Was very thankful to watch the UCB x Project Rethink Town Hall yesterday. A lot of stories were hard to hear and I thank everyone who shared. I’m lucky to have had a mostly positive experience there and I know that is not true for many people.

Something that came up a lot during the town hall was the school/teachers, which I found interesting and have been thinking about a lot. I’ve taken a lot of classes at UCB. A lot of them. More than what you would say is a normal amount. An embarrassing amount even.

27 classes. This is because they were free, because I worked at the theater. This is just an example of how I’m privileged. I was an intern first and then was hired as a manager. I did this from like 2013-2018. I paid for my first 4 classes and then the rest were free.

An absolute privilege. I didn’t have the economic barrier preventing me from taking classes, I was able to take so many classes for free. So many that they changed the rules of how many employees could take a class at once. That’s true.

None of this is my point really and kinda makes it sound good, but it’s part of the story. I do feel really lucky that this was my circumstance. Something I did wanna point out with the school and teaching there though, is my next point.

In all 27 of my classes, all of them but 1, were taught by a white person. All of them. 26/27 classes. I had ONE POC teacher the whole time. ONE. That’s insane. ONE. I can’t believe it. It was Eugene Cordero who is of course, incredible and a good dude.

But that’s a huge problem. There are so many teachers that have been doing it for so long and are just simply taking up space. Many of whom aren’t great teachers, and who have complaints in that regard.

If and when UCB and the training center reopens, this needs to be addressed. There are some teachers I’ve had that I’ve never seen improvise. What are they still doing there?

What does it take to become a teacher? How are the teachers trained? Is anyone an accredited teacher? How many complaints can you have against you until you are no longer a teacher? What is the student feedback for?

If the way to become a teacher is to just be around long enough, the theater isn’t the only element of UCB that needs a massive restructuring. I don’t wanna see teachers teaching because they were on Harold Night a 8 years ago.

I feel really lucky and have for the most part have had a great experience, but all this shit needs to fuckin go. I didn’t even have someone to like look up to coming up that was latinx. I hope I can at least be that for someone if the theater continues.