Victoria Curry

 

Originally from East Lansing, MI, Victoria is a 2008 graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. After college, she joined an organization called Council on International Educational Exchange where she taught English in Malaga, Spain for a year. After a few months of travel in Europe and Northern Africa, she moved to Brooklyn, NY to join the New York City Teaching Fellows and began teaching Spanish in both high and elementary schools across NYC for the next 5 years. She obtained her Masters Degree in Education from Pace University in 2012. In 2015, she started a job as the Recruitment Manager at Coney Island Prep, a K-12 charter school in South Brooklyn. There she's in charge of instructional hiring across all three of their campuses. A life-long educator, her true passion lies in connecting with diverse populations to share ideas about issues surrounding institutionalized racism as it relates to education, socio-economic disparities, and politics (among other things).

 

Her favorite piece of art is "The Problem We All Live With" by Norman Rockwell. "In an ideal world, we can all agree that racism is evil," says Victoria. "It rears it's ugly head in even the most innocent and harmless of situations. In this painting, a nine year-old Lynda Gunn poses to represent a six year-old Ruby Bridges on her way to school. The bold and blatant racism that this little girl experiences by exercising her constitution rights is jarring. From the racial slurs written on the wall behind her to the tomato thrown that just barely missed her to the uniformed Federal marshalls who require a court order to escort an African American child to an all white school. Unfortunately, institutionalized racism and white supremacy affects every facet of human life in the United States of America and this is just one of countless examples of how racism permeates our society."