ABSTRACT
The author would gather her things and set out for the long journey to her sublet on the border of Carnegie Hill and Spanish Harlem in Manhattan, high on the Upper East Side, one bus and two train rides away from this middle school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Do-or-Die Bed-Stuy, the kids called it, quoting the rapper The Notorious B.I.G. The author knew nothing about the history of Bed-Stuy when she arrived. When she traveled back and forth between the school and the subway station it looked like a warzone, the bus bumping along hole-pocked streets lined by abandoned buildings—broken windows, empty lots, and blowing trash. The author always thought she would be a teacher. It felt not so much like a career choice as a calling. Her first official teaching gig was when she was 12 years old.
