Peter Rambo (author photo)
In 2008, I jumped at the opportunity to move to Phoenix, Arizona, to teach 8th grade science in an area where 98 percent of the students were Latinx, 46 percent were living in poverty, and 99 percent received free lunch. The county's 4,100 homicides, 1,000 aggravated assaults, and 2,100 violent crimes scared most teachers away, but I was born in an area of Michigan that was both high poverty and high crime, which made this school feel more like home to me.
Brick by brick and day by day, I built an inquiry-based science program and started a sustainability club. I coached the basketball team and rallied them to their first-ever playoff berth, and with my incredible team of amazing teachers, helped our 8th-grade students earn the highest passing percentage in the school’s history — proving that academic change begins and ends with high-quality instruction.
But what I am most proud of is that we fundraised enough money to take our 8th-graders on a trip to our nation’s Capitol. When we knew we were going, for real, for real going, I wanted to prepare my students for the worst, because my students were dealing with the harsh complexities of unlawful crackdowns and violent immigrations sweeps every single day.
I could not teach them how to cope with having their mother taken away. But I could teach them what I knew. How to survive while Black. So, I shared with them how to safely show identification (wear it around your neck so you don’t have to reach down), place precious items in bins (yes, your iPhone has to go in the bin), and how to remain calm if we were pulled aside for extra screening at the airport (absolutely no backtalk).
I taught them how to keep their hands in plain sight and make sure those gringos can see both their hands at all times. I taught them about stop-and-frisk, avoiding sudden movements, and keeping both hands out of their pockets. And never run, even if you are afraid, even if you believe that you are innocent. I said “do not run, do not resist” over and over again, as if these phrases were Newton's laws of physics. I knew from personal experience that an outburst at the wrong place or time could mean that they die. I carried the same burdens and hurt in my eyes as I saw in theirs.
My kids put my advice to practice quickly. Outside of one student being interrogated by a Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport TSA agent, things went smoothly. I was so proud of how my students followed procedure — since Arizona practiced illegal immigration measures at the time, it wouldn’t have taken much for them to get detained. Before we knew it, my class was checking into our Baltimore hotel. And my students were so well-behaved they were praised by the hotel manager. But I couldn’t stop worrying about visiting the Capitol building.
On the way there, I was jolted out of my anxious state by students squealing...squealing about squirrels. I swear to you, they thought those squirrels were the cutest darn things in the whole wide world, and they just had to get a photo of a squirrel for their brothers and sisters. I laughed with them about this all the way to the Capitol building. The bus stopped and we were silent.
It was more serene than I imagined. I could taste the humidity, hear the birds singing, feel the warm sunshine on my face, and I saw a new excitement across my students' beautiful brown faces. We walked into the Capitol like supermodels from Project Runway. I swear to you it was like a scene from a reality TV show. All us young and gifted minorities all up in that meeting place of the United States Congress like it was a fashion show.
Until I heard the sharp ring of an emergency bell during our tour. It felt like every dang-ole gringo eyeball in that building was looking directly at us like we set off the metal detectors, like we had to be the ones that did something wrong. This filled my heart with so much despair because this ugly warning sound mimicked an immigration raid alert. None of us could see what had caused this commotion, but we knew what we needed to do to be safe. The sharp noise continued to travel down the hallway as we made our way outside. As we had practiced, we collectively took a deep breath, prepared our IDs by making them visible from our necks and slid our arms up in the air five phalanges at time, metacarpals, carpels, ulna, humerus. We shed our childhood joy and innocence and prepared for a massive security sweep.
We took another deep breath and clustered into what must have looked like a Black power fist. We were so united as a group that a Black security officer asked us, “What tour group y’all with?” We gave him our tour guide card. All the while, armed men and women stormed the streets outside of the Capitol. My students and I remained calm. Our cell phones were buzzing out of control but we knew not to reach in our pockets until we got back onto the bus.
We needed to get back on our bus and to our hotel ASAP, but it was difficult because it looked like all the streets were blocked by people with guns. I was starting to show sheer panic on my face and then that same security guard that took our tour guide card from before gave me the head nod, that “I got ya, Brah” head nod. And, before I knew it, I saw our bus pulling up. Somehow this Brother took our card, contacted our tour group, coordinated our bus driver, and got us picked up and taken off the premises
We learned later from our hotel lobby TV that an 88-year-old white supremacist had entered the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and fatally shot a museum police officer and since that museum was near the Capitol, they shut our tour down. I felt so defeated when I learned that this was the reason why we were sent back early. That is, until I heard one of my students squeal “squirrels” and then fall flat on his face in the front lobby because he was trying to get outside to take its picture.
Everyone in that moment, including me, burst into joyous laughter. Because if we were to look at this crisis through the lens of a kid from Phoenix who traveled all the way to Washington, D.C., for the first time — Brah, what could be better than a squirrel?
Charles Payne is a Madison transplant, certified teacher, and self-taught social artist from Michigan. He has a master’s degree in education.
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