ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
Content Notice: policing in education, childhood trauma
Falling Star, Melody Yang, DE-MIL-I-TA-RISE Dissenters Portfolio, Justseeds
Devante’s mother sighed. After 30 minutes of listening to a table of people share why her son’s behavior wasn’t working in school, she appeared ready to be done. This was his care team. A principal, vice principal, school counselor, climate manager, behavioral therapist, and classroom teacher. All making the case for how they cared about her six-year-old, chocolate-skinned boy in what felt like a trial. Mother and son sat side by side on the witness stand.
We all testified one-by-one. “He just won’t stay in class.” “He is constantly running around the building.” “He’s a safety risk to himself and others.” She sat silently taking it all in, and her eyes seemed to say Did you know that I’ve heard this speech before?
After everyone shared efforts that had been made to support Devante, we looked to her for a response. We were hoping for some magic words that would give us insight into what could be done about her son. And she delivered, just not in the way I expected.
She calmly met the gaze of her child’s first grade teacher, my gaze, and said with absolute clarity, “Devante knows you don’t like him.”
Suddenly, all eyes were on me. The room that was just moments ago buzzing with voices, now only echoed with the sound of my pounding heart. Body frozen and face hot. New sweat stains formed in guilty rings around my underarms, and my mouth filled with cotton.
You see, I was an aspiring abolitionist teacher. I had peace corners instead of timeouts, created community agreements instead of classroom rules, and encouraged conflict resolution over punishment. I thought I was doing right by my students. But, her words exposed a truth I hadn’t even let myself believe.
In that moment, I realized how deeply I had fallen into the trap of carceral thinking— a mindset that views punishment and exclusion as solutions to “bad” behavior. This perspective shapes how schools act as extensions of the prison system that frames discipline as a necessary response to harm. Just as prisons remove individuals from society, effectively making them disappear from their communities, I found myself doing the same thing to this child. The act of disappearing him–– withdrawing my attention, care, and acknowledgement— had become the discipline itself, a subtle punishment for his behavior. I had prided myself on rejecting this way of thinking, but somewhere along the way I had stopped recognizing his needs and instead only saw the disruptions he caused.
I had lost sight of the very child I was meant to support and nurture.
As I held Devante’s mother’s gaze, I knew that she knew that I knew she was right. And in that moment, I began to understand that abolitionist teaching required more than just alternative disciplinary methods. It demanded a fundamental shift in how I viewed and valued each child in the classroom.
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In the beginning of the school year, Devante flew under the radar. He followed directions well and kept to himself. He had big wandering eyes and a squeaky voice that we rarely heard.
But, in October his behavior changed. One day, I was transitioning the students into an activity. He was trying to get my attention and I told him to wait while I tend to the rest of the class. In the few minutes I took to focus on the others, time likely passed more slowly for Devante, each moment amplifying his sense of being overlooked. By the time I was ready to center his needs, he was gone. He physically left the classroom. It was as if to say since you won’t acknowledge me, then I will go somewhere that will. I immediately called the office and he was brought back safely to class.
I worked diligently to understand what could have happened to warrant him wandering around the school over staying in the room. I spent my prep periods meeting with the counselor to gain insight on his behavior. Over time we learned that Devante was experiencing challenges at home, so I wanted to approach his needs with patience. I wanted to know how I could support him.
However, as time passed, his needs continued to grow, while my capacity to empathize with those needs began to wane.Over the next several months, Devante began leaving the classroom on a regular basis. This behavior initiated a vicious cycle: the more he left, the less he was seen as part of the community, which led to increased rejection from his peers. As he seemed less connected to his classmates, he engaged in more disruptive behaviors, such as running around the classroom, hitting other students, and ripping up work– in what seemed like a cry for attention, or perhaps, connection. The less Devante abided by the standards we had established for our community, the less he was accepted as a member, even by me.
I became increasingly agitated with him and soon only viewed his presence as a disruption. On one occasion, Devante had left class for the third time that day. Normally, I would have alerted the care team immediately of his absence, so he could be returned to class. However, on this day, wanting to savor in the peace of his absence, I waited. Ten minutes went by before I dragged myself to the phone again. Eventually, a climate worker brought him back. Upon seeing him come inside, I let out a slow, heavy breath and looked down on him. “Are you actually going to stay this time?” I asked, not even trying to conceal my annoyance to him or the rest of the class.
He didn’t.
By March, I had all but given up on him, and he knew that.
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“Devante knows you don’t like him.” Three years later, I still feel where those words sit in my body. They crash-landed into my gut and brought me back to reality. I looked at Devante sitting next to his mother and realized that I had forgotten how small he was. When was the last time I wondered what was behind those wandering eyes?
The care team made a plan. For the next month, he would have a goal of staying in class for small increments of time. For every 30 minutes he stayed, he would earn a sticker. If he earned five stickers, then he would receive a prize. He could choose between a variety of incentives: fidgets, ipad time, positive phone call home, or lunch with the teacher. He chose lunch.
Later that week, we had a particularly challenging day and Devante had left the classroom for over an hour. He came back in right as we were lining up for lunch. My immediate thought was how disappointed I was, because he had not met his goal at all that week and was nowhere near it today. As I looked at him, I thought what if that didn’t matter? “Devante, I missed you this morning in class”, I began. He turned away prepared for the speech. “Since you weren’t here, I was wondering if you would like to have lunch with me and tell me all about how your morning went.” His eyes lit up. “Really? But I ain’t even reach my goal” he squeaked with a mixture of confusion and excitement. “That’s okay, I just want to spend time with you.”
He raced downstairs to be first in the lunch line, arriving back in class out of breath. He sat down right at my desk and spread out his Wawa chocolate milk and chicken tenders. There was a moment of silence that passed between us, neither of us really knowing what to say and hoping the other would start. I pulled out my lunch and began with my blueberries. As I popped one in my mouth, his eyes followed. “Did you know that you gotta wash blueberries before you eat them?” I chuckled and responded that I did know and that I had in fact washed these before eating them. He offered another fact. “Did you know that you can eat blueberries both hot and cold?” I plopped another handful in my mouth and he watched closely. “Wow you sure know lots about blueberries!” I said. “Yeah, because did you know that blueberries are my favorite food?” he said, begging me to take the hint. “Would you like some blueberries, Devante?”
He took a small handful while trying to contain his pride in having accomplished his mission. Throughout our lunch, he began opening up. We had been learning about ocean animals in class and unbeknownst to me, he absolutely loved this topic. He stumbled over to the display shelf and reached his blueberry dipped finger tips to grab The Big Book of the Blue, a book all about sea life. “This is my favorite”, he whispered excitedly, and revealed a page devoted to sea turtles. When he left class that morning, he had missed the entire lesson, which was coincidentally all about sea turtles. “When you weren’t in class, we actually read this page! Would you like to go over it together?” He put one sticky thumb up in the air to signify he was ready.
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The chocolate-complexioned boy with big eyes reminded me that care is a practice. Carceral thinking teaches us that an individual’s deservingness of care is connected to how they exist, how they maintain order. We practice this way of thinking everytime we enforce punishment. But, abolition offers an alternative. It dares to imagine that we deserve care because we exist, in all our wild, wonderful, and sometimes messy ways. Just as I embodied carcerality in my thoughts that showed through my actions, that is where our abolition needs to be practiced as well.
This realization didn't come quickly or easily. It took Devante’s mother’s words for me to understand his language. When he left the room, his actions seemed to say I am here. So, the halls became a much more welcoming place for him after awhile. It was here that he could run and someone would acknowledge him when my actions responded, I do not hear you. Abolition asks that we listen differently, to hear the unspoken needs beneath the behavior. It demands that we recognize care-seeking in all its forms, even when it doesn’t align with our expectations.
I wish I had not taken all year to hear him and I wish that I learned just in time and everything was perfect after this realization. It wasn’t, but it did get better.
Devante only met his goal a few times in the remainder of the school year. However, we did share many more lunches. That initial meal was a reminder that Devante was just as deserving of care when he left the room as he was when he stayed. It underscored that our duty to care isn’t contingent on how that care is requested, but on the fundamental worth of the person before us.
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I don’t know how Devante is doing now. I often debate calling him to apologize for failing him or perhaps even just to see how he is doing, to form a deeper relationship that I wished I had done with him three years ago. But this debate always ends with a reckoning of how selfish this would be. So, instead I send a happy first day of school message to his mother each fall and secretly hope that instead she reads this as I’m sorry.
Devante is in third grade this year. A grade where the School District of Philadelphia has determined that he is old enough to be suspended, formally disappeared from a community. I hope that his teachers hug him instead of watch him leave. I hope they kneel to meet his gaze, instead of speak down to him. Show him that their arms are strong enough to carry the weight that no child should have to, instead of watch him struggle to lift it each day. Praise instead of punish. Welcome him in, instead of showing him that teachers do hold grudges.
And I hope they have all learned how much he loves blueberries.
Alexandrea Henry (she/her) is a former SDP elementary teacher who misses it everyday. She believes in and is committed to the formation of worlds where prisons cease to exist in any form and where every child is free, from the River to the Sea. She is currently a PhD student at Stanford University, studying how our youngest learners make sense of power and belonging in the context of school discipline. She also loves documenting the world through film photography, sweet poems, and long conversations at dusk. Alexandrea is currently reading works by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Rasheeda Phillips.