coming to this space. I'm in the third grade. I really don't have any expectations of what was supposed to happen at that moment. And so, but now I want you to think about what do you think happened after I turned in the papers, right? And so, well here I'll give you this part is that she turned, she gave them back to me.

It probably took her about a week or so for her to give her to give me all those papers back. And when I get them back, they had a whole bunch of red marks on them as well . I really want to make sure you understand I'm not so mathematical genius. I just happened to do the math book. Right. The thing though that I saw that when she gave me all these papers with the red marks on him , what I saw was that, oh, oh, that's what that meant.

Like I literally was making the same mistake over and over again because my interpretation of what the magic book said to me was just different than what, than what it really, you know, Matt , right. And so, but I kept on making the same mistake and so when I corrected that one mistake, everything became right from there. And so everything that I do , I'm not imagining is , but everything that I did was very correctable. Once I saw it, I was like, oh, okay. Well, that was what that meant.

And just come kind of kept on going through and I saw where my mistakes were. And my question to you now is, what do you think happened to me? What do you think happened between this teacher and I after those moments, you know what I'm going to build up the drama even a little bit more right now is that I shared this story with a child development class, right? And I asked him this question, I was like, Yo, so what do you think this teacher did with me?

And Yo, it was like they said things that were peer to me, genius to say. It was like, oh, does she put you in a higher level math course? The answer, no, she didn't do that. Somebody else said is like , did they , did they give you just another book? And I said, that's a great idea. Nope, that's not what happened either. And the students quickly started figuring out like, oh well what the heck did happen? And then I gave him one like, Yo, she didn't even give me a good job or a outta boy.

Hey, you know what, you made some mistakes, but let me , let's, let's work through some of these and let's, let's, let's develop you. You know, it was like, let's, let's develop this talent that you have or at least desire to do math, right? That didn't even happen. You want to know what happened. Nothing happened. Literally nothing happened. And I lived through that moment almost on a daily basis, folks, like for real. And I don't know how much I realized, Oh, I'm , I'm fairly confident.

I didn't realize at the time how trauma ties you in this. I mean, I was only in the third grade how traumatizing this was actually going to be to me. This is what that moment taught me. What I learned in that moment was that going above and beyond is not appreciated , is not expected and it's not necessary. Honestly, I feel like my whole life would have changed.

There's this moment in my life was just appreciate it whether she gave me another book or not, whatever, but just appreciate it because what I, what people don't understand is that , um, again, and I'm not saying this an ego is that how little I actually worked all the way through from indicate through 12 system after that point. Now granted I am. I you'd like in high school I was like a 3.5, you know, the student, and this was really before all the AP classes, stuff started kicking in.

And so 3.5 was a wizard , you know, rock solid, really high GPA to have. And I never worked hard for it. I never tried to work hard for anything. And that's, that is the honest truth folks. I, I could catalog my way. I could, I could ease my way. I could rely, I could chill my way to A's and B's. That's the student I was. And I found out relatively quickly that this was good. It was good enough and people didn't bother me. Right. I wasn't getting in trouble.

Uh , well I didn't get in trouble until after I was done with my homework and started talking in class a lot. But we'll talk about that one a little bit later on. But this was what happened to me as a result of that. And I can tell you now with confidence, I didn't go full speed again. I kid you not. I didn't go full speed again until December 26 2006 and I already know some of y'all are like, Yo, how do you know the day like that?

I could tell you why I know the day like that is because on November 30th, 2006, this is when I went through my first defense of my dissertation, November 30 2006 this is a day that is burnt into my brain forever because that's the day what I failed my first dissertation defense and here's the deal as that I knew, I knew that I had turned in the paper that was less than my best. I knew it was, but by that time it had become normal to me to do less than my best.

It became normal to me because I was just like, Yo. It also became normal to me because it was a defense mechanism against the pain of rejection, if you will. Because of I had done my best and still got hammered for it. I was just like, my ego just couldn't stand something like that. And so you know what?

I'm going to do less than my best and if I wind up getting like a B or something that cool, I just get a B. But if I do less than my best to get a c or a d, well at least I know that I didn't do my absolute very best on that thing. And so that became a defense mechanism for me my whole entire life.

It became normal for me, but when I went into my first offense, I got absolutely body-slammed in that space and my, My dissertation folks, my committee, they were like, Yo, they didn't, they weren't disappointed if you would, but they, they let me know specifically, Bruce, this is nowhere near to your best. You need to step your game up. And I was wondering how I was going to do that. And here, this is how clear they made it to me, that my dissertation suck .

One of the people on the Dissertation Committee, he 11 pages of critique to let me know how bad my dissertation was, 11 pages of critique folks, 11 pages of critique to let me know, he's like, Yo, you are not bringing your a game. Stepped the game up. And I'm like, wow.

I was not expecting this at least to the degree that it came at me because I had spent my whole life damn near my whole life doing things the way that I had just done it with no negative ramifications, you know, big time, reverend negative ramifications. But in this space I got turned down and it was extremely difficult. And the other thing that I experienced in the space, and thank goodness that I had the big Homie , uh , Edward Polaroid , uh , he was in the space.

Now he is Dr Edward Polaroid . Um, he wasn't Dr Edward Polar at the time, but he was able to help me out because he came with me to my defense. And , um, and even told me he was like, Bruce, when you were in that space, there was no time that you ever became Dr. Bruce Hoskins. There was no time in that space where you ever became Dr. Bruce Hoskins . You stayed a student the whole time. And I was like, thank you for that. I understand. That makes sense to me.

And the reason why I can say that it wasn't until December 26 , 2006 until I went full speed again is because after that, after I didn't pass my first defense , I still had my job here at MiraCosta. Right? And so I had to finish my semester and I looked through that 11 pages to critique and I actually figured out, I was like, you know what it's like as , as bad as this is 11 pages of freaking critique. Right?

Um , there was only four things that he kept saying and that if I address those in my theory section, then most of the critique that he's saying will actually go away. Or at least it'll be explained. And I'm like, cool. And so it wasn't so like daunting of a task, but that was, but uh , of course it was a huge, huge, gigantic deal to me. It's still right.

And so again, so the reason why I could say it was December 26 , 2006 is that, that's the day after Christmas and I kid you not, I was married already.

I had some kids, you know, I have had family and I literally like kiss my kids and my wife like almost goodbye because I went to my office on December 26th and they didn't see oh damn near didn't see me again for four weeks because I had buried myself in my work for four weeks and in four weeks I added 40 pages and 70 citations to my dissertation. Now, I don't know if that means anything to you, but that is more writing and more reading than I have ever done in my life before.

And I literally turned it on. Right. In retrospect, I'm so happy that my committee turned me down for the first defense because now I knew what I was capable of and if I would've got my, my phd with just a minimum effort, I would never have the confidence that I have now that I actually am pretty smart academically. I still struggle with that, but it's better now.

So just to finish this up, because I want to let you know, it was like, look, I'm telling you, I went into my second defense with that little Wayne Swag . Like, oh, I was, I was so ready. You have no idea how ready I was. But when I walked into the defense, into my defense, my professors were already standing up. Now I didn't know what that meant. As a matter of fact, my dissertation chair , uh, Elaine Bell Kaplan , she was like, oh, we're just stretching our legs.

And that made perfect sense to me. And so I was like, okay , cool. You know, and so I was about to take a seat and right before I took a seat, she was like, Nah , we just , I'm just playing. Congratulations Dr. Bruce Hoskins. And my whole life changed in that moment because I realized that working at 100% was not only possible, but where it could get me to . And so what we need to do, if you're truly hearing what I'm saying, this is what we need to do.

We need to reteach ourselves about why students may be disruptive in the class because this all started with this disruptive kid. But to recognize that there's all kinds of reasons for a kid to be disruptive. But if we don't reteach ourselves, we can wind up putting these kids into these historically marginalized boxes and devalue them based on that rather than seeing the potential in them. Right? And so we need to see that potential in these historically marginalized groups.

We need to reteach ourselves how to see that potential, right? Because we have to understand that we have been socialized to not see it. And that is everyone. Folks is not just white people, is not just males, is not just straight people. Whatever the heck you want to put into that space. It's not just that we have all been socialized to not see it to Nazi in these historically marginalized spaces. That's why I, to whatever degree they have been historically marginalized. Right.

And so we also, we have to reteach ourselves about who would benefit for for being pushed towards excellence is that if you w w look, if you truly understand what I'm saying, we could change millions of lives period. And I would argue we would even change more lives within historically marginalized spaces because this group has more untapped potential in it because of how we've been socialized. Right.

And so then if we are going to make a difference, we have to learn how to re teach ourselves how to see our students because we have been socialized away from seeing their potential, their greatness at everything that they can be in their lives, all the greatness that could be in that space. We had been trained not to see it. We had been trained to say that is deviant. We've been trained to say that it is less than we have been trained to say this is unacceptable.

We have been trained to see it that way. We have been socialized in those spaces and we have to re socialize ourselves. We have to reteach ourselves to have the impact on student equity that we know that we can. Anyway, I ran way longer on that one and I thought all those folks, I hope you learned something. Peace. Thank you for listening to this episode of reteach.

If you want to learn more about me or my open source introduction to sociology textbook, please go to Bruce hoskins.com in closing, I want to leave us all with a question. If you learned something today that you think would help close your student equity gaps, how long would it take to incorporate this into your classroom? A year, a semester, next month. Today. No matter the timetable , we must commit ourselves to becoming better teachers. Our students deserve it.

All of them, not just the ones that are good already.