7 minute read
Reflection: Arnelle Williams ’13
Icannot talk about my current accolades without giving a well-respected homage and ode to the life-changing work an experience at Wilbraham & Monson Academy did in elevating a quirky, teenager from Brooklyn, New York, to be a confident Black woman, educator and mentor. The beauty of writing this reflection during quarantine is that I am able to pause, reminisce and smile at how my journey, still being written, has fashioned me to become passionate about fighting against social injustice, creating what the late, legendary congressman John Lewis said is “good trouble,” and educating and empowering young people to envision a better world.
Growing up in an Afro-Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, I was incredibly comfortable with the sights, smells and sounds of inner city life. A walk to the corner store for quick necessities, block parties and frequent use of public transportation created both a demeanor and citizenship that was edgy, creative and familiar. However, within my social context, nobody I knew in the neighborhood nor family members went away for high school. When it was time to embark on this novel chapter and depart from the familiar, it felt like I was being uprooted from everything I’d known to study in a distant, foreign land even though it was only three hours away. Retrospectively, I have learned that every once in a while you must be uprooted, challenged so that you can discover more of yourself, and grow in humility, love and respect for other people.
When my sister Amber and I arrived on Wilbraham & Monson Academy’s campus in August 2009, I experienced the effects of being uprooted. It was culture shock. I could not believe there existed an educational system that brought students from all over the world to learn and mature, and the class size was, at most, 15 students! Living in the dorms, eating new foods in the dining hall, cultivating time-management skills during study hall and interacting with different students on sports teams and clubs, was a privilege unlike anything I’ve known. Like a sponge, I soaked up this revelation and quickly became involved.
I joined the Atlas newspaper as a budding journalist, became a writing tutor, a lead dancer in theater, a prefect in the dorm, a volunteer at the local soup kitchen, a global scholar, participated in Model UN and co-founded “WMA’s Got Talent” with an Italian international student. But my need to help others and give back to communities fueled any ambitious spirit. Each activity shaped my passion for writing, leadership and the arts, and I indebtedly pursued them during my four years at Wesleyan University. There, I was co-president of the Caribbean Students Association, joined the Ankh (a student of color publication), danced, and became a residential advisor. These parallels were not a coincidence, but rather a result of what happens when you follow your passions and they make room for you to flourish.
I also had great teachers who became mentors to me: Mr. LaBrecque, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Moran, Ms. Hutcheson, Mr. Whitcomb, Mr. Swanson, Mr. Deziek, Mr. and Mrs. Dziura, Mr. L (Lautenschleger), Ms. Decker, Ms. Markowski and many others. They all helped me to excel academically. I had Mr. Boozang, Mr. Easler, Mrs. Power, Ms. Gallagher, Ms. Norman, Mrs. Swanson, Mrs. Smith, Ms. Jalbert, and Mr. and Mrs. Sparks who were there for my social-emotional development. They were my village away from home and I express my gratitude.
Yet, as much as WMA became a celebrated multicultural community, I could not ignore the ways in which I became very aware of how my Black identity transgressed certain spaces. I could not help but notice that in almost all of my AP classes, in varsity sports and as a Global Scholar, I was the only Black American girl. I could not help but notice that my peers looked at me awkwardly when we spoke about slavery in history class or questioned the conditions of my kinky hair. I could not help but notice that all the Black students sat together in the dining hall or when I said that I was from Brooklyn, people imagined it as a dangerous place. I could not help but wonder if I was being awarded something based on merit when words like “affirmative action” or “it’s because she’s Black” circled around me. I also could not ignore how my upbringing did not include Harry Potter references nor “summering” in the Hamptons or receiving a car at 15. Although the 2018 movie “The Hate U Give” was a fictional account of the complexities of boarding school for the protagonist Starr, in many ways I related to her liminality when I transgressed between home and boarding school. Despite WMA’s best intentions for creating a tolerant community, I realized that I still had to find ways to navigate different social settings. I recognized that privilege is historic, and a direct reflection of how we treat people in this country. It finds its way into the very fabric of a society and will expose itself when representation of people of color is little, color blindness becomes a practice and unconscious biases persist. This experience opened my eyes to the realities of opportunity gaps in communities of color and how these disparities affect generations who strive for success.
I left WMA not only very prepared for a studious and extracurricular life at Wesleyan, but also with an unwavering voice in my quest for understanding how socioeconomic and political
— arnelle williaMs ’13
structures create inequalities. At Wesleyan, I was labeled a “student of color” for the first time ever, and immediately learned what predominately white institutions were. I kept making parallels between WMA and Wesleyan concerning themes of race, class and belonging. They were hot topics on campus, especially the Black Lives Matter protests for the deaths of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police officers. I witnessed Colin Kaepernick’s kneel to the national anthem in the sports world spill over at Wesleyan, and I dealt with the aftermath of the 2016 election of Donald Trump when one of my residents was the subject of a hate crime. These events exposed the damaging effects of what happens when white supremacy slips under the radar and goes unchecked. Those experiences peppered how much I valued the lives of marginalized students. In my senior year, after studying abroad in Cuba for four months, I decided to do a thesis in anthropology on blackness as taboo in Cuba that correlated to issues of citizenship and belonging. Although the setting was Cuba, I came to understand that blackness was an African diasporic identity that affected people everywhere. We, as a society, needed to be more compassionate, tolerant and just. I want this mantra to begin with our leaders of tomorrow: young people. I decided to apply for Teach For America because I believed in the power of education and how important it was to empower young people.
I spent three years as a Teach For America corps member in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I taught Grade 7 and 8 English and Dance at the only middle school in the district, and it was a humbling and rewarding experience. I underwent hurdles as a young teacher, but I learned how to advocate for students inside and outside the classroom. I reflected on how teachers at WMA advocated for me and created unique opportunities on my behalf, and I sought to do the same. For example, I helped to fundraise and sponsor three students to the 2019 Girl Up Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. I created an online diary for middle school girls called “Inside Her Diary” to help elevate their stories. I also coordinated a dance school trip to Memphis, Tennessee, to see Alvin Ailey Dance Company perform during Black History Month. Overall, I saw tremendous growth in my students’ reading and writing scores. Being uprooted from a college bubble and living in the historic, blues-ridden Mississippi Delta pushed me to recognize myself as an educator and mentor for kids.
Currently, I am an educator, mentor and writer. I am attending Columbia University for my master’s program in Educational Leadership. I plan to continue advocating for students in education and give back to communities. We all have the potential to be a light in this world, and I think the recent events suggest that the time is now to act, respond and rebuild healthy, thriving institutions.
