MIA ROBINSON

I've always been the only one.

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In the A class, I was the only Black girl within. I was the only Black girl within Honors English. The sole student with a Mercedes at Cal State LA got pegged as a drug dealer.

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I grew up in Ladera Heights, but I've spent most of my life in spaces not designed for me. Private schools. Gifted classrooms. Rooms where I was representing something before I even understood what I was representing.

 

I didn't know if I was Black enough. That question haunted me from elementary school to college. I overcompensated. I put rims on my car. Tinted the windows. Added subwoofers. Locked my hair. Tattooed my body. I was, like, a character, someone's idea of what Black was supposed to look like to someone.

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Upon getting my first car, my mom made me sign a contract saying that I could not drive past Crenshaw Boulevard. I did not know the reason, until the day I did it. I was reintroduced into the culture that I had kept myself sheltered from. I immersed myself. I got close to a lifestyle that wasn't mine to claim.

 

And then I picked up a camera.

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Ten years behind the camera shooting for Amazon Prime, I learned how to tell a story, how to control a narrative, how to make people see what I wanted them to see. I learned all that doing miniseries, behind the scenes videos, and live events.

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But I kept thinking of that girl in the A class who felt like she had to act as though she belonged. Nobody handed her tools, and she just figured it out and hoped she was doing it right.

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Later, I went back to school to earn a Master's in Teaching from USC, and helped develop the new high school Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine opened in Inglewood: a school built on the philosophy that students learn by doing.

 

Now I teach ninth graders who remind me of myself. Smart. Capable. They can navigate spaces not designed for them. I don't hand them worksheets. I hand them real problems. They investigate problems in their community and present solutions to adults who listen.

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I'm not teaching them to tell someone else's story.

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I'm teaching them how to build their own.