Educators That Rock!: Torrey Maldonado
Torrey Maldonado in a photo by Allison Maletz.
Torrey Maldonado is an author, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Middle School 88 in Brooklyn, N.Y., and a trained specialist in conflict resolution. Maldonado, who describes himself as a Black Puerto Rican, says he was inspired to become a teacher by his mother, who gave him homework she created herself, and by a few good teachers in Red Hook.
“I had a lot of teachers who encouraged students to become factoid regurgitators, and then I had a lot of teachers who encouraged us to learn the stories in history and see the humanity behind the facts and behind the dates,” he told findingEducation.
Maldonado’s first book, “Secret Saturdays,” will publish in April 2010. Learn more about “Secret Saturdays” at torreymaldonado.com.
fE : How did you become a writer?
TM: When I was a kid, I wrote a lot to distract my mind. In housing projects, there’s a stigma with education: If you write, then you’re into school and if you’re into school, then you’re corny. Young girl writers—those girls were called nerdy. If you’re a boy and you like to write, you get called “soft.” I stuck with it. I loved writing. Writing, for me, prevented me from ending up in jail like a lot of friends that I grew up with, dead, on drugs or living beneath my full potential like a lot of unfortunate guys around me.
fE: What was the first story you ever wrote?
TM: The first story that I ever wrote wasn’t a story. I came to writing through drawing. I started drawing pictures of anything, of superheroes, of villains, of people in the neighborhood. I don’t remember what my first drawing was. I do have one drawing vividly in my mind. It’s a picture of my grandmother Milagros. Her name means miracle. My grandmother was the only other person, besides my mother, who really provided me with a safe space to drop the macho front and just be me.
fE: Where did you get the idea for writing “Secret Saturdays”?
TM: Many years ago, “Secret Saturdays” started out as an article. At the time I was wrestling with the ramifications of my father’s absence. When he was gone, that hurt my mother, and my siblings and myself. And then when he was around, he sometimes could have a negative presence. One day one of the boys that I work with in this after-school program for boys came to me in my lunch period. As soon as I closed the door he started crying. He said, “My father’s gone, my father’s gone, my father’s gone.” That triggered an explosion of emotion in me, and that summer I went home and I stretched that article into the book.
fE: One of the issues in your book, “Secret Saturdays,” is trust. What can you do as a teacher to help students develop their trust in you and in others?
TM: Boys have been conditioned and bombarded with images of macho manliness. I’ve given them a safe space to turn that off and be candid about things that they wouldn’t normally discuss with one another or with females or with their parents.
fE: How do you create that safe space?
TM: Kids don’t want to lose face in front of a crowd, so all the kids can be in the classroom and be in front of me and never expect to be put down by someone else. Whenever I have an issue with one of the kids, I’m heavy on speaking privately with kids and celebrating them publicly. Also, I’m a new father [and with that] there’s a heightened sensitivity that my daughter has brought to me for other parents. Now I look at kids and think, “That kid could be my kid. Would I want an adult to speak to my kid like this?”
fE: Does rap play a big role in your classroom?
TM: Throughout the years that I’ve worked with youth, I’ve realized that one of the ways that they can be most raw and passionate and vulnerable is through hip-hop, through rap.
A lot of time kids will come to me and they’ll ask to battle me. And I say, “I’ll battle you if you don’t dis women, if you don’t call anyone gay, if one of us doesn’t lose, if there’s not profanity and if there are no guns.” Most kids hear that and they immediately don’t want to battle me, because they lose 97 percent of their material.
I would like to see hip-hop used for more of a win-win dynamic, where things get worked out, intelligently and peacefully.
fE: What do you do to encourage creativity among your students?
TM: Before school, at lunch and after school hours, I’m one of the teachers who gets a lot of student traffic. Kids will come here and just sit around and write. In class, we create assignments where kids get to operate out of their main sense. Some kids are extremely visual, some kids are auditory, some are kinesthetic. We do plays, we do artwork. I let them have flexibility in how they meet the standards.
fE: Before you became a social studies teacher you taught conflict resolution to teachers. How have you used your training in conflict resolution with students?
TM: A couple of years ago, we designed an after-school program where I would create a safe space and get kids back on track with their antisocial behavior.
I do a lot of mediations in the building. Recently there was this rivalry where one entire class didn’t like members of [another] entire class. I had to do a huge group mediation where I sat both classes down, which culminated in an inter-class resolution.
fE: How does the process of conflict resolution work?
TM: You have to create a safe space and let people know that you’re coming together to hear both sides of the story and come up with a solution that both sides can live with. That means identifying the issues. It means listening neutrally. It means making sure the kids feel heard and respected. It means generating solutions for each issue, then crafting an agreement that both individuals or both groups can sign off on. And trying it out for a certain amount of time. Then, we revisit the agreement and see if it held up.
fE: Does being a cool teacher get in the way of you doing your job?
TM: There’s always the one or two disruptive students who will test the “let’s respect each other rule.” I would say 98 percent of the time, I’ve established such a mutual respect with them that they [the kids] will take care of the classroom management for me. If a kid that’s at a table is side talking, another kid at the table will get that kid in line. I have seventh graders that will walk by my classroom and poke their head in and say, “You better respect Mr. T because he’s mad cool.”
fE: Having grown up as a black man without a father, were you excited to see Barack Obama elected president?
TM: As a black man it is positively staggering to see Barack Obama [as president] because he represents a multi-dimensional masculinity that I want to emulate and also want a lot of boys to emulate. Coming from Red Hook projects there are a lot of men who are living like big kids. It’s wonderful to see Barack Obama as a black man, as a family man, as a highly educated man, as someone who always comes across as having a care for others. So far he’s come across as someone who’s interested in creating a win-win solution for all people.
Since Maldonado uses rap in his Social Studies lessons, in his work with teens and in “Secret Saturdays,” findingEducation asked him to write a rap about his book. This is what he came up with:
“Every person has a secret
But most try to conceal it
Just to blend in.
Sean and Justin
Are adolescent best friends in
The gritty city and it’s a pity
They have no dads and it’s extra sad
That they keep the truth about their pops from each other
When they’re as close as brothers from different mothers.
But their ‘best friend’ thing is about to change
When Sean starts disappearing and acting strange…”
