Julia Torres is a Librarian and Language Arts teacher at a public high school in Denver, Colorado and writes and publishes on Medium.com for her students and the wider audience. As an advocate for all students and public education, Julia facilitates workshops and professional conversations about equity, anti-bias/anti-racist education, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and literacy in the digital age.

I met Julia at the 5Sigma Conference at the Anastasis Academy in Colorado. As soon as we started talking, it seemed like we had always known each other. I sat in her session about teaching tolerance and knew that I had to connect with her. We kept in touch, saw each other at SXSW, and just had to follow up with a podcast. Enjoy the podcast and what Julia wrote and shared below.
 
Let’s talk about you and your family.

I am originally from Southern California, but when I was a teenager, I lived in Brazil and this changed my life.  My father died when I was young, and my mother raised me. She is bilingual (Spanish and English), so she taught me Spanish from birth. In Brazil, where I lived for one year and have been traveling on an almost-yearly basis for the last 23 years, I learned Portuguese, which I consider to be the language of my heart.  As such, multiculturalism and multilingualism is a big part of who I am. I currently live and teach in Denver, Colorado where I am lucky to work in the largest (and only urban) school district in the state. I have taught Language Arts since 2005, and am currently what is termed a teacher-librarian. My main job is to help students re-ignite their passion for reading by finding new and creative ways to introduce them to books, authors, and the written and spoken word.

 
What was it like when you were young and in school?

When I was young, I remember liking school because I was a very curious person.  I was also always in a book. I have always been a passionate reader and a secret writer.  I remember school being easy because I was one of those kids who just knew how to do school.  Language arts was always really easy for me, but math was where I struggled. My math classes traumatized me. Friends who are math teachers now chastise me all the time for labeling myself as “not a math person”, but I still think it’s true!  I cried a lot because of my math grades. I was that person with all As and a D bordering on an F–in math class. I remember school being about impressing the teacher with how well-behaved, obedient I could be, and how well I could do what they wanted.  I definitely suffered from “pretty brown-girl syndrome” in which we are taught to be quiet, obedient, and twice as skilled as anyone else…I internalized the lesson many Black women are taught by society, that you have to be twice as good to receive half as much.  Half as much pay, praise, half as many rewards. I knew that I would always be punished for the slightest misstep, and rewards would seldom if ever come my way…only after working very, very hard. It is for this reason that I consider myself and so many other Black women I know to be masters of our crafts.  We often have no choice not to be.

 
What is your passion? What you love and want to learn?
Every once in a while, I read books about metaphysics and/or astrology.  I read one recently called “Astrology for the Soul” that offers a pretty simple way of calculating your North and South Nodes.  I won’t go into that for folks who don’t believe in such things, but the basic message was that I am at my best when I’m with children or teaching people how to best serve children.  When I read those words I was SHOCKED.