10/01/2026
September 30, 2026
I've been a teacher, senior administrator, trustee, educator trainer, and paid consultant in public, private, boarding, day, parochial, non-denominational schools on both coasts. I first became a teacher because one of my first teachers betrayed me as a 3-5 year old baby girl who did not speak English and had immigrant parents. I told an adult. And, no adult stood up for me.
For clarity, I didn't remember this ongoing s*xual trauma until I went through months-long training with San Francisco Woman Against R**e (SFWAR) 20 years later as a way for me to make sense of my 1998 r**e as a first year teacher on the East Coast. I told a few friends and moved out of my basement apartment the next day. Why didn't I report?
By the start of the next academic year (1999), I moved back to the Bay and through my training with SFWAR, my memories of the continued s*xual abuse at the hands of my preschool teacher came flooding back. I did some digging and learned the adults opted to keep it quiet so that the school and the family wouldn't experience negative consequences.
I went on to find solace in the classroom. A place where I thrived. Where I was seen and valued. My excellence as a student gave me credibility as an important person, to myself. I needed to set in stone that I was someone who was someone...I decided to be the best and accumulate as many pieces of evidence that I was not, in fact, someone who could be hurt, ignored, silenced, or discarded. I am not defined as a child who was verbally and physically abused for what a grown man did by their community.
Last night I went to bed thinking about this most recent, public example of patriarchy and misogyny at Cornell- in both the attack, non-response, and current response. (I have a personal tie to Cornell University because as I junior in high school I earned a full scholarship to attend their summer college program). As an aside, as I walked to a Political Science class in June of 1993 with a peer. He shared with me his family's concern over Clinton nominating "a Jew" to the Supreme Court and their concern over the power forming for women and outsiders. I'm born and raised in the Bay Area. I'd been "taught" about the Holocaust, but not in any way that led me to understand that Anti-Semitism was alive and well. (There is another post to come to delve into this). I asked questions and did not back down, but I not equipped to hold my own (because I was not afforded the information and skills to discuss).
Last night, I couldn't sleep because the personal assaults, the assaults of my friends and classmates, and those of my students throughout the years swam through my brain like a deluge. It's 2:30 AM and I'm still awake trying to drown out the mental images and visceral feelings as my mind shuffles through the Rolodex (a "highlight" reel) of abuse I've endured and witnessed.
This is an old story, yet educational administrators and others continue to look aghast in horror. I worked at a school where a young woman had s*x with four man/boy football players, while one other boy/man videotaped (without her knowledge). She also didn't know there would be more than boy/man present. The student reported the event to me and at that school, we were instructed to report to administrators so that they could make the call to CPS (as the "senior mandated reporters"). I asked if I should report it and I was told "no". The student was then called for a disciplinary hearing as she had broken school rules and she requested that I serve as her "advocate" during the disciplinary hearing. I did. I had a lot of "feelings" (I cried) during that "hearing" as she was given the same "punishment" as the 5 boys. Her mother reached out to me and she later called the school wondering if she should call the police for "s*xual assault" or "r**e".
The administration called me in and instructed me to "get a lawyer" because I had broken protocol. The school was concerned that this could become a police matter and instructed me not to talk to the student nor their parent. I got a lawyer and wrote a testimony to protect myself from any attempt to make my efforts to expose wrongdoing into something it wasn't. I had a 1:1 meeting with an administrator who told me, "You take teaching too seriously." I rebutted, "This is about integrity." They laughed and said, "Oh please...it's not that serious."
Unfortunately, I have many more examples of schools looking the other way in order to maintain a revenue stream. The donors, the full-tuition pay families, and the systemically marginalized educators used as window treatment to "dance" without making too much of a raucous.
I teach to be the someone that was not there for me. I've never been quiet. I won't be still.
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