Cheryl Chun is originally from Alea, HI, and is a 2006 D.C. Region corps member. This blog post is reproduced with permission from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, NJ. It was first published on the Human Capital Blog.
Before I was a medical student, I was a teacher. I taught high school mathematics for two years in the District of Columbia.
Being a public school teacher was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. I spent my days trying to not only excite my students about mathematics, but also to help change their life trajectories by encouraging them to go to college.
Neither of these tasks was easy. Many of my students cited math as their least favorite subject in school. And despite the college atmosphere my colleagues and I worked diligently to create, many of my students struggled to accomplish the necessary coursework and SAT scores they needed for college.
First and foremost, I’m a working mother of two young children. This role looms large in shaping my current perspective on education. It is interwoven with my experience growing up in low-income circumstances—as a little black girl in a small Midwestern town whose trajectory was changed via entry to a gifted program in third grade.
Heather Harding with her family. Photo by Satsun Photography.
My six-year-old son has been attending charter schools in Washington D.C., since he was two years old. I want several things in a school for him: quality instruction, a balanced and enriched curriculum, racially and socioeconomically diverse classmates, and safety. I want much the same for my three-year-old daughter, who will join her brother at school in the fall, but I have to admit that I worry a little bit more about my son given his “dreaded” status as a black boy in the US education system.
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