Schools

I’m Glad I Went to So Many Schools

I’m glad that I went to so many schools while growing up.

I didn’t plan it that way. Life just moved us. But now I see it was a gift.

I went to schools that were impoverished. Desks carved up, books missing pages, teachers doing their best with nothing. Metal detectors. Cold lunches. Kids who were angry because home was angry. I learned there. I learned how to read a room. How to survive. How to see the brilliance in kids the system already counted out.

Then I went to schools that were well off. Green lawns. New computers. Parents who sat on the PTA and knew the principal’s cell. I learned there too. I learned what resources look like. What expectation feels like. What it means when a kid is told “you’ll go to college” instead of “if you graduate.”

I went to a white Christian college. And that was its own education. I learned Scripture and I learned silence. I learned what it feels like to be the only one, to have people pray for you like you’re a project. But I also met good people there. People who really tried to live what they preached. It taught me discernment — how to keep the faith without swallowing the culture.

Then I got to attend school in Copenhagen, Denmark. Whole different world. Bikes everywhere. Free college. Nobody pledging allegiance to a flag every morning. I learned how big the world is. How small America can feel when you step outside it. How education can be a right, not a debt sentence.

But out of all of them — I loved Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.

DVC. That place was holy ground for me. Community college with a heartbeat.

I loved my African American history class. For the first time, I wasn’t a footnote. I wasn’t a paragraph in February. I was the whole chapter. We talked about the Moors. About Reconstruction. About jazz and justice. We talked about us. And it wasn’t shame. It was power.

I loved my humanities class. We read James Baldwin and Sophocles in the same week. We asked what it means to be human, to suffer, to create, to resist. Nobody told us what to think. They asked us if we thought.

And I loved the instructors.

They saw me. Not “Cathryn with the attitude” or “Cathryn from the poor school.” They saw a mind. They called on me. They pushed me. They stayed after class. They wrote recommendations. They said “PhD” before I could even spell it.

And I’m telling you — every school shaped me.

The poor ones taught me grit. The rich ones taught me access. The Christian one taught me how to keep Jesus when the people get messy. Copenhagen taught me the world is wide. And DVC taught me I belonged in the room.

I’m glad I didn’t get one story. I got twelve.

Because now when I sit with a teen, or a client, or a judge, I can speak every language. I know what it’s like to be underestimated and over-privileged and foreign and home.

Education didn’t just give me degrees. It gave me range.

And for a Black woman from Pittsburg who wasn’t supposed to make it out — range is freedom.

So yeah. I’m glad I went to so many schools.

They were all my teachers.

And I’m still learning.

*Cathryn m harris