Coming up on American Black Journal, we've got a great show for you this week.

We're gonna talk with the president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers about education during the pandemic and the potential to return to in-person classroom learning before too long.

And we're gonna talk to someone whose new book pays tribute to the wisdom of our elders.

Stay right there.

American Black Journal starts now.

Announcer 1: From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco: serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Announcer 2: Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

Announcer 1: The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African American history, culture and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

Announcer 2: Also brought to you by AAA, Nissan Foundation, Ally, Impact at Home, UAW: Solidarity forever, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪ Welcome to American Black Journal.

I am Stephen Henderson.

Across the country, school systems are debating about whether it's time and whether it's safe to reopen schools for in-person learning.

Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer says, she'd like to have kids back in classrooms by March 1st.

And in Detroit, they're talking about opening some learning centers in the next month and they hope to be able to start opening schools in March.

And that's only though if the COVID infection rate remains low.

I spoke with Terrence Martin, who is the president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, about the possibility of returning to in-person learning.

Let's start with the position of teachers, the position that teachers are in during this pandemic.

We haven't talked a lot with teachers.

We've talked a lot about teachers, but I haven't had a chance really to talk a lot with teachers who are experiencing this or making the changes that are necessary and I assume, anticipating a time when we'll get back to in-class learning for everyone.

But just give us a sense of how this has been for Detroit teachers this school year.

Well, as many can imagine, there was no methods course in college on how to teach through a pandemic and do it remotely.

And so, as you can imagine, teachers have been feeling very frustrated.

as obviously something extremely new, something that none of us have been through before.

And so it hasn't been easy.

Certainly been very difficult.

And as we approach a year that we've been in this environment, it's growing and increasingly getting tougher.

You can imagine having to deal with death and illness in your own family, but also reaching out to students who are experiencing the same issues.

And for us, you're not able to mourn in the ways that we typically do, you are not able to comfort your loved ones in the way that we'd like to, because of the restrictions.

It's been very difficult to teach through this environment.

What about the support that teachers have gotten?

What about the ways in which the district has made it possible for distance learning to take place and maybe made it easier?

Do you feel like you've gotten the kind of support that you need?

Yeah, I think one of the things that certainly we're proud of as a union is, the letter of agreement that we signed with the district back in the early fall, late summer, where it allowed teachers to have the option of whether or not they wanted to teach face-to-face or continue to teach online.

And I think for a lot of educators, that served as a huge relief for them.

Many live in a multi-generational household where they're taking care of care of the elderly parents, and they have children of their own.

And so being exposed to this virus saw a great risk in that.

To be able to choose and have that decision solely with you on the health and safety of your family and the health and safety of students, teachers really appreciated that.

And so we certainly appreciate the district seeing that and then being able to accommodate folks.

Nevertheless, we do have some teachers that want to go back face-to-face, and they were allowed to do so, and they received extra compensation as a result of that.

And also, the testing protocols that we were able to establish with School District allow for a voluntary testing of students, staff and the community at large at schools.

And so that has been huge.

Philanthropists coming through, allowing for every student in DPS to have a laptop with connectivity was also a huge support.

Those are the things that we thought we needed at the time.

Now that we've gone through this for a year, there are other things that we now need, other supports that are needed.

We knew at the beginning of this that this was gonna take a huge toll mentally and emotionally for our students and for our staff.

And so now we know.

It has been confirmed that the emotional and health of our students and our staff are gonna be paramount to address coming up.

I had a very brief conversation with the superintendent last week about using some of the federal funds to actually provide support, mental health support to students and the staff very, very soon here.

And so we're really looking forward to that.

And again, now we're a year in it, vaccines are around and out and folks are getting them, but there's still so much that we don't know.

But what we do know that this has taken a huge emotional toll on us all.

And so that certainly has to be addressed.

Now the discussion is around the vaccine, what that allows us to do in the school environment in the next few weeks or months.

Superintendent Vitti has announced that he'd like to have kids back in school at 100% within just a few weeks.

Whenever somebody says that though, I immediately think, well then how come we're not making sure that every teacher has a vaccination?

That hasn't been the way that the protocols have worked.

That has not been the way that we've done this.

I wonder if you have that same concern.

And if we do go back to the point where they say, "Hey, we're back to in-person school for everybody all the time."

Are you gonna be okay doing that if all your teachers haven't had vaccinations?

I think we all have to be comfortable with saying, we really don't know.

And the bottom line is this, we all wanna go back to work.

Teachers want to teach in schools, but it has to be safe.

We have to remain healthy.

We've gotta have the resources necessary in order to do that.

We don't know what in-person education is gonna look like.

After a year of having it just sporadically here in Detroit, who knows what it's going to look like moving forward?

And I think that, obviously the vaccine is gonna be huge to continue testing is also going to be huge.

But what we also have to understand is that, Detroit is no different than LA, and DC, and Chicago, with a huge population of black people and black students.

There's an undercurrent there of distrust in the government and distrusted in healthcare and there is a history of it there.

We're really gonna have to truly educate the public on what this vaccine is and what it is not in order to get folks back.

It's certainly not the end all to be vaccinated, but certainly is a strong first step to getting us back.

And I think it's really too early for us to say or put a percentage on how many folks we want back.

I think we really have to analyze where we are and both the union and the district have committed to really looking at the numbers, the hard numbers.

We made a commitment that the positivity rate had to be at least at five or less, a 5% or less in order for us to return to some sort of in-person learning.

And we're gonna stick to that.

The union plans on sticking to that.

I'm certain that we'll have more teachers who choose to teach in-person now than we did back in the fall.

Many of our teachers have been vaccinated.

There needs to be more obviously, for us to get to the point where we're comfortable.

But we also have to look at the families also being vaccinated and the general public in Detroit being vaccinated and tested right along with that.

We have goals in terms of how many students we want back.

We're far from certainly where any of us would like to be at this point.

I also wanna talk about once we get back to in-person learning, all the time that's passed since we were at that point last year, and what that will mean in terms of some sort of loss.

I think there's no other way to cast that, right?

There's going to be some loss because we've had to disrupt things so much and so many different times in so many different ways.

How do you prepare teachers for the challenge that's gonna face them when they get all their kids back in front of them in a physical classroom?

There's no question that there's gonna be learning loss.

And one of the things that this pandemic has done is really expose the inequities in education that already existed, particularly in the city of Detroit.

Now we get into a conversation of funding and really to be funded properly and appropriately for the student population, by which we serve.

And so that has been a challenge for us for a number of years.

And we have pressed upon Lansing to really look at a way to school formula, which really says that, let's provide the service, the support and the funding for students based on their needs.

Based on their individual needs.

And we know when you look at students in the city of Detroit, we have almost a third of our students who receive specialized student services, be it speech, be it OT, or PT assistance, resource room, special education services, all encompassing What our teachers know inherently now, is that we're already at deficit and what they know, in the coming months, in the coming years, is that that deficit has now grown because of this pandemic.

And so there's gonna be a reliance on funding and a reliance on supports, not only from our school district, but from our state and from the federal government to ensure that black students and brown students and students of special needs aren't left behind in this country.

It is black history month and there's a new book out that pays tribute to the achievements and wisdom of our African American elders.

"A Generation Found: Precious Pearls of Wisdom," features, photographs, and interviews with seniors from across the country.

They share their life lessons, their legacies and memories with photographer and writer, Roohee Marshall.

Seniors range in age from 80 to 108.

I spoke with Marshall and one of the featured seniors, Carol Hall of Detroit about the project.

So Roohee, I'm gonna start with you.

Tell me a little about your book and tell me where you got the inspiration for this idea.

The book really came from a place of need.

It's something that I was feeling inside.

I was thinking about the elders that I grew up with and missing their presence and their influence and just being in the company of them and guidance.

And I was driving down the street one day visiting a friend.

I was in Inkster.

I looked to my right and I saw a beautiful elder standing in her yard and I rolled my window down and I said, "Ma'am, can I talk to you for a minute?"

And she said, "Yeah, sure, come on."

And I went over and I started a conversation with her and she said, "Yeah, honey, I'm standing here cutting my front yard and I'm waiting for my niece to come with gasoline so I can cut the backyard."

She was beautiful.

She had brown skin, silver hair, 93 years old, cutting her grass.

And immediately I felt connected to her.

And I began to feel my elders through her and just embraced by a smile from her heart and her sincerity.

From that point, I began to talk to her and I told her something I really feel I needed inside from her today and I totally received it from her.

And on my way home after I talked to her and I asked could I come back and talk to her more, she said, "Sure, honey, we can talk anytime."

So I scheduled an appointment with her and I went back and talked to her.

But on the way home, I began to think about how I was feeling that day and how I began to get my colors back again and feel better.

And I thought that there must be other people who are feeling like this today, or just here yet in the world like me.

And I know that there were other outstanding elders throughout the world that I probably need to seek and find so I could try to share with them what I had received that day.

So that was my inspiration.

It's a wonderful story.

It really does reflect the title of the book, "A Generation Found," this idea of rediscovery, this idea of kind of bringing back to the surface these people and their legacies and the stories that they use to shape our world.

Carol Hall, tell us a little about you and how it feels to be part of this amazing collection.

This is an unexpected excitement in my life.

I met Roohee at a medical center.

She was actually drawing my blood.

I 84 years old so this was an unusual situation because she said, "I wanna talk to you.

I need to talk with you."

And I thought this was unusual.

"About what?"

And she came to my home and she sat down with me and she told me that she was doing a book on our elders and that she was putting it together.

And then of course, later on, I saw this magnificent book that she put together.

Beautifully lined, the photography is outstanding, the descriptions of all of us elders is extremely well done.

And I realized, as I talked to my family and particularly even now with Cicely Tyson having left us, and realizing the value of finding those beautiful people that have done so much for us.

We bury grandmom and granddaddy and we kind of forget what they've done for us, but Roohee has not forgotten that and she's sharing it.

And I think that we need to do it more often.

We need to have it open for our great-grands so that they can see that we don't sit in that rocking chair with a blanket and go away.

That we're here.

We can see what they can't see now.

Floyd, in my judgment, opened the door for us this past year.

And to a large extent, we're old enough to see beyond the door now.

We can see some things that are happening that my grandchildren can't see yet, that my great-grands can't see yet, but that is coming 'cause we can see that we're growing in spite of where we are today.

And because of what Roohee has put together here, we can share even more with the world.

It's just a magnificent piece that's very well done.

What parts your own story, Carol, do you think resonate the most or should resonate the most with younger people?

I think that the thing that's really critically important to me is that I come from the Hastings era, where I grew up with Aretha Franklin family as a kid on Boston Boulevard when they lived on Boston, 4210 Hasting street, was our church.

I lived on Willis, 633 East Willis.

It's since gone because of line 75.

I was listening to a record by a good guy that sings so well.

I thought of what the alleys used to look like when I was growing up on Willis.

There was a horseshoe shoeing place then three doors from my house, and there was the stench from those horseshoes being shooed every day.

And then there was a guy coming down the street with a wagon shouting, "Tomatoes, potatoes, fresh vegetables," and my mother and grandmother would go out and buy from that.

We came from that, we came from the period where we had to hide underneath the seat and carry a bottle in the car when we had the urinate going to Mississippi and Alabama.

I'm from that era.

But I'm also from an era that ended up, thanks to Mary McLeod Bethune, who inspired me in the second and third grade to move forward.

She said the door would open for us and we would have to be ready, but it wouldn't be open long.

And she was right because it's opened up starting with Eisenhower to some extent, but it began to close with Reagan and it began to close with Nixon.

And we've had to kind of struggle from that era up to where we are now.

And the result is that we're now in a new era and we can see where the struggle has been from Emmett Till to Floyd, those losses.

But there's been, where we've been last year, the good trouble a good friend has had.

So that's basically all Detroit.

I went to school in Michigan and then went to school in Boston as well, mother of three sons.

And they tell me and I'm glad to say, none of them have been in jail yet but it doesn't mean that they have been all good, it just means that we've been very blessed and very lucky and very conscious of the Floyds and what they go through.

Roohee, I wonder if you can talk about the feedback you're getting the book, both from people who are in it and people of that generation, but also from the younger generation who the book is kind of aimed at, saying, "Hey, look, this is part of your history, you should know this."

I feel divine intervention as far as the elders.

I mean, I stay connected to all of them as much as I can, before the pandemic, during it, and up until yesterday or today.

And I find that it helps because the book is filled with the sung and the unsung.

And what it has done, like one of the elders, Mr. Achla Lynch in DC, he says, "Our generation remains authentic because of this book."

It helps me to afford a sense of validation.

I've always had that sense with my grandfather.

He was a very important person in my life.

You always seek this sense of approval.

So I feel like I received that from them.

I wanted that first from them.

And the feedback that I have gotten gotten from them has been amazing just in my own healing.

Just receiving their energy, their strength, their courage, their wisdom.

Interesting thing happened, my granddaughter, she was nine, 10 years old and I showed her the book.

She went through it, she said, "Oh wow, Nana."

She said, "You went and you got all this knowledge this information from these old people?"

She said, "Now when I don't know what to do, I can go and find out what to do."

(all laughing) I was going for that and I was also going for the elders, what do they do from day to day?

Not the finished product so much, but just what they think, what they eat, what brought them to where they are today.

It was a very organic interview.

It was something that had so much power in it.

When I talked to mother Carol, it was just so amazing.

I remember someone asked me, they said, "Why didn't you just tape it?"

I said, "Because I wanted to write down."

While I was writing down, I could feel her spirit coming through my fingertips.

It was just amazing.

I had talked to her from time to time and she has been such an inspiration and I have learned so much.

I have learned so much and I am connected to each and every elder in the book, I want you to know that.

It's been one of the best experiences of my entire life.

She has been able to chronicle over 40 of us older folks, our histories, and what we do kind of for recreation, and the value that we really have for the next generation.

And then, generation Z really does need our connection.

And she's right.

My great-grandson at 14, is seeing this and they are excited about what has happened.

They don't get this history in school, they get black history from, now her, as you know, but it's important for them to know that history is in their family as well.

She has started that bandwagon, I hope that it keeps going.

And finally, today, we wanna pay tribute to iconic model and actress, Cicely Tyson, who we lost recently.

Throughout her 70-year career, Tyson paved the way for black women, both on and off the screen Miss Tyson made headlines for refusing to take roles that demeaned African Americans.

Instead she portrayed strong characters who commanded respect in movies like "Sounder" and "The Autobiography of Jane Pittman."

Miss Tyson's memoir just as I am, was released shortly before her death at the age of 96.

Our condolences to her family and her legion of fans.

That's gonna do it for us.

Thanks for watching.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org.

And as always, you can connect with us on Facebook and on Twitter.

Will see you next time Announcer 1: From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Announcer 2: Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

Announcer 1: The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African American history, culture and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

Announcer 2: Also brought to you by AAA, Nissan Foundation, Ally, Impact at Home, UAW: Solidarity forever, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪