Commentary 3: “Strategic Intrusion”: A Commentary on Felton-Koestler’s Case

I view this case through a particular set of lenses shaped by my experience. I am a heterosexual, Black male with a bicultural upbringing—I was born into a military home in Texas and raised within a variety of family contexts (including nuclear, extended, and, eventually, single-parent households) in Los Angeles, CA, and Seattle, WA. Coming into political consciousness as a teenager in the early ’90s, I have worked to make sense of what it means to be Black and male and poor in America; that said, as a U.S. citizen, I have been personally shielded from the marginalization that comes with having darker-than-white skin while being an immigrant in these United States. I am also a former middle-school mathematics teacher and math coach. In the community I taught, I developed deep personal and professional concern for my students and their families, many of whom are first or 1.5 generation (those who immigrate before their teens) immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Currently, I am a tenured professor in an Education department at a historically White college in Los Angeles. In my current work (mostly with undergraduates), as well as in the context of inservice professional development with math teachers in urban school districts, I am regularly engaged by worldviews that position people on the margins as “problems”. As such, the interaction between Felton-Koestler and the prospective math teacher in this case resonates with my experience.