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Chuck Poole

To her students at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City, English professor Jani Decena-White is a cheerleader and a hand-holder. But she is no pushover. Recently, a student who didn’t like her grade threw a tremendous hissy fit in class. “Honey, if you think you’re scaring me,” White said calmly, “you couldn’t be more wrong!”

Everything White needed to become an effective and inspiring educator, she learned in the 4th grade from Miss Harris. “Some teachers are intimidated by or are dismissive of students who are rude or difficult or just not like them,” says White, who attended PS 115 in Washington Heights. “Miss Harris taught me by example that poor doesn’t mean dumb, and rude is often a cover for scared.”

White worked her way out of poverty and marched to the front of the class at Hudson County Community College 22 years ago. She has come full circle, now championing the kind of students that she once was: poor and smart. Two years ago, she breathed life into the school’s moribund Honors Program. Today, it has grown fivefold, with 160 students and 16 honors courses. “My goal for them is to be able to compete with students who have had richer, book-filled upbringings. I want to take them from good to great.”

I was raised in Washington Heights, the oldest of three sisters, by a Puerto Rican mother, who was critical and strict. My father, who is Dominican, left when I was 3. We were poor, though my mother worked at the phone company for decades. The only place we were allowed to go besides school was the library. We’d bring home a crazy number of books each week. Later, I read for pleasure and knowledge, but then I read for escape.

When I was in 4th grade, I had a wonderful teacher, Miss Harris, a middle-age African-American woman, who had zero tolerance for messing around. She could glare! She wanted us to know there was a great big world out there beyond Washington Heights and that we had to work hard to get out of the ’hood. Miss Harris was the one who introduced me to art and literature and culture. She took us to see the movie “Fantasia” and the play “The Little Prince.” Her philosophy was, “I can love you and give you all the nurturing you need, but you must do the work.” That’s who I am as a person and who I am as a teacher.

I attended JHS 52 in Inwood and when it was time, my mother refused to send me to the local high school because of the drug dealers and pregnant girls. Little did she know that I later dated a drug dealer. But of course, I was trying to straighten him out and get him to finish high school. Ridiculous! So off I went to Norman Thomas HS, on 33rd and Park. It was another world, an unbelievably exciting world for a Dominican girl who was determined to do something big with her life. I had this odd-looking teacher with curls and very big glasses, Mr. Wachtel. He taught me math in a way that I understood it. It wasn’t my thing, reading was. But he taught me that you don’t have to love a subject to learn it, and that it helps when you make the learning fun.

After graduating, I started at John Jay College because my mother wanted me to be a lawyer. Aren’t we always trying to please our mothers? I had this English professor there, and she was passionate and inspiring and really cool. I knew I was meant to teach. So I quit and went to NYU, then to CUNY for a master’s degree in language and literacy.

I started teaching at Hudson County Community College when I was 26. Students were always mistaking me for one of them: I was young and I looked like them. They are no longer mistaking me for a kid, but I still look like them. I am them and they are me.

— As told to reporter Christina Cheakalos