Welcome to the T.H.U.G. Academy

*WARNING* The contents of this blog are a mix of my opinion, stories of my experience inside/outside of the classroom, and my interpretation of facts. If you are easily offended, please stop reading now. I also apologize for the length of the article. I wanted to give some context for where some of my ideas are coming from!

What is this all about?

This blog is about education. It’s titled T.H.U.G. academy as an homage to the theme I used in my classroom during my first two years teaching. Most people associate the word “thug” with negative images of crime, violence, and, in today’s world, people (in particular men) of color. I spent a great deal of time in my first months teaching trying to find ways to motivate and engage my students. I studied their behavior, their conversations, and their academic strengths/weaknesses in order to look for a glimmer of something that might help me help them. Then it hit me; regardless of our age difference, my kids and I had a shared LOVE for HIP HOP. (To give some context: my school has a population that was 99.9% Black or Latino and had over 90% of its population on free or reduced lunch.)

Recently, popular figures such as Bill O’Reilly and Bill Cosby (ironic that two Bill’s don’t make a right) have spoken out about the negative influence of rap music and hip hop culture. In some regards, the Bill’s are right to speak out against the homophobia, sexism, and consumerism propagated in rap music. What they fail to understand is that we can’t condemn an entire culture, and by proxy its generation of followers, simply because we don’t agree with certain facets of it. Their arguments regarding the culture’s shortcomings obscure the fact that they are completely overlooking the ways in which hip hop and urban culture allows kids to connect with artists, see people who look like them grow to be successful, and hear narratives that reflect many of the issues that they deal with on a daily basis. While I in no way accept all facets of hip hop culture, I do not reject it upfront because of its many flaws. Instead, I embrace what Tricia Rose calls a “love ethic” by which I both admire it and criticize it freely hoping that it will evolve and continue to grow.

The outright rejection of hip hop by people like the Bill’s, administrators in school’s across the country, and in particular, teachers in urban classrooms has led to what education scholars regard as “oppositional behavior.” By devaluing the very culture that kids feel a part of, the message we are sending kids is that they are, like the music they listen to, worthless. In response, kids become disengaged because they feel like they are being forced to embrace a different culture or set of values over their own. This sort of cultural imperialism is a major issue in conversations on urban education throughout the country and one that isn’t engaged in adequately.

As a result of these frustrations, I spent months trying to find ways to build a bridge between the music/culture that I was raised with/by and a public education system that saw no value in it. I knew that I was seen as a “thug” by many teachers and administrators (I dress in what some call “urbanwear,” I have long curly hair, and in my second year I taught with a gold grill in my teeth) and I also knew that this was how they viewed many of my kids. One day at the gym while listening to Tupac (the irony that the man who proclaimed “thug life” would be my inspiration) I finally came up with it: T.H.U.G = True Hardworking Urban Gentleman/Gal. While I’d heard cheesy acronyms like this before (SWAG as students who achieve greatness and PIMP public intellectual with moral principles) my term connected with the qualities that we associate with a “thug” and simply recontextualized them to fit in an academic setting. I explained to my students that the loyalty, hard work, dependability, aggression, success, and other qualities that so many of them associate with “thugs” could translate to achievement in the classroom and beyond if channeled correctly.

I made posters for my classroom emblazoned with my acronyms and introduced new “hip hop quotes of the week” with modern and old school artists who spoke about positive themes. I told the students stories of my own life and how I had overcome struggles to be successful. I told them about my immigrant parents, my teenage mother, my heart surgery, and the reason why I taught: because people had invested in me and so I felt obliged and honored to give back by also investing in people. Gangster flicks from the 70’s and 80’s always depict the “thugs” as taking care of their own and working to make their families and sometimes community better; I wanted my students to understand how important our individual successes were for our collective success. At the end of my first year teaching, my students had the highest level of proficiency in the 13 year history of the school, my advanced Algebra 1 students had a 100% passing rate on their state exam, one student who had been in the country for two years made a perfect score, and statistical analysis showed that I ranked in the top 25th percentile of teachers in the state of Florida.

Midway through my second year teaching the vice superintendent visited my classroom to see the “rockstar” math teacher in action. The man didn’t speak a word to me, looked around for a few minutes and then walked out. That afternoon, my principal approached me and said that his boss had some serious concerns about the way I was teaching my kids to glorify criminals and hoodlums. He also said that I, as the only Latino male teacher in the building, should set a better example. I kindly reminded my principal that I was/am one of those kids and that I was one of two people in the building with an Ivy League degree (he wasn’t the other). I then informed him that if he wanted me to do something different then he would have to show me a teacher with the same type of students, the same level of success, who did things the district’s way… That person didn’t and doesn’t yet exist. Until then, I declared, I will continue to be a T.H.U.G for my kids. The day after the superintendent’s visit I put up a new poster in my room: “Yes I am going to say that I’m a T.H.U.G., because I came from the gutter and I’m still here!” – Tupac. I told my kids the story (I’m VERY honest with my students) and said that it was just another example of people “hatin'” on us. My kids took the administrators words as a sign of disrespect and went to town on their standardized tests. This time, even though my algebra classes were doubled from the year before, we still had 93% of students pass. Today my T.H.U.G.’s are in high schools all across Miami enrolled in AP and Honors classes. Many of them are in the top 10 of their grade and most of them keep in touch with me. This blog is for them and all the other T.H.U.G.’s out there!