Occasional Paper Series #46
An Invitation to Imagine Education Otherwise
by Grasilel Esperanza Díaz
Dear Fellow Teacher,
Hi! My name is Grasilel Esperanza Díaz. I am a special education teacher at PS 75, a public school in New York City. I am also the mother of three public school-educated children. I myself am a former student of the New York City public school system. This is all to say that I have experienced the New York City public school system from a number of vantage points.
At the age of 7, I immigrated to the South Bronx from a small town on the south side of the Dominican Republic. I know firsthand how racism and colorism cause trauma in young children and their families. Because of my own experience in New York City schools, by the time I was 8 years old, I knew I wanted to become a bilingual teacher. Even at that age, I recognized that teachers played a pivotal role in my relationship with education.
Even as a young child, I knew that I did not want my future students to feel inferior or think of their families as disposable. I did not want them to internalize racism and colorism to fit in, to belong. I entered teaching because I wanted to communicate to them, through my everyday actions, that they belonged, that they were enough.
Grasilel Esperanza Díaz graduated from Bank Street College of Education in 2012 with a master’s in dual-language childhood special and general education. She recently finished her second master’s from Fordham University (early childhood special and general education dual certification). She is a current first-grade dual-language (Spanish and English) elementary school teacher in New York City. She has over 13 years of teaching experience in New York City public elementary schools where she has taught in monolingual and dual-language inclusive classrooms.