7: The Haunted Curriculum: Memory, Pedagogy, Trauma

One must take care in speaking of metaphorical ghosts, as the act of conjuring them may draw the attention of real ones. In 2005, I was a young teacher at F.J. Chester Elementary School in New Orleans’ B.W. Cooper housing projects. The 2nd Ward neighborhood, notorious in local media for its poverty and drug-related violence, was also a cherished place of community and pedagogy for my 18 third-grade students and for myself. Less than a month into the school year, Hurricane Katrina struck the city and the projects flooded with a toxic brew of gulf water and sewage as stranded residents struggled to survive. I did not return to teaching for over a year after the disaster, and after months of searching I was only able to locate one of my former students in a temporary shelter in the Houston Astrodome. Today every trace of the community is bulldozed and buried under concrete, scheduled for commercial redevelopment.