Tonia Coleman

This is Ms. Tonia Annette Coleman. She is from Laurel, Mississippi and has been at BHS for 4 years. She speaks English and AAVE (African American Vernacular English). AAVE is a type of English spoken by many members of the Black community in America. It sounds a lot like slang. For example, people say “finna” when they mean “I’m going to do something.”When she was teaching in middle school, she taught everything: Math, Science, English and History. However, the most important thing is she teaches kids how to “play school”, which means how to succeed in school. Ms. Coleman supports teachers so they can be successful in their class, She visits the classroom and observes the teacher, and she gives them feedback on all the things that they did well and she also gives them advice to be better.

She really enjoys supporting the Berkeley High athletic directors by thinking about how sports can look like during the pandemic. One of the most stressful parts of her job is finding substitutes. The first thing she does every morning is check and make sure that there is a teacher in every class. Some things Ms. Coleman does for fun are collecting sports cards and going to the Raider games. She misses going to concerts, and the last concert she went to was Rhapsody in March. (It was crazy.)

Ms. Coleman’s favorite thing about MLP is the sense of community and family feelings. Even though she didn't really know the students, they made her feel like part of the community. After the shooting at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, members of the MLP community had an event in the library. According to Ms. Coleman, it was amazing and beautiful and a lot of folks had poems and held conversations. Another one of Ms. Coleman's favorite memories is the birthday party that was held for Ms. Stewart (aka Ms. Patricia) in the cafeteria. There have also been potlucks, and making MLP shirts. Did you know that Ms. Coleman has screen printed our MLP shirts herself? Even though there is so much uncertainty right now, Ms. Coleman believes it’s exciting thinking about how to reimagine education and ways BHS can support students where they’re at. If you have any ideas about ways to make DL better, she says to let her know!

Written by Oliver Sopak (ELD 5)