Planting the Seeds: How a 5th Grade Classroom Shaped My Black Consciousness

About a year ago, I was having a conversation with my high school friend Melissa. We were talking about my trips to Africa, the books I’ve read, the moments of injustice I’ve felt compelled to stand up for. She paused and asked me:

“What made you like this? Like… be so into this stuff? Have you always been like this?”

With confidence, I answered that it was in my DNA. My father was into politics, social activism, and fighting for the people. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to speak up for anyone being bullied or treated unfairly.

That felt like the full answer. Until last night.

I was watching a movie that took my mind back to being 10 years old. Suddenly, I was sitting in Ms. Gathers’ 5th grade classroom at P.S. 235 in Brooklyn. And that’s when I realized that the visible seeds were planted long before I ever recognized them.

The Seed of Identity

My Black History Month memory begins September of 1992, with the first teacher I ever had who told a classroom full of Black children in Brooklyn to put away their history textbooks because we wouldn’t be using them that year. Instead, she introduced us to the richness of Black history. Not the limited version centered only on slavery, but a history rooted in geography, culture, pride, and presence. Every day, we traced the continent of Africa. Every. Single. Day.

By the end of each week, we had five complete tracings. When you make a child repeat something daily, they begin to know it. After months of this practice, at 10 years old, I didn’t need a reference. I could fill in every single country in Africa from Morocco to Madagascar.

At the time, I didn’t realize what she was doing. She was planting pride. She was teaching us to look beyond what is handed to us. She was showing us not to rely solely on an educational system to define who we are. Looking back, everything she taught centered on empowerment and the beauty of Africa and Black America. She knew we would eventually learn about slavery and Jim Crow, but she made sure that wasn’t our starting point.

The Seed of Sisterhood

But she didn’t stop in the classroom.

She selected me along with a small group of girls to be part of something separate from the school agenda. She called it “African Womanhood Is Mine.” I don’t remember every girl who was there. But I remember the feeling. Our parents entrusted her to mentor us in womanhood, sisterhood, community, and Black pride.

If you never met Ms. Gathers, let me paint the picture.

She embodied Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman. The way she walked. The way she spoke. The way she carried herself, and her home reflected that aura.

Her brownstone in Brooklyn felt alive with African instruments, Art, Masks and Green plants everywhere. The smell of incense or sage floating through a huge living room with hardwood floors and minimal furniture. That’s where we gathered. We sat in a circle and talked about our concerns, our history, and our futures. Things we didn’t even realize we would need years later.

Everything centered around a quilt.

Each week, as we talked, we sewed. Two or three more pieces of fabric added to our personal quilts while stitching conversations about identity and strength into the seams. That’s where I learned to sew.

That’s also where she introduced us to waist beads, at 10 years old. In my 30s, I watched women rave about them as if they were some new discovery, using them to monitor weight. And I realized that my 5th grade teacher had already taught me their cultural significance decades earlier. 

She even took us to a sweat hut, a sacred space where women of all ages gathered in heat and smoke to release, to purge, to sit in discomfort, to share stories. At 10, I didn’t understand how important that was. As an adult, I crave those spaces. She was planting seeds of emotional and spiritual awareness long before I knew I would need them.

The Seed of Inquiry

Back in class, she didn’t just teach us Black history. She made us research our own history. We created genealogy books. We interviewed family members, collected photos and documented stories. On the first page she made us write: “Research Started September 1992.”

Now I understand why.

She wasn’t assigning a project. She was starting a lifelong investigation. Looking back, that may have been the first time I ever prepared questions and interviewed someone intentionally. Fast forward 20 years, I graduated college with a degree in Communications, focusing on Print Journalism. Without knowing who I would become, she had already placed those skills in my hands. She even encouraged me to research branches of my family tree I wasn’t ready for yet, ensuring the map existed for whenever I was strong enough to follow it. 

The Seed of Return

At the end of “African Womanhood Is Mine,” she planned to take us to Africa. In my 10-year-old ignorance, I said,
“They don’t have McDonald’s over there. I don’t want to go.” And I didn’t. That regret sat with me as I grew older and realized how small that comment was. But Ms. Gathers, I want you to know: I went. Three times in three years.

I stood inside the Elmina Slave Castle in Ghana. saw the pyramids in Egypt, and walked the history-rich streets of Morocco. The seed you planted grew roots.

Full Circle

So when Melissa asked me what made me “like this,” I thought it was just in my DNA. But now I see it clearly. Ms. Gathers helped in teaching me to think for myself. To stand up for others. To question what I’m given. To seek my own history. To love where I come from. She planted those seeds when I was 10 years old understanding that it takes a village.

For Black History Month, I want to thank Ms. Gathers and every teacher who goes beyond what is required. The impact doesn’t end in the classroom. It echoes into adulthood. It shapes consciousness. It creates courage. 

My experience with you as a Teacher and a Mentor, has placed the desire in me to create my own version of “AWM”, and one day I pray to accomplish that. I've already started with my Spirit Of Woman Book & Talk Show creating a sisterhood circle through my Creative Arts. I’m grateful my mother allowed me to be part of that space, and Ms. Gathers, thank you for seeing something in me before I saw it in myself. 

Ms. Barbara Gathers, You are appreciated.