Author’s Note: Portions of this article first appeared in the Carolinas Communication Association Annual, VOL. XXXV (2019), titled “Mentoring as Applied Communication Education” by Deborah Breede and Margene Willis.
All my life I have wanted to be a schoolteacher. One of my favorite Christmas presents was a chalkboard with colored chalk. My favorite game to play was “School.” Before my brothers, I played school with my dolls and stuffed animals. I would sit them down in straight rows in my bedroom, place an open book in front of each of them, and begin to “teach.” I would write and draw on the chalkboard with my colored chalk and point at it while I repeated the lessons to my always attentive but sometimes lopsided “pupils.” Once my brothers were born, grew beyond babies, and we got settled in our family home where my father still lives, I would teach them, finding duplicates of books that everyone in our family had. Because I would be beginning eighth grade at Frank W. Cox High School, where I would “change classes” in a Grade 8-12 overcrowded high school that served most of northern Virginia Beach, I insisted we “change classes” while we played. We’d start in my room, then move across the hall to my brother John’s room, carry our books to Ed’s room, and so on. We never played school in my parents’ room, and we always ended up in my room, back where the chalkboard was.
I’m not the only one in our family who was inspired to teach. My father received his bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion College (Norfolk division of William & Mary) in business administration and finance and his master’s degree from Indiana University of Indiana in banking. He taught an occasional business class at colleges and universities for years. My brother John received his bachelor’s degree from Virginia Wesleyan University in History and taught History at a public education academy for teenagers who were incarcerated. My brother Ed, the only one who raised three sons, was a welder who did the steel work on everything from major bridges to U.S. Naval aircraft carriers, but he trained all his workers himself and took pride in the fact that they had absolutely no accidents the whole time he was foreman. We are a family of teachers. I knew all my life that I was going to go to college and become a teacher. I was already the first girl on my father’s side to finish elementary school and high school. It was my mother’s dream that I would be the first girl on her side of the family to get a college degree. Education has changed all our lives for the better.
I applied and was accepted at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. My father went with me to orientation. I’m not sure who was more excited – me or him. I knew that I wanted to be an education major, and I chose English, Public Speaking, and Theatre as minors. I liked my faculty advisor quite a bit, an accessible, friendly man named Denny Wood. We both thought that it would be a good idea for me to join our discipline’s mentoring program, which provided academic mentors for public school children who were struggling academically through Old Dominion’s College of Education. We agreed that this would be a great opportunity to help others but also to “get my feet wet” and ensure that a career as a teacher was for me.
So, with my map and directions laid out across the passenger seat, I headed across town, turning into a neighborhood that was rather infamous in our area. The further I drove down the street, the more dilapidated the neighborhood became. Boarded up buildings with iron bars stretched down either side of the potholed and unmarked road. Some boys played basketball on one street corner lot, weeds sprouting through the concrete. The basket had no netting, just a rusted wire rim, and the thud of the ball, the boys’ taunts and jeers, echoed across the concrete. On the opposite street corner, an old man wearing a dark suit sat in a green lawn chair. Both the man and the chair had seen better days. I was starting to get a little nervous, so I pulled over to check my map. I almost jumped out of my seat at a knock on my window.
“Are you my mentor?” A girl about 11 or 12 stood there, one hand twirling a braid. I rolled down my window. “From the school? Are you my mentor?” She repeated, eying me warily, with desire and distrust, hope and hostility, rocking slightly back and forth on sneakers that, like the concrete lot and basketball rim, like the old man and the lawn chair, had seen better days. But those big, brown, hopeful eyes sealed the deal. I leaned my head out of the window and smiled broadly. “Yes,” I replied. “I’m your new mentor.”
Teaching has been the honor of my life. I received my Virginia teaching license in 1980, taught middle school in Virginia Beach for 6 years, then high school for two. I left Virginia to move to Florida, where I got my advanced degrees and began teaching college. In saw a job advertisement for a new faculty member at Coastal Carolina University and laughingly dismissed it. I had never heard of a school called Coastal Carolina University and thought the job posting was a fake. The following year I saw the same advertisement for a new faculty member, researched the school, and saw that it was a small but fast-growing state university in Conway, South Carolina. In my frequent travels between Florida and Virginia to visit family, I often explored old coastal routes rather than taking Interstate 95. I had driven through Conway a few times and remembered that it was a lovely historic town on a river. I decided to apply for the job at Coastal Carolina University, was granted an interview, hired, and started in the Fall of 2005. I taught there until my retirement in 2021. I was honored with the title Distinguished Professor Emeritus, so I am still on campus frequently, doing research, guest lecturing, and reveling in the joy of being around our beautiful, talented young people. I have been especially honored to teach people of all backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses, colors, sexualities, philosophies, politics, preferences, and ages.
When I taught in Virginia, “mainstreaming” had just begun, so I always had students in my classes who had special challenges, including at one time the actor Mark Ruffalo, who has been quite public about his struggle with dyslexia. One of my favorite things to do when I visit my family in Virginia is to get a big bear hug from my nephew Brandon, an autistic man who I adore. I had physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually disabled/special needs students in all almost all my classes, and they added joy, humor, and insights that we would have never reached without their presence. I still see some of those students on campus, and they always greet me with a vigorous wave and a shouted “DR. BREEDE!” Diversity, equity, and inclusion are hallmarks of all good teachers, because all good teachers are invested in their jobs, their students, and the greater good that they know lies, in part, under their tutelage. Good teachers want us all to have good futures, and I believe good teachers also try to create good citizens. We know our future is up to them.
These are just some of the reasons why I deplore President Donald Trump’s announcement(s) of the dissolution of the Department of Education and his proposed budget cuts that affect student loan funding and teacher education programs, but they’re not the only reasons. According to Purdue Global Law School “The 14th Amendment Protects the Right to a Public Education,” the dissolution of the Education Department will have ramifications that we will feel for years to come. However, for all the worries and fear, Purdue Global Law makes the point that many of the programs housed and funded within the Department of Education must survive, because there are laws in place that created and/or govern them. For example, the Department of Education must still fulfill its obligations under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. In addition, the Department of Education itself and many of its offices were in part created by congress and/or established by law. Therefore, it would require congressional legislative action to close its office or to transfer its responsibilities to other departments and/or agencies. Most of us know how unlikely congressional agreement is in this heavily partisan congress. Even Linda McMahon, current Secretary of Education, has insisted that financial aid, because it is congressionally propriated funding, cannot be affected by any plans for Education Department cuts and/or downsizing.
There are also arguments to be made that such action would violate the 14th amendment of the Constitution of the United States, often referred to as “The Equal Protection Clause.” Students with disabilities have the same right to K-12 public education that students without disabilities have. To receive and benefit from that education, students with disabilities may need special education and/or related aids and services. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) works to ensure that public elementary and secondary schools, including charter schools, provide a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) to all qualified students with disabilities (generally, students with disabilities who are of school age), regardless of the nature or severity of their disabilities. Section 504 and Title II require public schools to provide appropriate education and modifications, aids and related services free of charge to students with disabilities and their parents or guardians. The “appropriate” component means that this education must be designed to meet the individual educational needs of the student as determined through standard evaluation and placement procedures. However, students with disabilities must be educated with students who do not have disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate.
My dear friends and neighbors, these are good things. Many of us, including myself, cope with a variety of disabilities throughout our lives. Just imagine you were denied the ability to pursue your education because of them! I’m reminded of a dear friend who has also spent her life as a teacher, underpaid and overworked as most teachers are. As she has aged, she has required disability accommodation, including a handicapped parking pass, a walker, and other quality of life-saving accommodations. At the university where she teaches, the handicapped parking places are situated next to steps! She cannot access her building. There are literally no ramps she can use for access, no elevators, no federally required accommodation. Her husband of more than half a century, who is trying to run his own business, must drive her to and from her workplace so that he can help her access her building! This is unconscionable, unethical, and certainly a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This federal law legislation was signed into law on July 26, 1990 by President George H. W. Bush. Prohibiting discrimination against disabled individuals, it provides protections within most sectors of governmental employment – private, local and state – and offers protections in all telecommunications as well as public and private accommodations and transportation. It has been a lifesaver for folks ranging from the elderly, to adults and young adults, to minors. I think it important to note that this act was passed with full support of the Republican majority congress and the Republican President who supported and funded it.
I have been writing all my life. I started journaling when I was 8 or 9, published my first poem when I was 11, and I haven’t stopped yet. I wrote song lyrics for a rock band I managed in the 70’s, worked with the Poets in the Schools program throughout the 80’s, and in my graduate programs and throughout my time at Coastal as a faculty member, I wrote research articles, book reviews, and books. Some of the topics I have explored include racism, intimate partner violence, cancer survivorship, the plight of children living in abject poverty, premature infants in a neo-natal ward, and drug and alcohol addictions. I say this not to brag. I say this to point out that I have written about a lot of difficult, factual, heartbreaking realities, and the notion that our students, our young people, our children will all suffer because of these proposed cuts makes me sadder than anything I have written about so far. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever written. I requested and received a very rare deadline extension.
Then, this morning, I took a few minutes after breakfast to watch coverage of Pope Francis’ funeral. The contrast between Pope Francis life works and the choices our current leaders are making is stark. I immediately knew that I would end with some reminders from the “People’s Pope,” the man who eschewed the trappings of the ornate Vatican for a life, a papacy, and an end-of-life celebration that was like all good things – beautiful, fair, honest, and accessible to all.
“Dear Young People do not bury your talents, the gifts that God has given you! Do not be afraid to dream of great things!”
“The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need…”
“An authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized.”
“Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government most ask themselves two questions: ‘Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions, in order to choose the best path?”
Ask yourselves, please, and then vote accordingly: Are our current leaders listening “…to everybody, to diverse opinions, in order to choose the best path?” I think not.
