Terrence Foushee - On his time at Chapel Hill High (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): And going back to your high school experience, I know from listening to the interviews we’ve done with your mother she went to Chapel Hill High School.

Terrence Foushee (TF): Yes.

KW: What year did you graduate from Chapel Hill High?

TF: 2005.

KW: Okay. And what was your experience at Chapel Hill High like?

TF: Um. [Pause] I would say first, I enjoyed my experience at Chapel Hill High School. I’m proud and grateful of the fact that I grew up with friends who, for the most part, I matriculated with and are still my friends today. I had long-lasting friendships that I think, in high school, I really have a lot of memories that even when we still get together, we still reminisce on, even though we graduated you know, nearly 20 years ago. [Pause] But also, I think that at Chapel High School, one, I had teachers that I felt like cared about me, that made high school difficult [laughs] because they cared about me and because they were really tough. Having Ms. McClelland as an AVID teacher was something that I’ll never be able to forget because AVID was the easiest class that I took at high school. It was also the most difficult one at the same time because Ms. McClelland was always asking me about what I was doing in certain classes, and she always held me accountable.

I think I was also expected to take honors classes because I mean, I would consider myself to be somewhat smart - I don’t know how smart I am - but I had the ability to take honors classes and AP classes. But I never really did well in them because I never really [Pauses] focused a lot in those classes. So I don’t know - I do feel like I was like a classic underachiever, but I enjoyed most of my teachers. I don’t have too many experiences with teachers that were too bad. But I would say in my senior year, my - I took sports management - and I think it might have been the first year that that class was offered. And the teacher was the first time that I felt like I dealt with what might have been overt racism in that class. The teacher was from Burlington, and I will never forget - there was a situation near the end of the year where we had five Black people in that class. And in one day, she sent all five of us to ISS (in school suspension), but it was all individually. So, it wasn’t like, you five are acting up, you did this one thing, let me send you all to ISS. It was one at a time. Very beginning of class, one person got sent; couple of minutes later, another student. All five of us were Black, and we weren’t even sitting together. So it - it was just a really interesting situation. It was one situation where I, like almost lost it on that teacher. Luckily, I probably could have done more, especially understanding the space and the capacity in which I work now, where I probably should have done more as far as holding her accountable. But I did tell my mother and she - this - this lady ended up apologizing because she knew she was wrong - but it was just a really interesting and - and I don’t know - hurtful experience for all five of us. But again, all in all, I would say that in Chapel Hill High School I had some great experiences. I appreciated my time at Chapel High School because I do feel like I had a lot of teachers who had my back and helped make sure that I was doing what I was supposed to and I made great friendships that still last to this day.