Somebody from Their City Made It
Told by Frankie Ramirez
Written by Laurie Grobman
Frankie Ramirez wants his students at Riverside Elementary School in Reading to know that “somebody from their city made it.” He tells them, “Be a teacher like me.” The kids reply, “You think?” Frankie tells them, “Absolutely. You can come back here and work with me.” The children didn’t even know it was possible: “Because of their day-to-day, they can’t even really see that far ahead because of what the stories around them are like.”
Frankie experienced some of what these children face when he lived in Reading from birth to age 13. He’s a Riverside Elementary School alumnus. He grew up on the north side of Reading off 5th Street. As he got older, he noticed teens who were 14, 15, 16 starting to get into drugs. Frankie wasn’t tempted. Seeing kids 13, 14 who are high off weed appalled him.
Frankie was exposed to violence happening around him by spending a lot of time at the Clinton Street Olivet Boys and Girls Club. He remembers turning 11 and seeing other guys who played basketball there. He knew they were gang affiliated. They wore black hoodies. He knew that kids were getting jumped by seeing their bruises. And even at 11, Frankie “could see how their innocence was sort of lost.” Some of them had been locked up. He remembers a drug raid a couple of years ago in Reading, and “there was like three or four guys that I went with to the Olivet Clinton Street that were in it. So when they ended up there, unfortunately, I kind of wasn’t surprised by it, even at that age.”
Frankie’s family moved to Exeter when he was 13 to get Frankie and his siblings away from violence. But at 16, Frankie and his sister went to a party in the city. As they tried to go
through a fence onto the family’s back yard, there was a commotion going on in the back. They never made it inside. A large guy came out waving a pistol. Frankie was right there in his crossfire: “That was the only moment in my life where I realized, ‘Wow, I might die right here.’” Frankie froze. But “by the grace of God,” the police came and prevented any violence
from happening. Frankie has heard that the gunman has been in and out of prison.
Frankie attended Exeter Junior High School in seventh and eighth grades, followed by his ninth-grade year in Exeter Senior High. He remembers “that culture shock of going from Reading to Exeter and being like the only Latino in my class, and no teachers like that. I just always felt like I had to represent my community.” Even in junior high he knew about the negative assumptions about Reading but that “It’s not really like that in most parts of the city. I knew who I was and was going to show that I’m not that and people were not all that way.”
But there were other kids from Reading in the school who “brought inner city issues with them to the suburbs. There were kids that felt like they had a loss of identity. Their only claim was that they were from Reading.” But Frankie wanted his classmates to know who he was: “I grew up on the north side of Reading, but I’m not a gang banger. I felt like it was always me having to prove myself that I wasn’t that way.” Frankie also spoke to other kids from Reading and told them “‘Bro, you don’t have to be this way. You don’t have to.’ And they kind of understood that once I let them know.”
Despite all of that, Frankie made friends fast because he was always pretty loud, charismatic, and funny. He was a “B” student because he was “pretty lazy,” never taking time outside of school to do work. His favorite classes were English and social studies, and he struggled in math. Frankie excelled in sports. He played both baseball and basketball. His basketball coach, Bob Kramer “loved that I was who I was, me as an athlete, but definitely as part of my culture since we are really vibrant.” Coach Kramer encouraged it whereas most of his other coaches did not: “They kind of tried to keep me boxed in.” But things went downhill in ninth grade in high school, dealing with some racial issues from baseball coaches. Frankie didn’t quit the team, but he and his parents agreed that he’d go to Berks Catholic High School beginning in tenth grade.
Frankie had an overall “tremendous experience” at Berks Catholic. He loved his teachers except for one: “She called me out for using my phone and said, ‘I don’t know if they let you act like this in Reading, but you can’t act that way here.’ And the class looked at me and I said, ‘Well, I actually came from Exeter.’” Socially, it was a similar pattern: “like all my friends were Latino again.”
Frankie’s experience playing baseball at Berks Catholic was great. He’d already made a name for himself in high school and Legion baseball, so the coaches knew he was a very strong player. And Frankie loved springtime because it was his time to shine: “I felt like I had the spotlight on me because of the sports that I had played. I was pretty good. I’d say I was up there. I had played Legion locally.” Berks Catholic won the district playoffs in
Frankie’s junior year, playing in front of a huge crowd: “So then I got to put on display who I was.”
Frankie’s 2.5 high school GPA meant that even if he were recruited by four-year colleges and universities, he’d have a hard time getting in, so he chose the two-year Northampton Community College in Bethlehem. For the first time, he excelled in academics, making the honor roll and Dean’s list three times, and earned an associate’s degree in secondary education because he wanted to be a teacher. The baseball league provided great competition. Frankie was offered eight scholarships out of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) and other Division 2 schools from around the country. He chose West Chester because they had just won the national championship, and the centerfielder was graduating right in time for Frankie to take the position. But he had another very important reason: “It’s only 45 minutes from home. I just really wanted my parents to continue to see me play.”
Unfortunately, it was a bad year for Frankie in baseball. He was the only minority among the coaches and players. Although professional baseball is very Latino, college is far less so, especially at that time at West Chester. Frankie never felt part of the team. He wanted scouts to see him, but he wasn’t at his best, either in baseball or to his teammates. Frankie considers it “a victim mentality because I knew I wasn’t liked, and nobody was rooting for me. Well, it was like, ‘Why am I here then? Why am I wasting my time?’” It was a tough time for him.
Frankie went to Chestnut Hill College for his senior year and is grateful for the opportunity. He played baseball but was “mentally out of it. I knew that I wasn’t going to make it into the pros. And even if I did, it wouldn’t have been in the way I wanted it to.” But Frankie did what
he needed to do academically as a college senior. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Chestnut Hill College, followed by a teaching certification in social studies from Eastern University. He student-taught with his seventh-grade history teacher at Exeter while also working as a paraprofessional in autism support at Upper Marion Middle School. He also began coaching college baseball at Eastern.
With his certification in hand, Frankie did some subbing in Exeter. It had been a long and difficult journey, but Frankie never gave up. He started his first professional teaching job on January 24th as a six-month long-term substitute teaching computer science at Southwest Middle School in Reading.
Frankie received a contract at Southwest the following year as an eighth-grade social studies teacher. He loved the kids but found it frustrating and upsetting that so few kids were reading and writing at an eighth-grade level: “I was very frustrated with putting lessons together knowing nothing could happen. I could get them to read some things and take notes, but when the kids wrote in their journals, they used short sentences and a lot of repetition of words.” Some kids were at a fifth or sixth grade level, and a few were as low as first grade. Most were around third and fourth grades. Most upsetting to Frankie was that
“These kids keep getting passed to the next grade, but they can’t read. And I just think about how closed off is the world if they can’t even understand words that they see. Like I feel like they’re just missing out on a lot.”
Teaching remained his passion, but Frankie needed a new direction. He chose physical education (PE) because “whether they can read or not or write or whatever their language barrier is, I’m bilingual, and most kids like PE. And if they don’t, it’s an opportunity for them to be active and learn values that translate into real life.” Frankie left Southwest MS and headed to Miami in February 2023 to teach PE. What struck him at the Miami school was the large number of Latinos in staff and faculty positions: the principal was Venezuelan or Cuban. The vice principal was Venezuelan. Frankie was excited: “Oh, everybody here’s Latino.” It wasn’t an easy job teaching PE to high schoolers in a downtown parking lot because there was no gym and no parks nearby. But he was happy there. The atmosphere was different than what he’d experienced before. Finally, he didn’t feel pressured to represent his urban Latino community.
But Frankie didn’t stay in Miami because he bought a two-unit property in Mohnton and needed a job in Pennsylvania to get a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Loan. He’d taken real estate classes, and he wanted to begin building financial security. Owning a two unit building would keep his cost of living low and is a good way to start a real estate portfolio. Both units were already rented, so it was a great deal.
Back in Reading for the 2023-2024 school year, Frankie took a job as a long-term substitute at Northwest Middle School. He loved being back in the neighborhood where he’d grown up: “I connected with the kids because I said, ‘I lived on Madison Avenue,’ and the kids’ eyes got so big because they couldn’t believe that somebody from their community was a teacher.” Frankie felt “super comfortable being in my area of the city. I remember going back as a teenager and almost being a little bit afraid, being back in my own neighborhood because things had, quote-unquote, ‘got worse,’ and I didn’t feel comfortable.” But as a teacher in middle school, Frankie could really tell what was happening with the kids, mainly the seventh to eighth grade boys with a certain demeanor and dress. He noticed that each of these boys were struggling academically. Most of them didn’t play a sport. Many had truancy issues and just weren’t coming to school. Or they came and then got suspended, happy to be suspended so they could be home. Frankie knows that “idle time is the devil’s playground.” The kids were meeting older teenagers who are also out of school “who will lead them down the wrong path because they need leadership. They just don’t know what leaders they need.”
Northwest Middle School administrators offered Frankie other long-term sub positions, but he needed more job security. He found one in Wyomissing teaching health classes and a few PE electives in 7th through 12th grades. He noticed right away that there were more non white kids than he expected. He learned from the principal that the school is 41% minority.
Frankie was impressed with the many activities in Wyomissing schools for kids to be involved in. There are over 50 extracurricular clubs there, even for middle schoolers. He saw many minority students getting involved, and there’s transportation for them. One of his former Reading students, now a sophomore at Wyomissing, “is night and day from how he was. He’s improved so much. The atmosphere is different. The hallways are quieter. Kids get to class on time. There’s no disruption. I wish that all my kids in Reading could get his experience because I know that the trajectory of his life is way different than if he would have stayed in Reading School District.”
Frankie also immediately noticed a “natural segregation of the white kids hanging out with white kids and the Latino and Black kids hanging out with each other. And there was a clear divide.” He and the Black and Latino kids bonded off culture right away. They knew Frankie understood their experience.
Also reminding him of his years in Exeter schools were the Black and Latino students who weren’t really good athletes and who faced an “identity crisis.” They claimed a “hood mentality.” I’d say “Bro, why are you doing this? You live in West Reading. You go to Wyomissing. You don’t have to do that.” Frankie told one of the girls who was “real rough around the edges, “This isn’t Central Middle School. You don’t have to be combative with teachers and students.” It took her a while to get it, but she finally understood what I meant.”
The kids weren’t the only ones feeling the cultural divide. Frankie was the only Latino male out of nearly 145 employees in the Wyomissing School District, and there was only one Latino female. Frankie felt misunderstood. Frankie never felt fully included. And he felt like he had to represent his culture, a heavy burden to bear. Looking back, he thinks that when he was hired by Wyomissing, they probably thought he was going to be “a certain way.” But “when they saw that I was way more urban, it rubbed them the wrong way.” Often Frankie was told that he was acting, speaking, or dressing unprofessionally, but for Frankie, he was simply being who he is, part of the urban Latino culture. When he spoke up for minority kids who he thought were being treating unfairly, he was told he was being “abrasive and aggressive.”
Frankie tried to stay at Wyomissing because it was a great job on paper, and he wanted to prove he could stick it out. But he knew that if he left, he could be more impactful in Reading: “I knew Wyomissing’s 41% minority students need me, but not as much as others because the Wyomissing school provide so many more resources and opportunities.” Finally, he realized that staying “wasn’t worth me sacrificing my personal well-being.” Frankie resigned from the Wyomissing schools in April 2024. He views it as “a learning experience and wouldn’t change it.”
A week later, Frankie began teaching PE at Riverside Elementary School in Reading as a long-term substitute. He’d had summer camp experience with six and seven-year-olds and
decided to give it a try. After nearly two months, he’s very happy there: “I really enjoy it. I also think I can help more kids, especially the boys because they need structure.”
Frankie is providing the children with a strong foundation, a routine, and a structure they follow: “We come in. We meditate for two minutes. I put some instrumental music on to get them present. I really want them to be more in contact with their emotions.” He asks the kids what they’re feeling, and they answer with thumbs up or thumbs down. They go through a static dynamic routine, and then they play the day’s game. If there’s time, they end the class with meditation, but if the kids are enjoying the game, he lets them play until class ends. Frankie wants the kids to know that activity and energy can be used positively. Sometimes the children cry, especially if they lose, but Frankie takes the opportunity to ask them why they’re upset. To Frankie, that is why sports and physical activity are so important: “I call it a controlled failure. If they miss out on that, then when they hit a failure as an adult, they won’t know how to handle it.”
Learning about the children’s lives is another part of Frankie’s job. He sees himself as a “father figure” because most of his students live only with their moms or a mother figure, and their parents are typically not together, or their dad lives in New York, Florida, the Dominican Republic, or Puerto Rico. It’s important for Frankie to be a positive male role model for the kids because many “don’t see it” in their lives. Most of the teachers are women. He also notices how much the kids crave affection since he and many of the other teachers get so many hugs each day: “I recognize how much that does for them, even though it seems like a small gesture.”
The teachers are loving and caring, but Frankie also feels strongly about what’s missing among Reading’s schools–Latino representation. Ethnicity and race matter. Latino teachers were the majority in the school in Miami. At Riverside Elementary, Frankie is one of the seven Latino faculty and staff, a positive step forward for the school and the children: “They’re like me. Their relationship with the kids is that much stronger because they understand the Latino background from growing up. And you can talk to the kids differently because we come from the same place.”
Moving around in his first few years of teaching has taught Frankie that urban education is where he’s “meant to be.” Reading’s kids, despite the stigmas, aren’t “bad” kids: “They just need somebody who is willing to listen to them and redirect them without belittling them because kids know when you don’t like them. I want to continue to grow and connect with these kids.”
Frankie’s mom remembers one of her elementary teachers and the impact she had on her life. That’s what Frankie aims for: “I feel like if I can get them when they’re that young and they’re still very, very impressionable, I can teach them respect, manners, self-love, and give them tools to deal with their everyday life, to understand their emotions, to write down how they feel, to have that ability and perspective.” Many of the kids growing up in Reading
“don’t realize that they’re poor and that there’s a world that can be explored and that there’s opportunities that you can find.”
Helping these kids access those opportunities is what Frankie is all about. To Frankie, it’s not a “hard job.” Working with children at Riverside is, quite simply, “an honor.”