Terrence Foushee - On his favorite teachers (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): Did you, in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System, have any teachers that really stand out to you?

Terrence Foushee (TF): Yeah, so at the preschool level I loved my preschool teacher, her name is skipping me right now, but I just remember her being an incredibly nice teacher. One of my favorite teachers was my second grade teacher, Ms. Exson, she was my first Black teacher, a phenomenal Black woman, she was that right balance of stern but also nurturing and caring, and I think she was the first class–the first teacher that I had–that put me in an accelerated, gifted classroom when I was in second grade. There were a few other teachers that I really liked, in middle school, Ms. Works, she was an English teacher, another Black woman, and in high school I had a few, and interestingly enough they're all Black women, Ms. Joanne McClelland, who is still an English teacher at Chapel Hill High School, and an AVID teacher, she was my AVID teacher, I didn't have her for English, she was a classmate of my mother and also attended my church when I was a kid, so I knew her while I was growing up, and she was again the right balance of tough and nurturing, Ms. Kate Lawson, rest in peace, she was my ELP teacher, also another Black woman, balance of nurturing and also tough, I remember she threw a shoe at me for sleeping in her class in the front row. And then Ms. Barnes, I didn't have her as a teacher but I had a close connection with her and she's still teaching in the district. She's an AVID and English teacher at East Chapel Hill High School, so I mean I feel like this is a revelation to me is that one, all of the teachers that I named were Black women, but also many of them were English teachers, and I ended up becoming an English teacher at the high school level, so maybe it's something that I didn't really notice but I guess that was a part of their influence and impact on me.