The Legacy of Welcome

By: Vanessa Brown
Publication: www.nwp.org
Date: January 2005

Summary: In this address to the general session of the 2004 National Writing Project Annual Meeting, Vanessa Brown, who attended segregated schools from kindergarten through high school, recalls the gift she received from her kindergarten teacher. This gift, which she has since seen all good teachers share with each other and their students, has become the key to her educational success.

Good morning to my Philadelphia Writing Project family and to all of you with whom I share the honored profession of teaching.

This fall I celebrated thirty years as an educator in the School District of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. I am a by-product of that same school system, having attended three segregated schools in segregated neighborhoods within walking distance from my childhood home.

Although two of my three principals from kindergarten through grade twelve were Caucasian, every teacher I had in grades kindergarten to grade six was African American except one. And she, with all good intention, told our impressionable class of kindergartners that she was a "pinkie," referring to her pink cheeks and flushed skin color.

Looking back, now, at those days in the mid-fifties, which were just three short years after the Brown v. Board of Education [of Topeka] decision, I wonder if she was really trying her best to show us that the world was not just black and white. I suppose had there been a Philadelphia Writing Project at that time, she might have been encouraged to take an inquiry stance, asking the question "What happens when kindergartners define identity?" Beyond the principal, she was one of only two or three other Caucasians who worked at our elementary school. I don't remember a whole lot about my time with Miss "Pinkie," but I do remember that she could play the piano, she knew lots of songs, [she] encouraged us to write in little brown journal books, and she was pretty and pink. All the kids said so. Everyone also agreed that she was pretty and nice. She smiled a lot and touched our hair and gave tender hugs to us when we said or wrote something "smart." In three and a half hours each day, she managed to get most, if not all, of us to read the first basal of the Ginn series Fun with Dick and Jane. But, more importantly, she made us all feel welcomed in school.

It seems strange now to call upon that word to describe that first school experience. But the more I push myself to recall those early literacy experiences and the impact they had on my life and professional practice today, "welcomed" really sums it up.

There was something about the significance of acknowledging and celebrating our uniqueness that made going into that small gray stone building, with its out-of-doors restrooms, a welcoming experience. You see, Miss Pinkie not only pointed out what made her distinctive, but she had us look at each other and point out what distinctions we saw in each other as well. I can still remember comparing the various shades of brown that characterized who we were as well as our various hair textures and facial features. I remember a certain excitement about the act of "noticing." "He's got long fingers." "She has a round face." "I have long hair." "My hair is curly." "I can jump really high." "I can write my name." Everything became a wonder and a source of interest. Every day, we were welcomed into this world of wonder. Each of us, uniquely special, could find some point of entry. Pretty Miss Pinkie was on to something.

Now, please know, Miss Pinkie was not the only teacher in my life who contributed to this legacy of welcome. Educator after educator in each of the segregated schools I attended pushed my schoolmates and me to look beyond the obvious and to seek out invitations and opportunities that were not always evident. I can name more than one teacher at every level of my schooling who made it their mission in life not only to show us how to recognize these invitations, but to convince us that we should expect no less than to find and use them in the same fashion as others or in new ways that were uniquely ours.

When I met Marcus Foster, my first African American school principal, in the fall of my tenth grade year, I was lingering in the hall of Simon Gratz High School, already late for class. I was bent over a glass cabinet filled with photos of former graduating classes standing on the steps of the White House. The annual twelfth grade trip to Washington, D.C., was an anticipated rite of passage for every graduate. I was there looking for the face of my own mother, who had graduated from the same school some five years before I was born. Instead of chastising me for my tardiness, he asked me my name and asked me if he could expect to see me in one of those pictures some day. I looked up at this towering, broad, dark-skinned figure with his round wired glasses—a mountain of a man, I recall. "Of course," I said with firm conviction. I had no doubt in my mind, and at that moment, I wanted him to know that I was no ordinary hall lingerer—I was living the legacy of wonderment. I was living the legacy of welcome. Not only was I going to the senior class trip one day, but I was also going to graduate, go to college, and become a teacher. No matter that no one [in my family] except for my mom and older brother had ever even graduated from high school.

I was going to become a teacher who filled children with wonder about things uniquely different. I was going to create communities of welcome. Had I not already been late to class, I believe I would have told him so. Instead, I let the tone of my voice and the twinkles in my eyes finish my response as I panned this mountainous figure in front of me. After our brief conversation, we parted ways and never had the occasion to speak again that year until he looked into the audience at a Beacon Motivation Program, where a few hundred of the tenth graders waited to be inducted. In the middle of his opening remarks, he looked ahead and focused his piercing eyes at me and said, "I see little Miss Andrews sitting out there. Stand up, Miss Andrews. Thank you for being here tonight. Will you be here three years from now—for graduation?" My friends snickered all around me—embarrassed for me. I looked ahead right up at him and responded, "Of course I will." He smiled and said, "Thank you, I am going to be looking for you."

From that moment on, I believed that nothing could stop me. Neither hell nor high water was going to stop me from becoming a teacher. I have held on to that moment for all these years since. I have embraced the legacy that an endless trail of educators laid for me. In spite of the fact that every school I attended from kindergarten to undergraduate school was racially isolated, not until I reached graduate school did I truly understand that separate was considered unequal. Despite having written briefs of cases like Plessey v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education in my Foundations of Education class, the inequality of my educational circumstance had never crystallized for me.

What was it that so effectively overshadowed the gap that existed in educational opportunity and resource? It was a legacy of indefatigable teachers and other educators who lovingly, passionately orchestrated access to rigorous relevant and challenging reading, writing, speaking, and listening experiences that spanned home, school, and community. It was and continues to be keenly insightful, caring educators who understand the legacy of welcome. It has been people like so many of you, who have extended welcome by accepting the wonderment of my uniqueness, and challenged me to go further—to discover myself and to discover you. It has been people like you who have embraced uniqueness in styles of leadership and in ways of knowing.

Personally, I am convinced, some thirty years after taking my first teaching assignment and forty-seven years after leaving Miss Pinkie's class, that the world of wonder is inextricably linked to "welcome." It is much more than a printed word on a straw mat at the entrance to a building. It is a state of being. It is a philosophy. It is a way of creating communities of practice, if you will. It is a way of building and sustaining diverse pools of leadership.

It is the legacy that we celebrate through the story of this beautiful new teacher [see "You Expect Me to Do What?" by Johna Dowdall] and that of our founder, Jim Gray, and every one of us in between. It is the legacy on which we stand, the legacy of welcome . Thank you for having me today.