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Deborah Alexander

Deborah Alexander

Description

P.S. 243 educator, Deborah Alexander recalls her experiences as a teacher in Crown Heights for over 20 years. In particular, she describes the transformation of the neighborhood, teachers, parents, and students during her career as a speech teacher. She begins the oral history account discussing her maturation from childhood to adult. Then she addresses the social conditions of the Crown Heights community from 1990s up until early 2017, including gentrification and cost of living. Born April 20 1961, in Harlem, Alexander discusses what it was like growing up on Tiffany Street in the South Bronx during the 1970s, which was, in her words, “riddled with crime and violence.” Alexander shares details about her household upbringing, which instilled high standards in education and morality. Furthermore, she captures her experience as a student in the Intellectually Gifted Children (IGC) program in the 1970s, including how her love for reading and writing blossomed under the tutelage of dedicated teachers. The narrative continues as Alexander details her social and educational experience at Lehman High School in the Bronx, including recollecting her first experience of overt racism and venturing to places like City Island and Van Cortlandt Park. From there, Alexander discusses how her grandfather’s stroke influenced her to take up Speech Pathology and re-explores her college years at Ithaca College, which includes highlighting the stark contrast between Ithaca College and the South Bronx. Alexander covers the difficulty of being black at a predominately white institution in the early 1980s and how she coped with...
Type:
Oral History
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Voices of Crown Heights