"Education saved my life," Bertice Berry told her audience at ASCD's 56th Annual Conference and Exhibit Show. As a high school student, Berry was told she was not college material. An angry adolescent, she would ball up her homework and throw it at her teacher. "Fortunately, I had a brilliant teacher who understood that the bigger the attitude, the bigger the insecurity," Berry related. "She took my homework and had the audacity to read it, and she found out that there was more going on than the attitude. She was instrumental in making sure that I went beyond high school."
Bertice Berry
Attending college was just the beginning for Berry. By age 26, she had earned a Ph.D., "not because I was brilliant, but because I worked hard and had educators who believed in me." She went on to become a professor of sociology, talk show host, comedian, and author whose most recent books are Redemption Song and The Haunting of Hip Hop.
Speaking at the Opening General Session, Berry used song, anecdote, and uproarious humor to convey her message that educators are the physicians who can heal our ailing society.
Educators are expected to do it all, she acknowledged. "We need more parental involvement," she said, but "we need to define how much and where and when," because parents can make educators' lives very difficult. "I have a friend who's a principal, and she says that her dream job is to be the principal of an orphanage."
Nonetheless, parents must share the responsibility for children's welfare, Berry asserted. "I am so tired of the question, ‘Are schools safe for our children?'" she said. "Children need to be safe for the schools." It's at home, not at school, where students are making bombs, she noted dryly. "So the question needs to be put [to parents]: ‘Are you making your children safe to send them to schools?'"
Berry also challenged conventional notions of diversity. "People think diversity is about ‘Kumbiya' and ‘Can't we all get along?' My whole family is black, and we don't get along," she joked. "Diversity is really about diversity of information, ideas, and experiences. The more we expose children to, the more they become. Let me put it another way: Inbreeding does not give birth to genius."
Children should be told the truth, including multicultural perspectives, she added. "Diversity is not about being politically correct; it's about being correct."
"Be much more proactive with the media," Berry urged her audience of educators. "The business community has a lot of money, and politicians have the advantage of the microphone—and you're left out. I cannot stress enough the importance of making your voice heard."
"Invite the reporters to your school, invite the newspaper over," she advised. "Let them see the wonderful work that you're doing."
Not all parents will reinforce the work that educators are doing with their children, Berry conceded. "Yes, you will have to pick up the slack—but when you do, the world should know. They should know, because you're doing an incredible job. You're doing a better job than anybody recognizes or talks about."
To illustrate this point, Berry shared an anecdote about her own children.
"I read to my children in the morning," she said. "We read stories of our ancestors and our elders." One morning, she was reading to them about Sojourner Truth, and they were talking about the concept of abolitionism. When they had finished reading, Berry's 8-year-old daughter said, "My teacher is an abolitionist."
"I asked her, ‘How do you know that?' And she answered, ‘She sets me free.'"