Transcriber: Daniel Enger Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
On February 18, 1988,
I spoke to my father for the very last time.
He turned 35.
A week later, I turned 11, and two days later, he died.
My father was born Joseph Haines
and later changed his name to Yusuf Muhammad.
He was a brilliant man, charismatic, beautiful.
People loved him.
And I loved him.
My father struggled with drug addiction and lost his life way too early.
Now, I was a fifth grader at a public school in New York City at the time,
and I remember two African American males -
Mr. Smith, my fifth-grade teacher, and Mr. Spradley, my principal -
who wrapped their arms around me through the pain and trauma of that loss.
And it was at that moment, that very moment,
I was inspired, and I decided, as a fifth grader, to be an educator.
My name is Yusuf Muhammad, Jr., and I am a father to four beautiful girls.
And I am a principal, a high school principal.
And I have been fortunate enough to spend my adult life healing schools.
Now, what did Mr. Smith and Mr. Spradley do?
We’re talking about 1980’s Brooklyn. Inner city. A tough community.
When I returned to school after my father’s funeral,
Mr. Smith took me to the side and he said, “Yusuf, I love you.
Yusuf, I’m here for you.”
He said, “Yusuf, you can always speak to me.
I will never leave you.
If you want to take a break, you can take a break,
and here’s a safe space to do it.”
What did Mr. Spradley do?
He created an environment in my school community
where he taught us that we were beloved,
that we were special, that we come from a rich heritage.
And he celebrated our heritage. And I never forgot that.
I learned early on
that in order to be an educator, you had to be a disrupter.
You cannot just be a normal teacher and go through the curriculum
and focus on standards and focus on data.
I learned early on that you had to be something special, something different,
in schools where kids experience trauma.
I’m reminded of my senior year in college. I went to college in up-state New York.
I said I wanted to be a teacher, so I went to a teaching college
in an environment completely different from how I grew up in Brooklyn.
I grew up around Black folk, Black people, Black culture.
And I was sent to a place in Newfield, New York, that was completely opposite.
I mean I was the only person of color in the space.
And I was given three global studies classes and two US history classes
in a room full of White kids in rural America.
Some of these kids had to work on a farm before they even got to school.
And I went and taught, and something didn’t work out,
because I was taught
that teachers had to be here, and students had to be here.
We were completely separate.
“Do not let them know your first name.
Do not talk about your personal life.
You are there to follow this lesson plan script by script,
and you are there to teach.”
It did not work.
And I was reminded of what Mr. Smith had taught me in my earlier days,
and I started to develop relationships with those kids.
I thought about playing basketball with them.
I went to the cafeteria, and I ate lunch with them.
I let them know who I was. I let them into my world.
And then they began to learn.
I had to find a connection first.
When I finished grad school,
I wrote a letter to Mr. Spradley, my principal.
Not an e-mail, a real letter.
(Laughter)
I looked him up and learned
that he had progressed beyond the principalship
and was now working in the regional area.
I found him and wrote a letter to say, “Hey Mr. Spradley. This is Yusuf Muhammad.
You were my elementary school principal from first grade to fifth grade.
I want to start teaching. Can you help me out?”
He wrote me back, gave me his number, and I gave him a call.
And he remembered me.
And he said, “I want you to report to this school,
and this is the principal.”
And that’s how I got my first teaching job.
I taught US history to a wonderful group of beautiful students from Brooklyn.
I went home. Yeah, I returned to my community. I wanted to serve.
And what I experienced in that school as a teacher was trauma.
Some people think that trauma is just an event that happens in your life.
I’ve learned that trauma is something that happens every day, in and out.
It goes through the generations.
It’s seeing, hearing, experiencing trauma,
violence, death, fear.
It’s cyclical.
It’s scary.
I’m reminded of this young man in my ninth-grade class named Chad.
He was about this tall, bushy hair.
He was such an excited young man about learning.
He wanted to learn so much.
And I remember talking about Malcolm X and teaching about El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
And I said to Chad and to the class, “Does anyone know about this man?”
And Chad raised his hand. He was so excited.
Chad grew up over the years. He grew taller.
And one day I learned that Chad was murdered in a restaurant at 17 years old.
I didn’t know what to do.
The kids were
just beyond understanding.
How could they go on and go into a classroom
and worry about standards and data and all these things when Chad was gone?
Later, there was a young man named Kamau, a beautiful young man.
He sat right over there in my class. His smile would light up an entire room.
He was murdered in front of two of his classmates one summer day.
I had just started as a principal at that time.
I was an interim principal, and I had to bring the school together.
I opened up the gym and played basketball with the kids.
I learned that I had to create a space.
School can serve as a space for kids in grief.
I still didn’t have all the answers.
How do you heal a school community?
When I got my first principal job, the superintendent called me and said,
“You’re now principal of this school.”
I was about 36 years old.
Anyone want to guess who I called?
Mr. Spradley.
(Laughter)
And Mr. Spradley showed up. “Yusuf, come on, let’s go!”
And he walked me to the new school, took me around the entire campus and said,
“This is what you do. This is what you learn.”
“I need you to write this down.”
Mr. Spradley guided me through my first year as a real principal.
And he coached me.
My elementary school principal coached me
my first three years as a principal in New York City.
He loved me.
I thought I understood what it took to heal a school.
But the biggest lesson in my life occurred two years ago.
About two years ago today, I called Mr. Spradley again, and I said,
“Mr. Spradley, my wife is dying, and I don’t know what to do.”
He said, “OK. This is what you do.”
He gave me advice. He told me about taking my time.
He told me about eating right.
He told me about what to say to my children.
My wife passed away from neuromyelitis optica,
a rare disease, at 37 years old.
She transitioned and became an ancestor on November 14, 2017.
She was a beautiful woman,
and she gave the world four beautiful girls.
She was an activist, a feminist.
She was a writer.
She was a librarian. She was a storyteller.
And when I think of love and healing, I really think of what she taught me.
See, she was a woman who met everyone and loved everyone,
everyone she encountered.
They called her Miss T, in Brooklyn.
And she was known for her huge story times
and people from all around the city would come just to hear her speak.
She epitomized love, patience and understanding.
Word has it she didn’t talk bad about anyone.
She taught me to find the good in every single person that you encounter.
I spent countless hours on this campus, at the hospital here, with my wife.
And when I returned to school,
it really hit me.
School provides a space for our kids to learn.
But it also provides a space for our kids to heal.
And you heal through love,
through taking time out to listen to the kids,
to focusing on your own biases,
to go beyond the standards and beyond the data
and beyond all the things you have to do in the school
to have that rich conversation, that real-life conversation.
To let them know that no matter what happens,
I will always have your back.
We will always have your back.
Love is everything, and I choose to lead with love.
I choose to start my day and end my day with love.
And I’m not afraid to tell my students that I love them,
and I’m unapologetic about it.
Our kids face a life that many of us cannot even imagine.
They wake up to tragedy. They go to bed in fear.
We have to focus more energy, more time
in developing authentic relationships centered on love for our children
in order to make this world a better world.
That’s what I was taught as a young man from Mr. Smith and Mr. Spradley.
That’s what I was taught as a teacher,
and that’s how I decide to lead my schools.
Just two weeks ago, I encountered a young man
who had an argument with a teacher outside of her classroom.
He was angry.
He looked pretty rough.
Hair wasn’t kept.
He looked pretty sad, and I saw the rage in his face.
And I said, “Let me take time to talk to this young man.”
I went to my office with him and we sat. I asked him his name.
I asked what he wanted to do as an adult. He said he wanted to be an engineer.
I said, “Well, how’s your mother feel about that?”
He said, “My mother died when I was younger.”
And I said to myself, “Ding! Mr. Spradley moment.”
“He’s mine.”
And we talked, and we developed a relationship,
and we decided to form a pact,
that I will mentor this young man to graduation.
The very next day I encountered someone, a big-time person, who said,
“Hey, Mr. Muhammad, there’s a young man I know.
He goes to your school,
and I’m really close to his grandmother, and his mother died of AIDS.
And I need you to help him out.”
I said, “I know him.
We met just yesterday.
This is not a coincidence.”
There’s only one me.
I have a certain group of teachers.
We have thousands of kids who need us to be with them, to understand them,
to not take what we see on TV to heart,
to know that behind those images there are beautiful people
who want a chance at a life with choices.
I’m fortunate to work with an organization called Purpose Built Schools of Atlanta.
We have full-time therapists on staff.
We have lawyers. We have a focus on the whole child.
Because we know that it takes more than just a curriculum
or data to serve a child.
I’m going to end with this:
I was blessed and fortunate enough to have ancestors to watch and guide me.
I also had Mr. Spradley and Mr. Smith.
I had Ms. Deborah Manning, my mentor,
Dr. James Turner,
Dr. Sam Kelley.
I had educators in every part of my life
to guide me to where I’m at so I can serve.
I will ask you to serve.
If you live in the community, you live near a school.
And you can impact lives through love.
I know a handful of people in this room right now,
and I want you to know that I love you.
Thank you.
(Applause)