I grew up in the oil refinery town of Farmington, N.M., with an Italian father and Ghanaian mother. My parents bickered and yelled constantly at each other, and I came to adopt these same angry, confrontational traits. I…

In 2001, I became a first-grade teacher at a New York City public school. A senior teacher told me that I could expect a “honeymoon period,” where students are on their best behavior for the first week or…