Freda Andrews

Freda Andrews (FA): It wasn’t Durham Public Schools, it was Durham City Schools. I had my first teaching job at Fayetteville Street School in Durham. The ironic thing is, about that, as a Black teacher, I had to learn the culture of my own people because of the difference. When I was in Person County all they sang was, “She’ll be Coming around the Mountain.” But when I came to Durham, the kids were singing, “Thriller.” I said, “How am I going to adjust?” I was too [white] to be Black. That was my scary moment. I couldn’t control… I couldn’t manage my classroom.

So, I went home telling my daughter my saga about “I don’t know how to relate to these children.” Because they were behavior-wise like night and day. Even the music, everything about them was different. I asked her what should I do? She said, “Well Mom, you got to realize what your setting is. You gotta go in there and let them know who the teacher is, first of all.” They used to have a saying for teachers, “You can’t smile until the end of the year.” Things were really difficult for me. But then I kept saying “I don’t know whether I’m too…I can’t relate to them. I can’t get their attention. I can’t get them to do what I want them to do.”

So, she said, “We always believe in prayer.” That’s a strong glue to our family. So, after I prayed about how to handle the situation, I was determined that I was going to go back in there and this was going to be our class. Not their class, not my class but together we were going to work together in this situation. Once I did that, once I started talking about more of the things they enjoyed doing, I could understand the background better. My family was, basically, we grew up thinking we were kinda, I guess you say, middle class and up, so it was hard to identify with the inner-city children because I was never from the inner city. As an educator, oh my goodness, I am so far out of the range of these babies, but I made it because they eventually knew that I cared. That was the difference. Because once they realized and when I introduced my poems to them, they had no choice but to get [in line]. That’s how I worked that out.

Freda Andrews (FA): Folk like me, they don’t have to pay us full salary. They hire us to come in and do remediation for a grade level to help them because many of the students don’t do well on the End of Grade tests. We are like a faux tutor in the public schools. We remediate them. I work four days a week, part-time. My job is to help them with the skills that they are weak in. That’s pretty much all it is. Sounds like a fancy thing but that’s all we do. Work with a small group in math and reading. Those are the two areas.

Interviewer: Do you ever get frustrated or feel things toward like seeing things being perpetuated or never ending?

FA: There is such a break down in education and the importance of it in the inner city. Many of our parents of the students I work with are so young that they don’t tend to value education like my parents did. The home values are broken down. We’ve got children raising children. We come from an impoverished area. Durham is supposed to be a ‘pretty good neighborhood’ but we still have children that are homeless. I work with some of those children, they live in hotels. Of course, studying is not their priority, food is, getting to school. When they come to school late every day, there’s not much we can do except reach out and make a difference with these children.

When they go home, homework? Who does homework? All they want is video games. This is what they have, this is what they do. I found that many of them are struggling. They have not mastered the kindergarten/first grade levels. They are still so weak in the academic areas because there is no one home to reinforce what we do. To encourage them first of all. That’s why I love these poems. They have to encourage them and instill that. I had one student go home and her mother was a teacher where I worked. I was giving this homework assignment and some other things and her mother was complaining that I was giving too much work.

Her daughter said, “Well mom, Ms. Andrews said….” You know what she told her. “We can do all things.” This young lady is now getting her doctorate degree, because [of] the things that I instilled in her. “You can do this. So what if you’ve got more than one assignment.” I didn’t realize at that time that I was even touching her. I was pushing another child. It just happened to fall on her shoulders what I was getting one child to do. Her mom said, “You made a difference.” I said, “I did?” I have so many stories of children when I see them.

Freda Andrews: I grew up walking to Northside Elementary School because that’s the mode of transportation in those days. And I would cross a little branch everyday going to Northside, which was 20 minutes from my house, if that much. The only difficulty with that sometimes, the little water would rise up sometimes across the creek, and I would be afraid to cross it, but my older siblings were always there to help me. I grew up in Northside elementary school. I went to that school from grade first, because there was no kindergarten, through sixth grade. And the same people that I grew up with, that I went to school with, were the same people that I graduated with – when I did, finally, in the class of 1965. We did everything together. We walked to school together, we played together, we were in the same classes together. And the thing I admire most about Northside, and Lincoln High, and the schools that we were in, not that they were segregated, but because of the fact that we had caring teachers. Teachers who wanted us to be successful. And they cared about us. The one thing young people don’t realize is that a lot of times now it's more like coming at you to greet, keep moving on. We don’t get personal with our students, and we don’t have time for one another. But in those days, the teachers or the principal lived right in the same community that we grew up in. In fact, my principal, Mr. McDougal, lived right behind me. So he would watch whenever we had parties at my house. He would watch to see our behavior because he was strict on, you know, being great in the public [inaudible]. So I would always be embarrassed the next day when I would be sitting in a classroom, and he would, “Ahem!” on the intercom, “Oh, I just want to throw shoutout to a party that I observed the other night,” and he would go on to tell the whole school about my party. You know, I was like [] how well-mannered we were and he would just say that, and it was kind of embarrassing to me, but I learned to get over it because I knew he was, you know, a spy [laughs]. But anyway, as I said, Northside [] Elementary School all the way through middle school and through high school. Because you know, we really didn’t have a middle school, it was just you went from grade one through six and then you went on through the other grades. We didn’t call it middle school, we skipped that part.

Freda Andrews is a daughter of the Northside. Notably, her primary and secondary school education transformed her life immeasurably. Her teachers, especially at Northside Elementary, created a classroom setting that directed individual attention to each student. Fostered by these nurturing teachers, she attributes their dynamic pedagogical methods to her desire to pursue a career in education. She reflects on how her involvement in the Freedom Movement shed light on the potency of change. She references poems and freedom songs that echo this fervent desire to evoke change. She recounts how she incorporated these poems into her teaching curriculum. She expresses that this unconventional style of teaching black history countered the negative stereotypes that were ascribed to her African-American students. She shared that one of her ultimate goals was to instill self-worth in her students. Additionally, she discusses her diverse teaching experiences and her challenges catering to the needs of her students. She states that her resilience was inspired by her key figures in her life like Hilliard Caldwell, Floyd McKissick, and her grandfather. She reflects on their instrumental roles in shaping her character and values. In the interview’s conclusion, she circulates back to her insights on education. Her career exposed the flaws of the education system to her, and she shares her ideal vision for classrooms. She notes that a paradigm shift in how individuals approach teaching their students will reform the school system.