A Reflection from Within

My favorite part of the speaker series in the first few days was listening to Melissa Cole, Jr. Garth, and Torsheta Bownes. Why? Because it was real. Real in a different way than I described how I felt about Brown v. Board…Let me explain what I mean. You know how you see those feel good movies of teachers going up against insurmountable odds and students succeeding beyond all doubt? That’s what meeting them was like. The only difference is the true story doesn’t begin with the teachers entering the picture and there’s an endless supply of students. Like the previous post, I’d rather break down the speakers into parts and discuss what I got from each.

Melissa Cole:
Melissa is a recent grad (a.k.a she’s been an alumna for a matter of weeks) from the University of Mississippi. I don’t think you can get a more fresh perspective on the University than this. Amherst (save the invention of biological warfare by our namesake) doesn’t have the racial history of UM. The first black student at Amherst was Edward Jones in 1822. The first black student at UM was James Meredith in 1962, 140 years later. As you can imagine, the foundations of the University still tremble with aftershock. That’s why I think Melissa is courageous. It hurts to talk about race when most people want to sweep issues under the rug or bring it to the forefront and make it a marker for prejudice. I realize the courage that it takes for her to make the University her home too. Melissa, in the documentary The South Will Rise Again and in person, made me realize that we still have a long way to go until we’ve reached racial reconciliation.

Torsheta Bowens and Jr. Garth:
I don’t think…Scratch that, before Friday night I had never met a teacher that openly said “I hit my kids.” But I have also rarely met teachers who seem to care so much for their students, their kids. I think Torsheta more than Jr. seems like a “don’t start none, won’t be none” teacher. I’m not going to lie, if I had her as a teacher I would be intimidated. But when she said, “They know. They know if you care,” I knew she did care. Along the same lines, when Jr. said, “You have to care about them, but not care what they think about you,” I got the same feeling.

In my previous blog when I talked about home-grown talent from the community, Torsheta and Jr. are examples of this talent. Both are from Mississippi. I can’t believe someone would think, let alone say, Teacher Corps teachers from out of state are needed because Mississippians are unable to educate themselves. Students should be able to see people like them, people who come from the community, succeed. The people who go down and bring them up should be able to come from their community, and they can. I know sometimes you need a fresh pair of eyes and perspectives, but that doesn’t mean people who are in the fish bowl are invalid. If anything, they have more at stake.

Melissa, Torsheta, and Jr. make me question what I can do in Amherst. I have an idea of what I could do in South Carolina, but for the past year I’ve been wondering what the heck I could do for community service in Amherst. I wasn’t sure if I just wanted to tutor students, or be a big sister for one day a week. Those are both honorable and I wouldn’t have a problem doing either, but I just wonder, something else (I don't what) makes me wonder.

-Radical