Local educators participate in national oral history project

StoryCorps did interviews in 3 Hampton Roads cities

HAMPTON — Eight-year-old Harleé Patrick's wide, frightened eyes caught the heart of her teacher as she walked into class at T.C. Walker Elementary School in Gloucester.

Patrick's first memory of her former third- and fourth-grade teacher, Kate Musick, is of confiding in her teacher about her home life while sitting in the school's hallway.

The two formed an indelible bond that helped Patrick, now 15, pull through a dysfunctional home life in Guinea, an area of Gloucester that Musick says is populated by watermen, a culture of deep loyalty to family and little emphasis on finishing high school.

The student and teacher pushed aside nerves Monday to sit in front of recording equipment at Hampton University and candidly discuss Musick's career as a teacher in a small county and how Patrick's home life affected her education.

The pair interviewed each other through StoryCorps' National Teacher Initiative, an oral history project that launched in September to capture the stories of educators and students across the nation.

An 'open heart'

Musick and Patrick are among 18 pairs selected to participate during the initiative's three-day stop in the region, which included interviews in Virginia Beach and Norfolk before ending at HU Monday.

The audio will be archived at the Library of Congress, and a handful of recordings taken nationwide will be broadcast on NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday" throughout this school year.

Patrick, her bright eyes set off by a sunny yellow top, said she was going into the interview with an "open heart" and had no qualms about sharing her story, because she wants other children with difficult childhoods to know they can overcome, too.

An honors student at Gloucester High School, where she's a sophomore, Patrick described a childhood fraught with absent parents, exposure to drugs and being tossed between her mom's home and her grandmother's.

Her father died of a heart attack when she was 12, she said, and her mom was in-and-out of jail. She was raised by her grandmother, who she calls her "rock." Through the tumult, Patrick clung to the help of teachers to stay afloat.

Musick, who has taught for 17 years, says Patrick's story reflects the lives of dozens of her students who made the choice to "break the cycle of bad choices."

She credits her students for helping her, too, saying in the interview that knowing they needed her and cared about her helped her get through a divorce as a mother with two young children.

'Positive exposure'

Jeannette Potter, a former Newport News Public Schools teacher, said she focused her recording session Monday on what it's like to teach at the 48-bed Merrimac Juvenile Detention Center in Williamsburg, where she's worked since it opened in 1997.

She brought colleague and friend Karen Vaughan, one of seven teachers at the center, with her for the interview. Both women teach math and science at Merrimac. The center's residents who are between 10-18 have been charged or convicted of crimes ranging from murder or rape to truancy or assault.

Vaughan, who began working at the center in 2007, said she spent her first day there "very, very afraid of every little movement," but treated the students as she would have those in a regular classroom.

Potter described working with a student who asked her for copies of the biology lesson notes so he could catch up on the work. "I'm thinking, 'Are you the same person who stabbed someone to death three days ago?'" she said. "'Where's that kid?'"

Teachers meticulously keep track of items used by students, down to the pencils, which are numbered and must be returned to teachers because they can be used as weapons.

Vaughan said that in addition to academics, she works to provide the students a "good, positive exposure to teacher."

"Few of them have that," she said. "Sometimes it's that relationship you have that makes the difference."