By the time that students arrive to Krista Waldron’s class, they have already been in the school-to-prison pipeline.
“Nothing else has worked for them,” said Waldron, who teaches English at Phoenix Rising Alternative School, which was created as a result of a relatively new partnership between Tulsa public schools and the Tulsa County Family Justice Center.
After teaching advanced placement courses at some of Tulsa’s best magnet schools — the past 10 years as a school teacher at Phoenix has been particularly meaningful for Waldron.
“I’ve kind of gone deeper in,” she said. “The challenges are there but there are also opportunities.”
Her students — who are Native American, Hispanic, African-American and White — seemed to be “more united by their trauma and poverty than their race” and have developed unique relationships among themselves and their beloved teacher.
“If I make a promise to them, I keep it,” said Waldron, who has been a fellow in the Teachers Institute for Tulsa — a Yale University initiative that helps trains urban public school teachers from across the country to become experts in the subject matter that they teach.
“I always knew that I would work in the humanities,” said Waldron, 60, who was drawn to writing and literature at a young age. “Things just fell into place.”
