The teacher who saw me: A playwright reflects on learning, survival, in Plan-B’s DUMBED DOWN

DUMBED DOWN reflects on and is inspired by the playwright’s 25-year career as a high school teacher. 

by Darryl Stamp

I come from a family of high school graduates. 

None of my immediate family members earned a college degree, so I didn’t have an empowering educational support system. I attended elementary, junior high, and high school in Brooklyn, New York. Each of these schools were teeming with students from diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds.

Only one teacher — an English teacher in junior high school — saw any potential in me. In seventh grade, I wrote a story about a show I had watched on television. I titled it, “The Elevator.” This was before I knew anything about plagiarism, and there was no capability to record and save programs. My English teacher gave me an A and wrote at the top of it, “Excellent! You could be a writer someday.” He obviously hadn’t seen that T.V. show! 

I didn’t realize until decades later that I had a grasp of syntax and diction as a seventh grader. I still have that essay. It’s the only thing I wrote before some poetry about racism for a literary magazine at a college I failed to graduate from.

Mr. Cooper was the only teacher in elementary, middle school, and high school to see any potential in me.

Without a bachelor’s degree, I worked as a line cook, waiter, insurance investigator, stand-up comedian, a Kansas Department of Corrections halfway house employee, and an actor.

Eventually, I earned a graduate degree in education and became a teacher myself. 

I spent my first four years teaching at an inner-city high school. The faculty was mostly Caucasian. My first year was especially difficult, and I was ready to quit by Halloween. Our student body was about 55 percent African American, 35 percent Latino, and 10 percent Caucasian. But being well trained, innovative, patient, having a sense of humor, and seeing a bit of myself in my students, I was able to relate to them and help them realize their potential. In four years, my students went from saying, “Yo! Mr. Stamp, you so stupid!” to “Yo bro, I see what you did there, that was a sarcasm joint!” 

That initial eye-opening teaching experience, coupled with meeting folks who became my mentors at Weber State University after I moved to Utah, solidified my desire to continue teaching. I found myself fortunate enough to work with another diverse student body at Hunter High School, from which I retired in 2019. 

My teaching experiences reinforced my belief that if you create an interesting and relevant curriculum and genuinely care about students, success is possible. Especially if you’re a competent male teacher of color (which is highly underrepresented in the field of education). 

My play DUMBED DOWN is not about me. And yet, my experiences as a student, my work in the field of criminal justice, and my work with students to help them achieve academic success, career success, and societal readiness are all in it. 

I think Mr. Cooper would like it too.

Darryl Stamp has previously premiered his plays GO HOME COME BACK, “American Survival Story” (as part of FULL COLOR), and “Roar” (as part of … OF COLOR) at Plan-B Theatre. His latest, DUMBED DOWN, premieres February 12-March 1. Details at planbtheatre.org/dumbeddown