The Life of Kareem Tatum
By Taina Barbosa
Kareem Tatum is an assistant principal at North High School, and it is his first year starting here. Although Tatum has authority and is a well-respected staff member at this school, he does have a history and personal life, too.
Tatum grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts in Great Brook Valley. Attending grades K-8, he went to Harlow Street – a school now closed-down – and went to Burncoat Middle. After finishing junior high, his family moved to Shrewsbury for a year where he attended Shrewsbury High for his freshman year. “I didn’t like it too much,” he admitted, and so he went to continue his high school career at Holy Name Junior Senior High School.
Tatum states his childhood “impacted my drive” towards his future. The area of Great Brook Valley was utterly poverty-stricken. “There wasn’t much for kids my age at the time. A lot of drugs, a lot of crime, a lot of abuse- whether physical or verbal- a lot of domestic issues I saw as a kid,” Tatum states when describing the place he grew up. Beyond poverty, there were other challenges Tatum faced. “I was raised in a single parent home,” he said. Growing up, Tatum did not have much of a relationship with his own father. “I didn’t have a male role model in the home,” he explained. Fortunately, he kept himself busy by getting involved with sports so he had coaches and uncles who pointed him “in the right direction.” Additionally, Tatum grew up with his best friend Eddie Brown, meeting each other at the age of five and remaining close to this very day. “In hindsight,” Tatum loved the environment he grew up in. Though it isn’t a place where he would want his kids to be raised, it helped him with his goals and understanding what it means to really struggle and suffer: “I’m proud because it made me a better person.”
School wasn’t easy for Tatum though. He was frequently in trouble throughout elementary school. “As I matured and realized what life was about, I was able to change those behaviors,” he stated. Tatum eventually went on to receive higher education, but his experiences from Worcester stayed with him. “I went to Connecticut College in New London, CT, and there were a lot of students there who had no clue what it mean to live the way I did.” In college, Tatum was a psychology major and an English minor; additionally, Tatum played basketball for all four years.
After college, Tatum joined his former collegiate head coach at Brown University to coach with him for two years. Even though Tatum is now a teacher, it wasn’t his first career option. “As a high school student, if you had asked me if I was to ever be a teacher or go into education, it would have been definitely ‘no.’” However, realizing he didn’t want to coach anymore, Tatum found an opportunity to teach English at his alma mater, Holy Name. Later, Tatum taught at Forest Grove Middle School for four years, prior to landing an assistant principal position at Union Hill School for five years. His reason for applying for a job at North High was kind of selfish. He felt as though the hours working at Union Hill consumed too much of his outside life, like being involved with his children, Maya, age 7, and Quenton, age 5. He also felt that at North he had a lot to offer in assisting student development and learning.
Gratefully, so far Tatum has enjoyed his time at North High School. He finds the pace very fast, especially from his experience with elementary and middle schools. His family, his motivation for initially applying to North’s vacant assistant principal position, has impacted him to keep him motivated. “Without a doubt, and I didn’t understand this before I had kids, but everything I do, everything my wife does, is for my kids, so they have everything they need. We instill good values, in them socially and academically,” he stated.
When it comes down to it all, at the end of the day, Tatum is an average person who has struggled just as everyone else to make it down the road to a successful outcome in life. Let’s welcome Tatum and make his first year at North memorable and wonderful to make sure he sticks around for more!
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