Mondays at Malcolm X College tend to be harder days for students because of the violence that happens in Chicago over the weekends. Three weeks ago was an especially hard Monday morning after the police shootings of two African American men that week (followed by the retaliation shootings in Texas).
Mrs. Latsu, the Director of the LevelUp program that supports students who need to learn more college-level writing and math before they can take college classes, gives Motivational Monday talks to the students and staff during this concentrated course. Many of the students are at-risk students. Instead of her normal talk, three weeks ago she knew she needed to help the students mourn the shootings that have been happening. She talked about resilience, which led the students to talk about how they felt.
What they didn’t know is that they educated me (I was one of three white folks in the room) and gave me a window into how it feels to be African American in the inner city, especially an African American male.
Trees of Transition 