The Confidence and Understanding of a Black Female Scholar: Educational

Autobiography
Nelisa Poythress
Meta-Analysis: In my first draft I discussed my educational experience as a Black female.
During this first draft I reflected on the struggles I faced throughout my childhood, adolescence
and emerging adulthood and how each different stage of development was molded by the
experiences I had in school. Being in school and having an education challenged my racial,
gender identity, as well as how I identified within my social class. The greatest reflection I got
from this first draft dealt with forming my confidence and acceptance as a black female.

Of all the experiences that I possess in my life, the ones that weigh heavily on me are the
ones I am forced to acknowledge and take on everyday: being black and being female. Neither of
these identities dawned on me even the slightest bit until I started to think about education and
how it plays a role in my life and how much I needed to take on as a student just to be considered
equal to other races. I started recognizing the disadvantages of being a black female and how this
profoundly affected my perceptions in school environments and how it continues to affect me in
my current school environment in college. This also meant that I would require more support, or
equity from others to achieve the same opportunities (Kessler).
Something I have also recognized is that my image of being a black female in schooling
and education is often times misrepresented. Like Dr. Akintunde mentioned in his speech around
Coloring Epistemologies, he explained how difficult it was for him to maintain his identity as
an experienced professional and educated black man. I too, also saw that as a black female, I

faced the false portrayals of black females in schooling, which for a long time in school held me
back from success (Akintunde). Michelle Obama once said, by getting a good education, you
too, can control your destiny and by being here to tell my story as a black female who strives to
do well in school, I agree with Michelle Obama (Obama, 2009, 9:28).
Being a certain race or ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation can sometimes feel like a burden.
One finds that if they identify with one of these that they are ridiculed and falsely represented.
However, education is the one thing that people can identify with and feel confident that it
cannot be taken away. Though I have had hindering experiences in my life as a black female, I
believe that acknowledging them as a part of me and my educational walk is most important. I
can assure that if it were not for my resilience towards challenges, supportive teachers and family
who helped along my educational journey, that I would not be the student I am today (Kessler).
Childhood Years: First Exposures to my identity in School
In elementary school, I did not really think about being a black, let alone a female as the topic
never presented itself, probably due to fact that I was around 5 to 8 years old and did not really
grasp concepts like race and gender. Growing up I did not distinguish my race and ethnicity and
gender as setbacks until I entered into middle school, high school, and college. My preschool and
elementary years involved being overseas in the military and interacting with diverse groups of
people. These years also involved having two parents who told me early on in my education that I
could do anything I put my mind to regardless of what anyone else said. This gave me a nice
foundation on schooling as both my parents believed in education and taking advantage of it. This
mind set changed more as I transitioned into being a child of divorce and coped with the aftermath
of divorce as well as experienced the stages of adolescence and adulthood.
Adolescent: Growing into my Identity

Something about the adolescent stage teaches us to be logical and be more critical of the world
around us. I think once I became an adolescent, I started paying more attention to diversity in my
school and how I knew people of different races and genders. This is what mattered most in
regards to my views of schooling. Not saying that I did not experience racism, because I did. In
fact, the first time I started to understand my position as a black female, I realized how many
obstacles there were ahead of me in place to discourage me from success. For example, my
school did a good job of promoting diversity within the school and educating our student body
about issues like racism and bullying. Something I started to pay attention to or found myself
becoming self-conscious about was how I would attend these diversity meetings about race and
such and how every once in a while, a peer of mine would feel comfortable enough to call me
white washed because I was one of the only black females in the room who loved learning,
who got good grades, and who made good relationships with her teachers. At this point in my
adolescent stage, I examined how my difference in skin color and gender was portrayed in
education: as a black female, I was not supposed to be interested in education and for some
reason it was not acceptable for me to be intelligent. This is the first time I realized the power of
education and that people like meblack males and femaleswho had a passion for education
were strong and influential and in some ways, a threat, or so it seemed.
Adulthood: Insight
As I have emerged in adulthood, I am starting to understand more of the epistemology of my
education and how I know what I know. It was in these years of emerging adulthood that I
understood how often I would take history classes and would barely touch base on events like the
Civil War and the attacks on Native Americans land and rights. The curriculum barely focused
on these issues. It was in emerging adulthood that I started to form more views around
minorities access to history within their culture and even more so, how powerful it was to be a

black female in secondary schooling, as this was not something of the past. A lot of these
insights related to my knowledge about privilege, power and oppression and who has the most of
each. For most of my time in schooling, myself and many of my minority peers have experienced
some sort of inferiority to a group of people with more resources, more voice and more
acceptance. For the majority of my schooling experience, words such as privileged and
oppressed described the majoritywhites as privileged, and minorities as the oppressed
(Johnson). Becoming an adult through this system of education as a black female, I began to
identify the underlying privilege of having an education as a minority and the opportunities this
opened for many other minority girls like me (Johnson).
Closing: Understanding the Power of my Education
It was in emerging adulthood that I was constantly present with my identities, but as I am
becoming an adult I am starting to see how these identitiesbeing black and being a female
affect me in my life long term. For example in being a resident assistant and a teacher, I am
realizing that being comfortable with who I am and where I come from is the most important
aspect of how I will show up in other peoples lives. This related the people bag I made and the
baggage that correlates with who I am as a person and how this shapes my schooling experience
(Poythress).
Through learning from past teachers like my middle school and high school band teacher, I have
learned that if I develop a skill and if I really focus on improving it, I can achieve so much. This
was an excellent strategy to have as teachers. Because of this strategy, I credit my success in
secondary education because they did not focus on the obvious external factors such as the color
of my skin and me being a girl. Instead, these teachersMrs. Mabrey in middle school and Mr.
Gregory in high school I am sure saw my identities as a black female but they never

discouraged me from success because of them. In fact, they were encouraging and helped me to
realize that I wanted to be like them and to motivate my students in the way they did. I want to
be an early education teacher and an adolescent mentor so that I can open up my students.
I want them to acknowledge their identities and baggage but also learn from them as my teachers
did for me.
More so from the experience that I have had in this class and in schooling in general, I
have taken away the many purposes of schooling: schooling is not just defined as a space for
students to learn and teachers to teach; schooling is a place for teachers to teach wisdom through
students, to become more knowledgeable about themselves to be better teachers, and to
ultimately be a teacher with kindness. I learned that being a student is the ability to learn, to
grasp information, and to also apply it to my world. Teaching has the same purpose as it is a
several years of training, experience, wisdom, and narratives of educators lives that prepares
them for application in the real world. Teaching is a prize possession, I have learned and any one
person who can do it well can truly influence many people.