Laughing, debating, and avoiding distraction

5 questions for transitional kindergarten teacher Alicia Simba

I have been so honored by the reader mail that I’ve gotten in the wake of publishing Learning in Public. I get messages on instagram from parents waiting in the pick-up line, emails from church book clubs, even shouted at on the street by people passing by on bicycles, kids in tow, and, most recently, even got a free haircut from a reader who took on the daunting task of chopping my wild covid mane! It’s like a steady stream of sweet nothings that are really quite something, saying “it mattered.” It’s sort of all a writer needs.

But among the many favorite sources of feedback I’ve had on the book, Alicia Simba is tops. A recent graduate of my own alma mater, Barnard College, a Tanzanian with a fierce brain and big heart, and a teacher in my own town, to boot. When I found out that she loved the book and wanted to talk about it, I immediately jumped on the chance to have coffee with her. We had a no holds bar conversation about my book, so many other books, and so many issues dear to us both (race, schools, the Middle East, organizing, activism, etc. etc). She’s interviewing me for our alma mater’s magazine so I couldn’t resist taking the chance to interview her here. Meet Alicia…

Courtney Martin: You became a classroom teacher during the pandemic. What a wild time to start any job, much less that job. What were you most surprised by?

Alicia Simba: I was definitely surprised at how fun the experience was, given the absolutely terrible context. There were challenges with technology, students and their families were getting sick and losing loved ones, others were experiencing housing insecurity -- the pandemic was and continues to be wrecking ball, particularly in the lives of students. And at the same time, every morning and every afternoon, my class and I found ways to laugh and be silly and we had fun.

That’s the best part of working with kids is that even on the absolute worst day, I’ll have at least one moment where I’m bursting into laughter and just filled with overwhelming love, and thankfully for me, COVID couldn’t get in the way of that.

I was also really surprised at all the growth students made, even during the pandemic. The hyperfocus and anxieties around “learning loss,” I felt, ignored the fact that kids are always learning. That’s how they are wired, to always be learning. COVID meant that they maybe weren’t where standards said they should be, but my students learned so much throughout the year, academically and socio-emotionally, and I was really proud of how they grew in the space of a year, even if they didn’t always “meet the standard.”

You are at a school that narrowly escaped closure this month. What do you think people don't understand about school closures?

I’m new to Oakland Unified and school closures, so there’s actually a lot that I personally don’t understand. One thing that I thought a lot about is the impact of school closures on the grown-ups that work in those buildings.

Historically we know that when Black schools in the US closed in the name of integration, Black teachers were pushed out of the profession. Now, decades later, the schools that are being closed are the ones that don’t only have Black students, but Black teachers, Black principals, Black community schools managers, Black counselors, Black custodians, and all the other grown-ups that keep schools functioning and play a critical role in students’ lives.

What happens to Black staff members pushed out by school closures? What happens to the lifelines they provide to their students? How can districts hire and retain Black employees who can then be told at any moment that their entire community is up for closure?

You and I both went to Barnard College, an all women’s college. (At very different eras!) Now you’re teaching at a predominately Black school. As much as I stan for integration, I really believe in these kinds of affinity spaces. What makes them so important from your own experience?

I would not be the person I am today had I not gone to a predominantly Black African middle and high school and then gone to a women’s college because they really shielded me from a lot of the “distractions” -- to borrow from Toni Morrison -- that come with racism and sexism.

In these affinity spaces, I got to worry less about fitting in and microaggressions and actually, the priority was to center and celebrate identities that are often undervalued and underrated. When I was 12, I went to boarding school in Southern Africa, in the kingdom of Eswatini, and our teachers constantly pushed us to be proud of our Black African heritage, from the songs we sang, the books we read, and the history we learned about.

Then I went to Barnard and similarly, the emphasis was how amazing and exceptional and bold we were as women, and trans and non-binary folks. This is not to say that these educational spaces are absent from racism or sexism -- or classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and more. But for sure, in these affinity spaces, starting from a place of common understanding and respect made navigating those contexts so much less stressful. I could focus on identifying who I was without constantly battling microaggressions, feelings of isolation, and all the other emotions I’ve experiences in predominantly White, predominantly male settings.

And so when it came to looking for somewhere to teach, when the opportunity to teach in a school that was predominantly Black in terms of students and staff, I was excited to take it, so I didn’t have to be the one Black teacher -- because that sucks -- and I could also focus on instilling in students the same pride in my racial identity that I was taught when I was in school.

We met because you read my book and pitched a story to our alumnae magazine. When we chatted about it, you said that you were appropriately cynical about the book before reading it--which I just loved. It made me wonder--are you often drawn to things that you have reservations about? That seems like such a cool, curious quality that I want to encourage in myself and my kids. How did you get that way?

I love how you phrased it as “being drawn to things that I have reservations about” when the explanation is a lot more obnoxious -- I am often drawn to where I find discourse, because when I see people having an opinion, I also have to have an opinion! If there’s a book or movie or TV show that’s being reviewed, I’ll look for everything that is out there, and then I look into it for myself so that I can join the conversation and actually know what I am talking about. The only thing is that, because I’m not really on social media anymore, I end up just annoying my friends and family with my hot takes that they never asked for.

So what happened with Learning in Public was that I saw article after article after podcast about it and I went from skeptical to being like, “Okay let me see what this book is about,” and ended up being like, “Oh my goodness, this is amazing. I never thought of these things before,” and absolutely loved it.

I know exactly how I got this way and it was my dad and my grandfather. When we were kids, my sisters and I always had to have an opinion. We would have dinner table discussions about everything from Black Lives Matter to Queer Eye, and my dad was adamant on us having a position and debating it, so we all got good at always sharing our every opinion.

My late grandfather made it worse because he loved hearing us give our opinions and would also just love to hear us talk. He’d literally just sit there and smile as we went on and on. Sometimes he wouldn’t even know what we were talking about, he just loved to be there with us and made us feel like we were the smartest kids with the most valuable insight. It took me years to understand how valuable that was for three little Black girls.

Alicia and her sisters hang with their father.

Alicia and her sisters hang with their grandfather.

It’s the first week in June. School is out. What is your dream adventure or way to unwind and restore yourself if money and/or pandemic safety are irrelevant?

The beach. Always the beach. I love to swim, I love to eat seafood, and I love to sit in the sun and read, so anywhere where I can do all three. My favourite place to do all of this is Zanzibar, right off the coast of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where I am from. Fingers crossed, those might be my summer plans!

We’ll be donating to the Barnard Mutual Aid fund in Alicia’s honor. If you’d like to pile on, they take donations by Venmo to @barnardmutualaid.