Emily Leonard is a petite 5 foot, 2 inches. The best way to describe her would be caring, thoughtful and selfless, which may seem like the opposite characteristics a teacher like Leonard would need in Detroit.

Leonard lived in Renton and taught seventh grade at Showalter Middle School in Tukwila for the 2015-2016 school year. Before that, she spent four years in Detroit as part of Teach for America, where she quickly learned she was too “soft.”

“You have to put up a wall, have to be meaner, have to be on guard,” Leonard said. “It’s exhausting and not the Pacific Northwest way.”

When Leonard graduated from Western Washington University in 2012 with a degree in English Literature with an interest in secondary education, she decided to join Teach for America. She wanted to teach in a high-needs area, get her masters and experience life outside of Washington, she said. TFA Detroit has a partnership with University of Michigan, where she wanted to get her masters, so she applied.

“In hindsight, I don’t think I fully understood what I was getting myself into, but I was, and am, inspired by TFA’s mission,” Leonard said.

During her first year teaching in Detroit, Leonard taught ninth grade. And it was not easy, to say the least. She was punched in the jaw by a girl who saw her reporting a fight to security. It was so bad she had to get her jaw realigned. Leonard has many “I can’t believe that happened” stories, but despite those stories and experiences, she continued to teach in Detroit for a total of three years. And she is going back to teach this fall.

Leonard wants to say she stayed and is going back because it got better, but it didn’t. She stayed because of the students. It became heartbreaking to leave them when they open up and trust you, she said. So many people walk in and out of their lives, teachers, friends and family and she could not stand being another person to let them down.

She can pinpoint the exact moment she decided to stay after her first year, because of a student named Fred. She had seen Fred around school and one morning he walked into her classroom, interrupted the lesson and just stood silently in the doorway. Finally, another student let her know that the night before, Fred had lost his uncle, brother and a cousin in a shootout on 7 mile, about two blocks from their school. She remembers clearly hugging him and feeling the weight of his loss collapse into her. He sat in her classroom all day because it was better than being at home, she said. In that moment, she felt like if this student who had such a tragedy happen, could come to school, then it was her responsibility to show up for them. She couldn’t just up and leave as hard as the year had been.

As the years went on, things didn’t get better. At one point, there was a fire at the school but it was too cold to stand outside so everyone had to stand in a less smoky hallway until the fire was under control. She was also cursed by a student who believed in witchcraft. Her favorite part of the story is when she reported it to her vice principal. There weren’t consequences in the handbook for cursing teachers, but she wanted to let her know that one of their students could be mentally unstable. The vice principal takes her hand, looks her in the eyes, and asks if she believes in Jesus and proceeds to pray for her and instructs her to repeat the prayer three times to ward off the bad spirits, she said.

One thing Leonard wants to make clear about all of her students and negative experiences is that these students aren’t “bad” kids or people. The situations happened under conditions that are difficult to fathom unless you were there, she said.

She quickly learned to leave her “soft” self behind. To them, people who are generous, sensitive, compassionate, forgiving and non-confrontational are weak. Those were all traits she learned at a young age coming from a tight-knit community where she was raised. In Detroit, the culture is more aggressive, she said. Violence, stoicism, vengeance, and misogyny are all promoted. You lose your voice if you don’t shout, she said.

Leonard made a big difference in some of her student’s lives. It may not have been many, but those are the students she stayed for. They are students who because of her, got out of cycles of violence and poverty. They are going to college because of her. They saw what they could achieve, outside of what they were used to, because of Leonard. One thing she wishes she would have done before she left was to network more with the community to give her students a support system after she left. They weren’t set up for long-term success. Her students don’t know how to achieve that success. She said she regrets not showing more kids what that other future looks like or how to find it.

It is hard to compare her time in Detroit to teaching back in Washington this year because of the way the students had grown up and because of the ages she taught. In Tukwila she taught seventh grade and in Detroit taught ninth through 12th. In Tukwila, she could see the student’s thinking shift about their own perspectives, the world, cultures, society, etc. In Detroit, it was much more difficult. The students there were already dealing with issues most adults never face, so school wasn’t their first priority, she said.

“It was a challenge to gain their trust, whereas kids in Tukwila walked in wanting to be your best friend,” Leonard said.

One other significant difference she noticed was that in Detroit, 99 percent of her students were black. In Tukwila, there was a large refugee population. She had students from various African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries. That put the students behind because English was their second language and they would often move from a place of turmoil. Whereas in Detroit, the students were behind because of a combination of institutional failures. But, she said both groups showed amazing grit and tenacity for such young people.

While Leonard isn’t excited to be “hardened” again, she is looking forward to making the difference she was making before she left. As challenging as Detroit was, there is an extreme sense of pride when you see your students overcome tremendous obstacles and succeed, she said.

“I’m looking forward to being a part of that again, helping someone accomplish something they didn’t believe was possible,” Leonard said.