Allen Buansi - On his mother advocating for him in school (clip)

Allen Buansi: And some of my formative experiences being in Chapel Hill, I can remember my first or second day of school, when I was at Guy B. Phillips Middle School. I can remember not feeling the most welcomed at first, because I remember I got called into the principal’s office and when I went there my mom was there along with a family friend. And essentially the principal was doubting that I actually lived in Chapel Hill. He said at the time that there were a number of students who were pretending to live in town, or not students themselves, but families, because they wanted to take advantage of the school system, the great public schools, and so he had some doubt as to whether I was actually living in Chapel Hill. And so that was one of my first kinds of encounters being in Chapel Hill and certainly after that visit I was like, “is this the right place to be?” But I credit my mom for so much of my life, because, first and foremost, she taught me to be your own best advocate, and she was sort of my best advocate, coming up through school, not even just Guy B. Phillips Middle School, but also before those points in time, whenever a principal, whenever a teacher, whenever someone in school was treating me in a way that they shouldn’t have been treating me, she was always quick to come down to the school and set things straight. When she came down to clear up the air, I didn’t have any more problems, at least in that regard. As I progressed through school, certainly other issues popped up. There were times when she had to come and talk to a teacher because the teacher was either treating me or treating someone else in the class unfairly. I can remember this distinctly in the eighth grade. I was in a history class, and actually about that time, history became a real passion of mine and I loved learning about North Carolina state history, loved learning about the history of this community and so I remember I had forgotten a textbook, to bring a textbook to class, and I had been doing really well in the class, but I just forgot it and part of it had to do with the fact that I had to carry a lot of books with me to class. I had to ride my bike around. We didn’t have a car growing up. I had to ride my bike, forgot my textbook, and right off the bat the teacher put me in detention. And when I got home from school, one thing my mom always said to me when I would get home from school is “son, how was your day?” It wasn’t enough for me to say “it was fine” or “it was good,” I had to go into detail and so I told my mom “I got detention today.” And she said “well, what happened?” And I said, “I left my textbook at home, my history textbook.” She, knowing how much I loved the subject, knowing that I wasn’t one to just forget stuff just because I don’t want to do anything. She marched right down to the school and talked to the teacher, next thing I knew, I had two textbooks: one for the locker at school, and one for home. And so I really appreciated her level of advocacy throughout my schooling, because without it, I’m honestly not sure where I’d be.