The NPR Ed team is discovering what teachers do when they're not teaching. Explore our Secret Lives of Teachers series. Every fall, on the first day of school, Nina Park greets her new honors English class with a game called "two truths and a lie.
The mild-mannered Ms. Park shows a totally different side after dismissal, when she's geared up in helmet, knee pads, elbow pads and retro-looking roller skates and jostling, bumping and rolling around a makeshift derby track in an old warehouse. Known as Elle L. Cool Jam, she's part of the Cosmonaughties , a women's roller derby team in Boston. She's the team's jammer — the position that tries to score by forcing and finessing her way past a scrum of blockers, most of whom are way bigger than Park's 5-foot-2, pound frame.
Players shove, twist and bounce off one another, often ending up on the cement floor. Once, Park was literally knocked unconscious and rushed to the hospital.
But she's kept coming back, ever since a friend first brought her to watch a game more than four years ago. It was both a challenge and a change; instead of teaching, she was the one learning again. And her learning curve was a steep one; she didn't even know how to skate. Park says derby is a great way to release all the stress and frustration from teaching at her inner-city Boston public school.
And like Park, all these Boston Derby Dames — the name of the league — are acting out a kind of double life. By day, Brutal Lithium is a Ph. Some wear tutus over their tattoos; others are bedazzled and metallic.
