TC Today - Teachers College Columbia University

The Protector
When Names Can Hurt You
Adam Kelley understands how dangerous slurs can be—
and he’s shared that lesson with his students
Adam Kelley’s classroom at the Brooklyn High School
for Leadership and Community Service is a Safe
Zone, where name-calling is never allowed. “New
students push to understand the boundaries, so most of the
time we need to have that conversation again about community
and about respect,” says Kelley.
Kelley knows just how damaging slurs can be. As a Peace
Corps volunteer teaching kindergartners in a village in
Uganda, he was outed by a woman who was attempting to
blackmail him. The punishment for male homosexuality
under Ugandan tribal law is severe, and Kelley had to flee,
returning to the States.
Someone differently constituted might have rethought his
career path at that point, but Kelley, though shaken,
became even more committed to multiculturalism and community
building.
He threw himself into summer intensive training with the
Teachers College Peace Corps Fellows, a program that
recruits returning Peace Corps volunteers to teach in highneed
New York Public Schools. The Peace Corps Fellows has
trained more than 700 returning Peace Corps volunteers
since its inception in 1985, teachers who are consistently
rated better than other first-year teachers.
New students push to
understand the boundaries,
so most of the time we need
to have that conversation
again about community and
about respect.
In what turned out to be a pivotal teaching moment, Kelley
eventually told his Brooklyn students the circumstances of
his departure from Uganda. “Sometimes the students who’ve
been in my class before educate the new students, and they
will stick up for me. They have the conversation about what
the slur means, and they educate the new students.”
His students also identify with his experience because “they
don’t want to be saved. They want a second chance, and
they see that me teaching at the school and interacting
with them was my second chance. Sharing vulnerability with
students who feel guarded in the school atmosphere allows
them to focus on their learning because they’re not questioning
the personal relationships they have with each other
and with the teacher.”
As far as Kelley is concerned, teaching is all about forming
bonds, and even looking back on his final moments in his
Ugandan village, he stresses that two of his friends brought
their families to see him off. “They defied their culture to
come and say goodbye. That took courage.”
As he should know.
— Emily Rosenbaum
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photograph by Heather van uxem