Mialisa Bonta and Sarah Spieldenner

Recorded May 17, 2014 Archived May 17, 2014 41:09 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: ddc001572

Description

Mialisa (42) talks to Sarah (54) talk about their experiences at Friends Seminary School. Mialisa was Sarah's student and tells Sarah of the incredible impact Sarah had on her development of sense of self. Mialisa and Sarah discuss teaching risks when challenging students and pushing boundaries, as well as needing to develop a sense of trust to do so. They each reflect on the safe space Friends Seminary provided them.

Subject Log / Time Code

Mialisa tells Sarah about reading The Bluest Eyes in her class and still remembers the first words. She even brought the book with her because of the impact it made on her. She learned about her identity as a woman of color from a white woman.
Sarah talks about how Friends Seminary helped her develop a sense of self and feel grounded which she carried throughout her elite education. Sarah talks about what the role of a school is in the context of teaching at Friends having grown up in East Harlem.
Sarah talks about helping kids use words to say whats really on their minds because words have been used to build up walls. Sarah remembers some breakthroughs with students and talks about the fact that sometimes thats not something they want to know, like a black teen being best friends with a white teen yet having avoided discussion about race.
Mialisa tells Sarah how she helped her being an individual in a school that focused on equlizing, like some students hiding their wealth or poverty. Mialisa then tells Sarah about a time she helped build her sense of self when going through a tough times with friends in high school.
Mialisa talks about feeling it was random the way her teacher picked her to apply for private school when she was in the 3rd grade and upon reflection it makes her angry that other students didn't have the same chance.
Sarah believes learning is not "safe" if you're really learning , that there are risks, but that you have to trusts the people you learn with.
Sarah just informed the school that she will not be returning to teach after learning within the last 48 hours about a job opportunity as a chaplain and tells Mialisa how important it was to hear from her today.

Participants

  • Mialisa Bonta
  • Sarah Spieldenner

Recording Locations

Friends Seminary

Venue / Recording Kit

Partnership Type

Fee for Service

Transcript

StoryCorps uses Google Cloud Speech-to-Text and Natural Language API to provide machine-generated transcripts. Transcripts have not been checked for accuracy and may contain errors. Learn more about our FAQs through our Help Center or do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions.

00:00 I am 42 years old and today is May 17th 2014. And we're at friends seminary in the library and my relationship to my partner is a Sarah spieldenner with my awesomest teacher of the 10th grade English 10th grade English.

00:21 And I am Sarah chamlin spieldenner and my age is 54 and today's date is May 17th, 2014. And we're in the library of friends seminary in Manhattan. And I was Tanya's English teacher in probably the first year that I taught here, which was 26 years ago and

00:52 And I am a former teacher Alum and parent at friends Seminary.

01:07 And I'm 11 graduated in 1989 from Friends Seminary.

01:15 So I asked Sarah if you would do this storycorps with me cuz I thought it was a really great idea and I love the idea of oral history and capturing and I've obviously been thinking a lot about my time at friends with the 25th year reunions coming up and had this thought of just wanting to be able to connect with you as I was kind of reflecting on my time at friends cuz he had an amazing impact on my time here and and and I thought you I don't really know a lot about Sarah outside of that one year and I was hoping to hear a little bit about your experience of being that first-year teacher and what that was like a little bit about our class even if you remember but I kind of the ideas that first year of teaching and just teaching in general.

02:04 When I came to friends, it was 1988. So I don't know whether I could tell you in my first year my second part of maybe must have been first because I graduated but anyway, one of my most amusing memories of my first year at the friends Seminary is that in 1988. All of the girls had long hair that they parted on the side and sort of War over their faces. So they all tilted their heads the same way east of tickets.

02:42 And then they'd all the universe swing of it. So I spent a year or two or three looking at me and I just I remember because it was I came to friends to teach 11 years after I'd graduated myself and it felt very much the same that that there was a kind of

03:17 Organic excitement about learning that came from from the students and what we were doing not about no college entrance than anything like that that I had really missed in the six years that I taught elsewhere and I was just so

03:38 Happy to be here again, and I remember also that when I came to interview, which must have been the year before that I went to meeting for worship and

03:52 I hadn't been in a meeting for worship in 10 years and the the sense of

04:02 Togetherness that was created by everybody sitting in silence together no matter what your place in the school was no matter what your rank was the teachers for being silent next to students and students could stand talk. It just seemed

04:22 Like this

04:25 This incredibly affirming loving place and I was just thrilled to be here.

04:38 And I remembered really really really liking my first year at my first years worth of students and how

04:54 Comfortable and interested most of you were in in the

05:01 The complicated things that I was throwing at you and

05:08 I do remember that I was kind of put through the wringer, but I can't remember how just the way any new teacher is and I remember going to run singer and going please like I'll tell them to stop but

05:27 But I also remember that that didn't last very long and yeah, yeah, I never you getting a I started at friends when I was in the fourth grade. So that friends from starting at fourth grade and M.

05:45 I have mrs. Pillsbury was my fourth grade teacher and

05:50 Everything about my favorite spaces at friends and I fell in love with the library. Like I spent all of my time in the children's section of the library when it was its is it still so there's a portion of the library back then that was upstairs and there was like a little reading Nook that I spent all my time and and mrs. Pillsbury had like a reading Loft and I spend all my time just kind of like literally buried in a book all the time. And so throughout the years the English track what kind of language arts track was like a very

06:24 Important aspect of my time at friends. It was kind of what imprinted me first when I came into the school. Actually remember David Lowery and when he interviewed me as a third grader coming to school and he asked me some crazy story about a caterpillar an apple and an egg make a story of up about the caterpillar in an apple. So it was all very literary to me and I remember you coming in in the 10th grade year and I'd had like Molly peacock and run singer and

06:57 I remember you being really hardcore like just really really high expectations and really focused on helping us to kind of expand or defend our thinking around some really complex subject matter about for me a lot of it with identity. For instance. Like I actually brought my copy of The Bluest. I have it in my back right now, but I just remembered kind of opening up the first page of The Bluest Eye with you and you read it. This is the house is this what are this is a house the house has a red door can explore and on and on and I remember thinking about leaving that first reading that you did and thinking about how incredibly different from the reality of Jane my life was and and then obviously the rest of The Bluest Eye in the book is incredibly intense and

07:57 A lot about for me kind of in the moment of race and identity and ethnicity and I just remember dealing with very Soulful challenging difficult.

08:09 Concepts through literature, I'm learning the most about who I am as a woman of color and a girl of color is a Puerto Rican girl from white woman in a lot of ways just kind of being able to kind of like reflect on that. You have an incredibly high standards about our writing and you are the I to the first teacher that I had it friends where I kind of had something in and it would come back with red marks are the kind of feel like there is with this philosophy of like don't use red kind of makes people feel a little whatever and you just end and you did that and I remember getting things back but with little lot of love and kindness constructive,

08:55 Awesome constructive criticism around it and just really the challenge of just think more deeply than more powerfully. So you saw the red marks as me taking you seriously and listening carefully to what you had to say. I saw it as you challenging me and really pushing me to to make sure that I was bringing my boss best self into everything that I wrote and I think it different times in my life friends was you definitely family and definitely a place that I often needed to be nurtured within the environment. I think people knew that about me or it was just kind of the way of the school and sometimes it doesn't necessarily translate academically into

09:44 In to push you on the academic side. So did you was it frightening to have have this opportunity to think about yourself as

09:59 Or person of color as a woman was it was it frightening? I mean like you had to do it in order to pass that I can imagine that that and I've seen that people are sometimes frightened by that opportunity because they may or may not be ready to go there. Right? And I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about that. I think it was

10:33 It was

10:37 It was a little bit kind outside the realm of the experience. I was having in the school because I did feel like as a kid growing up in the Bronx.

10:50 Strongly connected to my family identity in my cultural identity and I'd get on the train and the Bronx and travel for an hour and a half and go through this process along the way of kind of needing to forget my I didn't write my cultural identity in a little bit. And so I think your class in that moment was the first time when I was asked if any of those two cells and so yeah, I think it was really scary.

11:20 Reading is really scary but in a good way and in a way that

11:26 I needed to be able to feel kind of connected and in whole as I was going through friends. So and what what what what do you think that?

11:40 Allowed you to do later or did this at that? What how do you think that is experienced shaped you after you left friends?

11:51 Think

11:54 I think it allowed me to connect to all aspects of why was no matter what setting I was in right? So I left friends and I went to Yale undergrad and then I went to

12:10 Harvard Med school and I went to Yale law school. So very kind of elite an elitist educational settings and I think the experience of getting grounded in feeling connected and acknowledging all of who I was no matter who I was around with the thing that I carried through the rest of my educational experiences and is also the kind of thing that I really having now working with lots of children of color and lots of different settings. The thing that I kind of always want to emphasize with them. So I think it definitely carried. Ford

12:50 You know, it's interesting because you're an education to this whole question of how does a how does an how does a school welcome students who are from diverse backgrounds and does the school just

13:13 How does it morph as as the student body changes and how does it stay the same or is is there a job that the school has to sort of teach all of its students the the language of power or is it to help them to find their own voices and that is often a clashing those those two questions Clash against each other sometimes and so it's it's really interesting to hear what you're saying about about your own experience and also

14:00 And also it makes me realize that.

14:08 Eye or at least remember that in my own experience coming back to friends as an alarm in a new teacher.

14:19 I also was struggling with some of the same or similar questions because I lived in East Harlem and there is one or two friends students who lives near me and went to see on the subway and they knew where I live and

14:39 And it was really hard for me to know and I've grown up in East Harlem and I didn't look like a grown up in East Harlem and it was hard for me to know how I should use that part of myself as a teacher because I didn't want to just like go up two kids and say, you know, I look a group needs to leave it in. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't never figure it out and it's funny because when the riots happened in 1990 in LA and I think school might have been canceled in the middle of the day, you know, it's like we're scared. They're going to be riots here. Everybody just go home. And that was when I said to Ed Randolph, I live on 109th Street and 3rd Avenue, you know, like I can help take peep.

15:39 I guess it was 91, but I can I can help take people home, you know and

15:50 So a 10 I remember another time when they were showing some film in the meeting house about you know, these poor people in the parable life that these poor people had and they showed my groceries and so

16:20 How do you think you did it? How do you how did you bring Caniff? How did you bring your sense of self into your

16:28 Teaching and who you were? Well, I think I think that one of the most exciting and terrifying things about teaching is there's absolutely no where to hide and even the things that you're hiding from about yourself.

16:50 Is it that's always showing you know, and so so the the the sort of questions that a teacher of English at least still has about herself is going to shape or curriculum. It's going to it's it's going to shape the discussions in class and you know, whatever. I don't feel comfortable talking about is not going to get talked about in class and perhaps the sort of things that I want to figure out about myself might be things that we end up talking about in class ROM and

17:37 I don't want to make it sound like you know classes therapy, but it but it I mean that's just naturally what kind of what happened right arm.

17:51 And

17:54 So

17:57 But but I think

18:00 But I think also one of the things that I've been most interested in as a teacher is

18:09 To help kids use words to show what

18:17 Show what's really on their minds like a litters a lot of kids who go to the English class and they're feeling unsure and then you got the stuff teacher. And so they'll use bow use words to say absolutely nothing and build up a wall and and then as a teacher have to say, you know, you wrote a whole paragraph and you could probably cut that down to three words and and that means that you haven't really done any work yet and that's both terrifying because they don't wall building didn't work but also liberating like oh, this is where this is where I get to say, what's what's really on my mind and I've had experiences with with

19:12 Students where they'll fight me fight me fight me fight me and then one day I'll be meeting with them and and they'll finally see that they don't have to write like a 45 year old man that that they they I'm really telling them that I want to find out what they have to say through the literature that were talking about and it's it's really great when I'm right with them because it's it's happened a couple of times where

19:49 One sweet one sweet. Take away all the extra words what's left is not always something that the person wants to know, you know, like

20:06 There's

20:09 Let me know like I'm

20:13 A black 16 year old boy and my best friend is white and I'm not really sure I want to find out like the questions that we don't ask each other about race, right? Cuz that's just a little too much and that stuff is going to come up if you're reading Huck Finn, you know.

20:34 Yeah, yeah, but

20:41 But there's something

20:44 There's something kind of I mean it wouldn't be as thrilling and liberating if it weren't also dangerous like yes, this is this is something dangerous thing that's going on and off.

21:02 You know, I'll have a class and stuff about race might come up and all night long. My stomach will be turning. You know, like is Joey. Okay, cuz he's the only person kind of color in the class that if I ask Joey if he's okay, then you know, he's going to think there's

21:29 But

21:33 Yeah, I did I do or that's interesting that you like. It's it's a it's a balanced right? Cuz I remember many of I can't remember all the texts. But I remember the feeling that I had in your class was a little bit that one of kind of like really pushing bringing in.

21:53 Text that really pushed boundaries, right like so I'm around sexuality around gender race and ethnicity is culture like poverty like all of all of those kinds of things and I remember that being like when it one thing where you just like the the grappling with a text and also being in a place where we felt comfortable enough speaking to it within the classroom environment cuz I think when I was here that walk that I took and kind of did changing of self as I was walking into the doors. That was a little bit kind of

22:30 Some of the things that were really positive about French for me, right? So

22:36 By the fact that I remember like in lower school.

22:41 We got it. We got a memo don't wear Izod shirts because I was at church or whatever. It's like whatever cool new brand was out there that was really expensive because they kind of indicate a particular class and I think a lot of kids were really focused on kind of hiding either their wealth or their property like they're there was a tendency to try to equalize and as we went through the years

23:06 That was kind of who we were right cuz we went with two cuz we were together for so many years and then we ever asked him to step into an environment and individualized and acts like it's a really challenging teaching thing to do it. Like it's just really challenging I think so for me, you're that the high expectations and instead of pushing in terms of that the text that was introduced and then also the building up like I wanted to share this story with you that I think I was graduating or something and I was having a really really hard to hear with a group of

23:45 We might be an 11th grader now with my group of friends cuz I was kind of changing my my groups even at that lady Age and and there was one girl in particular. Who is it kind of like on me and being really really negative and back talking and saying all these like terrible things to me and I was in the one I was walking down the hall and you were in your classroom can about the desk and I was like very weepy and I supposed to go Sarah's and I just kind of sat down with you and told the story about how I felt like I was being, you know put a pod but whoever it was and I and I don't remember your exact words, but

24:28 What you shared with me was kind of this idea of you people throughout your life. There will be people who will try to knock you down and who will try to make you less than who you are and you just have to kind of ignore that move on and so they kind of building up the building of that you did in those moments was really powerful like I remember the moment and sure it happened past and I always get to say well, I was told that I am worthy and I need to kind of bush pass that and it's fine to be different and individual and not listen to those kinds of voices. So I wanted to thank you for the answer.

25:17 Thank you for telling me that yeah, it's really really powerful for me. And I've got on to do different kinds of things in education when you were at friends. Did you?

25:33 Discover that you wanted to be a teacher while you were while you were here.

25:37 I think I always wanted to be a teacher knew that from yeah.

25:45 And it's funny because I've been talkin about how kind of scary and yet thrilling teaching is but academics was always the place where I felt.

26:00 Comfortable and safe and I had a very chaotic childhood and your story of you hiding in the book Loft and read like that's that's kind of how I dealt with my chaotic childhood and there was something that I really loved about the order of school and the excitement of learning things and finding things out and and figuring out how to do things and I didn't have to rely on my body which is off in a very awkward thing in my wasn't good at sports than the right and wasn't good at like making projects and all that. So no restorative all up in my hand hurt and so being and being in the classroom was a place that I always felt very

27:00 Good, I think the first day of school in kindergarten. It was pouring down rain and I remember being my my kindergarten room was in one of those beautiful old Gothic public school, and and I remember watching the rain and just feeling incredibly safe and in the classroom and

27:32 I didn't ever want to like leave that yeah. Yeah it is. I made my decision to

27:43 Do what I do I think in

27:45 11th grade psychology class so I ended up majoring in Psychology in college and if it's probably not that class, but I remember this moment where I was sitting and we were talking about young and archetypes and the way that we can think about the world is really attached to potentially like could we have been

28:12 Age needed before we ever existed on this Earth until I got really fascinated about the idea of psychology. And I think my commitment to do Public Service, which is what I've dedicated my life to and really around educational opportunity and Youth Empowerment and Community empowerment in particular all came from Friends. It was the idea of like the service-learning that we did and he's different kind of community service projects and how you kind of put you or

28:45 Put your passion into giving and and then it was that experience of you knowing that they were.

28:57 What I was the experience that I had her friends was so incredibly powerful and transformative in my life and at the same time so incredibly random, I ended up at friends because I had a teacher in my third grade who turned to me Tanya and not my best friend Tina who is sitting right next to me and she said hey, do you want to go?

29:25 Get involved in like a private school process and there was no as far as I could tell differentiator between Tanya and Tina.

29:36 And it ended up leading to this wonderful experience and I remember being at friends and in that site class or might have been over there like a series of different connections that I was making and feeling really angry about that and just angry about the fact that there were so many other children who were not going to have the experience that I had right in the middle of the growing up in a chaotic world and family life. My mom moved remove 13 x + 16 years while I was at friends and that it was that realization that I just, you know, realizations cut Injustice around that made me decide to focus on education is a thing I wanted to do.

30:26 And everything really scary cuz I was like

30:29 14 and 15 here with a really clear sense of what I wanted to do and it completely flipped out my friends around me who were just as they rightly so we're just kind of like I don't want from my friends. But it's the same kind of like how do you translate that feeling of safety that you had that you talked about our mere being in that kindergarten moment than all of the safety moments that I had at the school and how do we make

31:10 That experience for a offer for many many many kids in this world. So yeah.

31:16 That's one bone to pick that I've had with Educators in the lot of a lot of friends Seminary included where they say, you know, we want we want the learning environment to be safe and it is not safe learning is not safe. It's it's it's just not real learning right and so but you can trust

31:45 The people that you're learning with and so that when the white kid says so Othello is a monster cuz he's ugly cuz he's black, you know, just like, you know, like what do I do now when it when a white kid says that and has no clue.

32:13 What how that's going to be heard or what she saying or whatever like that's definitely not safe not safe is not safe for people to hear her. But if if there's trust then you can

32:36 Talk about it in in a way that that comment is heard and digested and and responded to in a way that that can move everybody to a better better place together. I wish I could but you know.

33:07 I I have worried that you know wanting wanting learning to be safe is going to like just till learning cuz it's it's it's not right, but it's bungee bungee jumping.

33:31 I think the other thing about friends that was is really powerful is that it didn't happen in the classroom like so things would come up and

33:41 Things could come up in the classroom and I'm sure in other settings comes up in the classroom and you leave it and it gets buried deep and maybe that's the end of it but the ability to kind of like connective, you know, we would offer here kind of like some version of whatever that thing would came up in class in a meeting. So people would kind of like constantly trying to process or make sense of whatever that was. And so I think you're right the idea of

34:12 Trust it, but being an environment where you could trust outside of in in multiple areas in and have cool spots. Like I'm different places where I go to fill out the Powerball yet.

34:29 It's um

34:34 It's

34:38 It's really fun.

34:42 It's hard for me to think about this now because I just told though that I'm not coming back to teach.

34:54 I can't remember if I told you this outside, but I took this year off to finish a degree in Theology and I've been studying for the past 5 years in how to be a hospital chaplain and I was going to take off a second-year and do a residency at Mount Sinai to find out if I could be a chaplain which is a demanding job search day in and day out and not just for fun summer and but this job opportunity came up that I couldn't pass up, LOL.

35:38 I'm at now. I found out lesson 48 hours ago and

35:47 And the story that you told about coming in to see me.

35:56 Made me realize that.

36:00 In a lot of ways the two jobs aren't that different at all?

36:07 And that's that's very reassuring to me because

36:16 It's very hard to leave teaching just so hard and it's it's especially hard when I hear from somebody like you what what was happening for you in in my class and I'm a big worrier. So everytime I go home from a day's worth of class. I'm only thinking, you know, I should have done this that way and they would have been so much better if that right and so-and-so looked annoyed.

36:51 But what?

36:55 When you can help.

36:59 Create a place where there's what we call continuing Revelation and theology worlds. Like there's continuing Revelation in the classroom. And in in my thinking about being a chaplain. There's I don't go to a patient and tell them the patient what he or she believes or what?

37:27 What they ought to do about anything that's not working right in their lives, but I'm actually trying to create that same classroom feeling of let's find out what this means together and I'm going to stay with you even even though you've got this gross bandage here and you're missing the race, you know, I'm going to stay with you and

37:59 While you find out what this means for you, I wouldn't know how it feels to me like the process of teaching and learning is something that you carry through.

38:16 And every one of your vocation since so this new location or kind of the interpretation of your always the same vocation is going to be there and so, you know,

38:33 26 years of teaching and 31 in the classroom environment that think all though there will be many who don't get to experience that but it's the it's a lot of students who have been touched by

38:49 You're working that you can buy acted. So hospital will be better for it. And we are all better for it. Thank you. Congratulations. It makes me so.

39:08 Happy that.

39:12 One of the things that I'm hearing from you is that because you you had such a good educational experience that you learned to be in the world as a place that was going to reveal things to you that we're going to be interesting that you that way that it was worth being curious deeply curious in the world. He would get something back and kills me to think about all the people in the world who don't get to have that video.

39:53 Glad you're doing what you're doing. Yeah, I have I'm running a nonprofit now. It's called bring me a book. And so it's an early literacy nonprofit and we provide access to books and a lot of good family support for families who were English language Learners who don't have the experience of reading to their child every night with comfort and Grace do I spend my days trying to help parents to connect with their children around literature and this particular time. I've been doing that for about 2 years. This is a little bit of a full circle moment for me in that way and it's wonderful to be able to do that and make that connection. So I feel like I'm doing doing good stuff for

40:47 The kids night and I do feel rich for the experience of being able to do that.

40:54 So we're all we're both a new pad has been really exciting.