Terrence Foushee - On becoming a teacher (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): What kind of flipped that switch to make you say, “You know what, I think I’m gonna go back to school and become an English teacher.”

Terrence Foushee (TF): [chuckles] A few, a few experiences. So the first experience was after I dropped out from college while I was trying to figure out what was next, I was introduced to Ms. Lorie Clark, who I work for now, who I see as a wonderful mentor for me. Especially in another aspect of my life, as far as my passion’s concerned is servant leadership, which also comes a lot from my mother and my dad. She gave me an opportunity to be the assistant coordinator for the Youth Leadership Institute Camp for one of her Blue Ribbon programs. This was also a camp I was a part of in high school. That was one club I forgot to mention, YLI-Youth Leadership Institute, which is a servant leadership club at Chapel Hill High School, which is part of my job running now, which was the club that helped me learn about developing as a leader but also in serving my community. I don’t know how I forgot but that was probably, along with poetry [club], the most important club that I was involved in. But in coordinating that club, it was a two-weekend camp out in New Hope in Hillsborough, and in the second weekend of camp on the last day–and this is a very specific moment that I’ve written about, I’ve talked about a decent amount–we were finishing one of our more difficult team building activities. It was one of the culminating activities that we were doing and there was one student that I developed a relationship with. He and I just kind of had an appreciation for one another, and I think it was because he reminded me a little bit of myself. He could be a bit of a troublemaker, but had so much to contribute to the group. It was just about making sure that he stayed on track, and after we finished the activity we had a reflection and after that reflection we were just talking and he said to me–and I’ll never forget it–and he said, “Mr. Terrence, if you were my teacher I’d do my work.” And I think he said it, you know, a bit in jest, but was also speaking somewhat truthfully and it was so, so shocking and eye-opening to me that I told Graig Meyer–who is a state representative now, who used to run the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate Program–in like a meeting. I was like, “This student said this to me,” and he wasn’t surprised. And he was like, “Do you know where you got your appreciation for service?” and he was like, “I could actually very easily see you as a teacher.” [Deep breath] And I was like, “Well I’ve never thought about being a teacher, not once.” Like it was never anything that crossed my mind, and he was like, “But you’ve always had a passion for service,” and he was like, “this is kind of an intersection of servant leadership for you.” And he was like, “Do you know where you got it from?,” and I was kind of thinking and I was like, “You know, well I guess [in] YLI I was doing servant leadership in high school,’ and he was like, “Yeahhh, but it came before that.” And I was just thinking and he was like, “Your mother! Duh!” [laughing] And it was, I don’t know, somewhat of an embarrassing moment, where I was not able to make the simple connection of noticing what my mother had done and had been all the way up until that point–not just for me, but also the community. And I think at that point I started really trying to put some pieces together.