Interviewee: Dr. Paulette Harris, female, Caucasian, Literacy Center and Augusta University, Augusta, Georgia

Interviewers: Dr. Niki Christodoulou, Dr. Darla Linville, Augusta University

********************Dr. Christodoulou: So, I want you to share with us some background information about you. Your name, um where you were born, when, if you want, your ethnic background. (0:19)

Dr. Harris: Ok. My name is Paulette Harris and um I was born Paulette Proctor and on October 5th, 1949 here in Augusta Georgia at University Hospital. And um, went to school here um all the way through – graduated from high school from Richmond Academy in 1967; and then, I went to Augusta College starting in Fall of ‘67 as an Undergraduate majored in French, and um was minoring in music most of that time. And um, changed my mind toward the end that I might want to teach. Since, I’d actually taught Piano since I was 13; probably would of have made sense that I would have thought I might want to teach. But, I guess I saw that as a different type of teacher. And so, um I changed right at the end and fortunately they didn’t have a whole lot of requirements for you to change at that point in time, from um completing my French to um adding a field in Education. So, that I could – I did a lab, one lab, during that period of time and one public school. Um, I remember going out to [INSERT NAME OF SCHOOL] and I was in the seventh grade Science class, which was quite a change from a French major to begin with a seventh grade science class. And, I always remember that the, the gentleman who was the teacher at that school at that time told me that the next week I would come in and I would be doing a unit from – for his class that dealt with the skeletal system and bones. And, I looked in the room and there were all these bones and I thought, oh my I’m not really a bones-kind-of-touching-person. But, I will do what I can next week when I come back. So, that was my first real lab experience as a prospective teacher in the schools, and the only one that I had as an undergraduate student. And, next semester, or quarter it was, they let me student-teach and I ended up in a seventh grade Math class for student teaching. Again, an interesting experience for a French major to do that. And, um, worked out of school in Richmond County right across from Richmond Academy where I graduated for that student teaching – worked under a teacher who had only taught for three or four years but she was much older. She’d come back as an older individual to teach and really learned a whole lot and spent the next few weeks after I finished that student teaching at that same school doing substitute teaching, which was an eye-opening experience for me. All this was in the early 1970’s, and um they hadn’t been a first grade class. And, I never will forget my most poignant memory of that first grade class was that um the teacher left that so that you can read to the class every day after lunch which was the most comfortable thing for me to do - was to read for first graders. And so, I did have a whole lot of experience having worked with them in any other context. And, I will never forget and I’ve told many people this story. But, after a few days of the teacher being out she was back, and I was waiting for them to call me somewhere else they’re to substitute and she sent me a note. Not an email or anything, because we weren’t up to that – so kind of a handwritten note through Principal’s office that the next time I came in, I was only to read one chapter after lunch to the class, no matter how much they wanted to hear more; this was limited to one chapter. And, I always remember when later I began to teach Reading that I thought if they’re really eager to listen to you reading, then they want you go a little bit further, I didn’t think it was terrible crime to have read a little bit more than that to them. But, I’ll always remember that experience. Also,

remember that seventh grade teacher where I’d done my student-teaching telling me right at the beginning, a lot of the children who I was student teaching came from housing projects. And, she said, “you had to be really careful,” because I never will forget that she said that one had gotten in her purse. And I thought, you know, hmm I never got any money; I don’t have to worry about that. She said, “Oh no, this was a child who had took it to the bathroom and dropped it in the commode.” And I thought, well that was a little different. I’ll always remember that experience. Fortunately, it never happened to me, but I was on my guard just in case. But, definitely a different group of students than the group I had graduated from just a few years before. And um, it was always interesting to, to relate what experience I had had to these students because, you know, I started coming to Augusta College when I was 17 and so when I finished I was 21. I had not done the student teaching experience and except that lab in the Science class, and the student teaching with the seventh grade Math students, and the first grade substituting; and, there had been plusses and minuses. But, I’d decided that being a teacher was a good thing for me. (5:06)

Dr. Christodoulou: And, so, what do you remember of uh your contribution in the area of C.S.R.A? Like so, so you became a teacher um … (5:23)

Dr. Harris: I waited a few months between graduating and deciding to be a teacher for sure – spent some quarter in France at [INSERT UNI. NAME HERE] and we went to um the [INSERT UNI. NAME HERE]. And so, I really didn’t lose that emphasis on wanting to teach French if I were to teach something. But unfortunately, that time, foreign language being taught to young children and even middle grades, which then was junior high school, wasn’t taking place very much. And so, I looked for the right position there – I interviewed private and public and then I went to the public schools and um they had me interview at a school, and I went back to the gentleman who was the Personnel Director, and he said, “Um, you’re fine but what I’d like for you to do is go down to John W. Hotton at 333 Greene Street and teach them Reading.” Which, you know, I thought oh I’d love to see small groups of children gather around, and we would be just reading away, and that was the interest that I had in it and - was pretty much how he described it. I would have a certain number of groups per day, and I would be teaching Reading, and I went down and talked to the Principal, and liked him a whole lot, and thought well this is probably better than the others I’d talked to where none were even close to French. So, Reading was certainly moving in that direction. So, I think I started the next day; it was October and the first teacher who had been there, her name was Ms. Murphey, they referred to her often, and apparently had a really difficult time and they really didn’t want her to leave, however. They were changing the fifth grade, you know, in the middle to this new teacher who had come in was a little challenging for me and for them. I never will forget the students would say, “But, Ms. Murphey wouldn’t do it that way.” And, I heard that many times over several days and I thought well I just will pretend that I don’t hear them saying that and will do it the way that I think might be best, keeping in mind I hadn’t had a lot of experience, but really always liked working with children. And so, I had um 15 children, five classes. I became part of a Title I Reading program – that’s where they wanted me to teach Reading. And so, every hour I’d change classes and had another class of 15, boys and girls mixed in there, and was really enjoying it a whole lot; that was um the fall on ‘71. Well, in February of ’72, Richmond County schools decided they were going to um integrate the school system fully. You know, Brown Board vs. Board of Education was back in ’54. So, they had taken a long time to get to this point. I will back up and tell you that there was a little integration at Richmond Academy when I was a Junior and Senior there.

Um, they placed all the girls in classes with all girls, and they had placed all the boys in classes with boys. And so, my Junior and Senior year, I was – particularly, the Junior Year with exactly the same students all girls in every class. And um, they had grouped us strictly by ability, and we had 18 classes, and down somewhere toward the bottom was where the Special Ed. students where I never saw them; unless I might have passed them outside. They were totally in isolation as much as they possibly could be even to the point of having lunch at separate time. And, I always thought about that because later on when I learned about mainstreaming and inclusion – and I thought back to how non-inclusive my Junior and Senior years were with the same girls in every class. The only change was I had had five years of French. And, that was all the French they had when I finished eleventh grade. And so, in twelfth grade I moved to German, and German um there were some males in that class, so I did have this one class out of all my eleventh and twelfth grade, where there were a few males, there were a few African American students in the school; they weren’t in my classes, but I did see some in the hall. And later, because I always attended some of the events that they had in the Spring over the last few years. I always remember they selected people as Richmond Academy graduates because, you know, it started in 1783. They go all the way back to when George Washington was speaking to classes sort of thing. So, they had each year, I think it’s been about three or four years; they’ve been doing this and each time they had introduced people, someone had either I had had as a teacher or had heard of from that class, or I had heard of in the class or were it back to my junior high years since last time there was a person recognized from that junior high class that I had remembered well they had all been recorded for something special. And so, from that twelfth grade graduating class, there was an individual – I should have looked up his name last night; I can’t remember but he was African American and been in those twelfth and eleventh classes I’m sure, but he got on to be a Physics teacher and Physics Professor at an Ivy league school and I thought, well, maybe it was good, you know, that somewhere there I hated I didn’t know any of them, but we were kept very close together. And, I had heard that that was because the Superintendent of schools of that time whose wife had been my fifth-grade teacher felt like you should start integration from the high school down rather than from young children up. And so, he had done that in ’66 and ’67 over at Richmond. But, I have to tell you that my part in that had been very small, but I do remember very vaguely and so when I was thinking about what had happened during those – that first year that I taught, I want to be sure today on this on this tape that um in February when they decided so February ‘72 that they were going to integrate the schools, they came to us as teachers and of course I only know what they said to me. And they told me that in just a few weeks I would be moved from the school where I was, where I had been teaching, to Reading to another school nearby. And, I would have some of the same students perhaps; um, but some things would change, because they were bussing students a whole lot. So, the students I had had for the first part of the year had lived near Hotton, downtown, a mixed neighborhood and it was already – actually there were black and white students in the school. But, I guess not as many in the other schools, in the other locations, as we had. So, I, you know, came home and talked to my parents and we decided there would be no reason why I couldn’t change schools in the middle of the year. Particularly, if I might be able to have some of my students it would be helpful to them, I think, for me to have moved with them and then they would feel more comfortable, too. So, I took the move, I moved over to the old Davidson building on Telfair Street which they actually made Hotton in and Telfair they called it The Telfair School at that time but later it went back to being Davidson. But, um there I found that um a lot of changes had occurred just from that move from teaching fifth grade in a school

to moving other there to teach seventh grade. I ended up in seventh grade Math remedial. I told you I student-taught in seventh grade Math but this was a different world. Um, for that period of time from February to the end of the school year, I was given no materials whatsoever. Many of those teachers who should have come with me, never came. So, I don’t know where they went. They may have gotten their choice of some other school. I never asked for any other school, just simply wherever they thought I should go. I thought: well, it will be fine, not too many blocks from here and, you know, it will be very good and it really was. Um, I did learn a whole lot and I think that was the best part of it. I bet because I ended up with none of those students I had taught in fifth grade; I only had 7th grade. I only had the seventh grade math and um I had had that, you know, semester – quarter really of student-teaching in seventh grade and at that time at the school where I was close to Richmond I had students of all levels in Math. But, mostly I would say middle of the level and higher. I didn’t have the ones necessary; I was now getting many of the ones who were at the Davidson school; this was before Davidson became a Fine Arts and Georgia’s number one school; this was very much a Richmond County school with students who weren’t performing especially high but some it was mixed. But, I never will forget that there were some in my classes who definitely needed special education a long time before, because I had some in seventh grade math who could not add at all. And, I had no resources as I’ve told you; I didn’t know a whole lot about a whole lot of extra resources and so my chalkboard that was on the - every wall, I came to school early every morning and I put all kinds of math problems up for them to work on when they came in and that was our source and I brought notebook paper for them and I brought it and pencils and those were our tools of the trade from then. But, I did find that the students I tried to help did some. I had a really nice African American Principal who couldn’t have been better. And, I went to him and told him that I thought they really needed to be tested. Some of them… But, testing took a long time and they were never tested during the time I had them. But, I do hope that somewhere along the way they were able to get some help, because even though they were struggling with Math, I have a feeling that some of them were struggling with other subjects as well. And so, even now, kind of a ripple effect when I wanted to work with – and I’ll tell you a little history starting the Literacy Center but it went back to that seventh grade class, I liked them a whole lot. I could have stayed forever but I found out that there was a Title I remedial position back at Hotton, back through um through fifth grade that I could have possibly have, because I had worked well with the school principal there. The Principal at Davidson encouraged me to stay there and I could have liked to had done both. And, I’ll tell you the story about that in a minute. But, on the last day when we were - last day, seventh graders - were graduating, we went into the auditorium of the school and – remember I used to be a piano teacher – so, I played a song that the other teachers there asked me to play– It was when you come to the end of a perfect day and that was really the end of an interesting year for me from October till the end of the school year. I definitely decided I wanted to stay a teacher. And, um, I get almost teary eyed now thinking about having encountered students who needed so much help and hadn’t gotten it; that was - hoping that this way of bussing students to other places and seeing other people and, and maybe working together would make a true difference. The other teachers that I’d worked with at Davidson were in the seventh grade were all African American. They were all women; they were wonderful. I was the youngest and they kind of took me under their arms. And, I learned as much from them as I ever had in any class I’d ever taken and some of them for years I would still see them out there and talk to them. I haven’t seen any of them recently, but they were much older than I, so hopefully they’re still around out there. I haven’t seen them unless it was in professional organizations or

something of that nature. So, one I saw as a friend longer than that but I went back the next year, my second year, and I was hired as that Remedial Reading Teacher and to be that Remedial Reading Teacher under Title I, you had to have a Masters. So, we were beginning a Masters at Augusta College. So, I entered right away and, um, specialized in Reading – took as many courses so that I could - so that I would be hopefully the most help to those students I had. And again, they were changing every hour and it was about 15-17 students. But, the real advantage and one of the main reasons I had wanted to do this, is they said if you enrolled in that Master program you also would have a full-time teacher's aid with you. And, having worked that year before when I can see a full teacher’s time person in the classroom with me, I couldn’t think of anything better. And so, I went back and suddenly I had 75 dollars per class to spend for my five classes so I could order materials, which was just monumental. And, I was able to interview and – and hire someone to begin working with me. And, the first one I had, was a lady who lived downtown. She became my teacher’s aid. She was a little younger than I. She was African American and very enthusiastic; and, to me, that was the most important criteria. She knew no more about teaching Reading than I did, but we both loved learning to read and Reading so that was good. She stayed with me that year; she went off after that to go to college herself and to do something. But, I always remember where she - where she lived, downtown. And, the other day, they were getting to tear down the house and I thought back to that year, you know, my second year of teaching when she was my full time adjunct. When we got along so well together and the only thing I had to teach her was – she was very young as I said, and I had to tell her that when I had to go to these Title I meetings, she had to be where the Principal can find her at any point in time. She can never leave or, you know, and because she was younger, like late teens. Once, I did find out that she did leave when I did and that was, you know, before I talked to her about that. Didn’t ever dream that you’d have to say that, but I always remember. But, it was a really good experience; she did provide a lot of help and I do remember I always read to the children every day, sometimes more than one chapter if I felt like they were highly interested. But, she would sit with the children and obviously had not heard a lot of the stories that I’d read to them. And was so eager, so eager, and so that was really good. So I finished out that year, that was the end of my second year, um, that would have been ’72 , ’73 …’73,’74 was able to interview – get another person. I certainly wanted to stay with my reading groups and I got a much older lady. I thought at that time she was very old; but, she was a mother of three children. She was 40 and much older than I was at, you know, like 21 or 22 now. And, she was great; she was a very totally different kind of person, but very maternal and very good there with the children, you know. And, loved to do bulletin boards and was very arts and crafts orientated, so it was really good. She stayed with me at the end of that year. I’ll never forget - this is probably the best story I have ever got. The teachers nominated me and I was Teacher of the Year and I was finishing up that Master’s program I had started, and the – some of the faculty who were here, um, somehow thought that I should come here to teach part-time. And, um, always, I did better when I was teaching a group and talking to one or two people, because, I’m really very shy at heart. And so, um, I was very pleased that they asked me, so I began teaching and so I taught Human Growth and Development and Foundations of Education and Educational Psychology. And, those were the courses that they’d gave me to teach and over my whole life span I probably taught those courses hundreds of times. And so, it was really good, because I learned so much by teaching those courses myself and going back and working with my class. And so, even last week, I was going to the GRU/AU Dental School Dentistry tour with someone I’m working with there. And, I talked to a lady – came in and she’d been in that first class I’d taught here. So, I’d taught here

from ‘73 or something like that part-time till, um, later; they asked me – could become full-time to teach here in ‘78 and so I did my teaching – um my classes with my Reading with my full-time helper that year and I finished up my Master’s degree in ’74. And um, I knew that I loved teaching and so, um, - let me make sure I tell you this correctly: the next year I taught another group of Title I children and they were all – I mean they were wonderful. I began to add a lot of creative arts that the – that teacher’s aid had done and so my Reading classes became more … I wrote my first article a long time ago – was putting a Arts and Language Arts for NCTE publication and I always thought it was based on my class. I had them do creative drama. I could still see one little boy on the floor, and I gave him these little scenarios – gave the whole class and then we’d write about them. And um, teachers myself, uh [INSERT TEXT HERE], was actually the thrust of how I taught and he was down there and he was supposed to be baking and he’d just come out of the freezer – must have fell down there and all the children were watching; and then, we all wrote about it. They used lots of language experience and reading and, because Title I had a lot of money during those years that I was Title I, I was able to go to conferences all over the country and Roach Van Allen became my friend and he was like the author of that and if you were to look up any of these names, lots of University of Georgia people, because the next year, after I finished up this third year as Title I Reading my first year, as a regular teacher with my Reading and Math… they – I taught every summer in Title I programs and from the very first up and there was this lady who was Curriculum Director and over Title I and she said that I had to be the Lead Teacher the next year. I would be teaching, but I’d be working with all of the teachers and they had videotaped me teaching. I don’t know why except probably I was a natural teacher, you know – had videotaped and they wanted me to be an Instructional Lead Teacher during the year. And, for this summer, and I told her, “I really didn’t want to give up my summer, because I’d been teaching third grade and eighth grade Reading and I just loved it.” I had the third graders in the morning and eighth graders in the afternoon. I was over at [INSERT BUILDING NAME] school building where I was and she said, “Well that’s fine if you teach though, in the fall you won’t get to be the Instructional Lead Teacher that I had in mind for you to be.” I didn’t know what an Instructional Lead Teacher meant but I thought well, let me at least ask about it. She said that I would go to multiple schools and I ended up going to three and I ended up working with their teachers and I would also be – um go to Georgia Southern, do all the tests, and measurements, and assessment courses because I would be the school system diagnostician. So, I thought, you know, that sounds pretty good. I hate to say though, so I agreed to be the Instructional Lead Teacher for that summer I went to [INSERT SCHOOL NAME] college, which is downtown. They have a new building; it was an older building then. And um, I worked with the teachers, you know, every hour I’d go into classes and they’d be doing Reading or Math that was the summer program was and I would work with their students, whatever they wanted me to do was really what I did and had a couple ideas and that was really a, a big change for me, because I never done that with other teachers going into their classes and working the whole time. But, it was really good. The Principal’s outstanding; he, um, I later knew his daughter she taught here. His name was Dr. Butler and, um, her husband for a while was Butler and she remarried her husband, she remarried and he taught in our English Department and was Department Chair. And, many times, I told her how much I learned from Dr. Butler the Principal of that school. So, the next year, I went out and I went to three schools. I was back at Hotton, which was my favorite school since the beginning, and I also went to Lamar, which was across from Richmond Academy and, um, to John Milledge, which was over on Greene Street and in a building that has since been replaced with a school, but still there. And,

most of the children I worked with were from low-income families very much like the ones I had started with. So, I liked very much working with that group of students and I did lots of testing; not only in that school, but other places. I never will forget; I told my students here this many times, but the first child I ever had who had autistic tendencies, I was testing and I – she said, everything she said, she said a bear has wheels; a book has wheels; it was just like everything has wheels. I didn’t know very much about autism at all but I found out what that category was and I also never will forget that one of the children I was testing was in Kindergarten at one of those schools. I just mentioned and she – I asked her just turn the page, you know, test manual and the child was ... almost six, she never had a book in her hand that she held. She had no idea what “turn the page” meant. And so, I guess at that moment I realized that I would always like to do anything I could to get books to children, so that they wouldn’t have experiences where they come to school and so many times there were so much they didn’t know. But at least they’d know how to turn the page and so not long ago I was working with some children at the literacy center and I was asking them about turning the page and then they started doing this, you know, [mimics I-pad/phone scrolling] scrolling. And I thought, well, the turn – the page has changed since the 70’s was testing those children as the diagnostician, so the last year that I taught in the public schools, um, was in the last 70’s. And um, they had asked me no longer to be the Instructional Lead Teacher, but to be the Assistant Principal in charge of Instruction. And, when I started doing that I decided that I needed another degree. And so, I debated between going to University of Georgia uh where I had all of the Title I Instructional Lead Teacher – I started telling you this and stopped. Um, had required an internship because if you were going to be Superintendent, obviously you needed it and I was very fortunate I had two people come and they chose who they wanted to work with. And, I was fortunate enough to work with um Ray Bruce and Edith Grimsely who’ve written tons of work on leadership … back into the 70’s and 80’s. Ray Bruce became Head of the um of the Southern Regional Education award – did a lot of work there and Edith Grimsely, too, with leadership and so I learned from of the classes they held here and, um, I thought well, I might want to go to University of Georgia, but then there were – I was still teaching part-time at Augusta College and Ed Christenbury who um was my mentor here as I was and Fred [INSERT LAST NAME] who you’ve might have encountered, because he’s still in Augusta, around us and Ed knew someone at the University of South Carolina in Columbia who was working with Doctoral students. Her name was [INSERT NAME] and she sent me over there to talk to her and she was wonderful and she told me what I needed to do to be accepted into their Doctoral program and I chose the one in curriculum and instruction because it allowed me to do reading and instruction which I [incomprehensible] underneath that and um entered that program [INSERT NAME] decided to retire almost as soon as she signed my paperwork. So, my, um, major Professor became Dr. Kevin Swick who was really Literacy and Early Childhood was his field. So, everything worked out really well. Um, I remained closed to the University of Georgia faculty who had – I would see them years later; but, the University of South Carolina – Columbia program I entered. And, I um taught part-time and then they asked me to teach full-time here and the Dean had been in many of my classes, and she just thought that I would like doing that and I wasn’t sure. So, I talked to my brother who um, um, - I have a lot of really sad things that happened in my life. One was my brother, right after I talked to him, died in a fire in his house and um but he was always was a Georgia Tech graduate and um business leader in real estate all over the country and I told him, I said, “You know, I love being in the schools. I just, just started this Assistant Principal in charge of instruction but they asked me to come to Augusta College and I loved every class I taught there,”

and he said, “I don’t see why you’re asking me/ You want to go to Augusta College and you’re entering that Doctoral program that would prepare you to be there and stay.” So, I came here as a temporary instructor that first year and I thought well, they may never keep me beyond the temporary instructor. But, they moved me to a tenure-track position the next year and so I started, you know, as an Assistant Professor um on tenure-track. And so, um most of you, the two of you, know a little bit more about the whole story when I stayed here. Um, I um went back to see the Hotton Principle a number of times. He was always the same one; a couple of years ago, during the summer, I was at Glynn County going to do a workshop with the Coastal College in Glynn County. And, a lady sat down in the group from Glynn County School System and she said, “You look so familiar,” and I said, “Well, you look familiar to me, too.” And, she told me her name and come to find out: she was the daughter of the Principal I had worked under the most. He has since died and she was like a 10 year old when I remembered her and now she was working in Title I in the Glynn County schools. So, I did a couple of projects with her there and it was just so coincidental how sometimes life meshes people together, you know. So, I say that, to say that, um I never have taught a day at Augusta College, or Augusta University or Augusta State University, or whatever name it happened to have that I hadn’t been really glad that I made that choice, because I’ve been able to work a lot with school systems and with Richmond County. I’ve always been able to go back and adopted me and kept me forever and still go back as if I were still there which had made it real easy. But, I came here and I continue the Human Growth and Development, Ed, Psych and um Foundations Courses that I was teaching, but gradually was able to move since I had that Master’s background and finished my Doctorate I – since I drove there back and forth it took me from’ 79 to ‘83 to finish my Doctorate and had taken lots of Reading and Language Arts courses. So, I began teaching more of this and did that; taught the 80’s, um I held many hats here. I was on Director of Clinical and Field Experiences; very much like what Fran does. But, it was placing student teachers and all of that but continued to teach my classes at the same time. I was Coordinator of Early Childhood and um Coordinator of the Reading Program when we had a Reading Specialist Program here which we chose not to keep. I was in the – I was… Trying to think about the other titles – it doesn’t really matter. But, um I went on to, um, work very closely with the administration here and in 1990, we didn’t do well within [INSERT WORD HERE] I was still, you know, kind of low on the totem pole in terms of, because I hadn’t had anything administration except coordinating field experiences, but, um, and student-teaching. But anyway, they asked me after we hadn’t done well if I might um want to be the Department Chair so I was our Department Chair for the whole – everything we have all the programs on this floor for five or six years and um the Dean we had changed and then they asked to me to be Interim Dean for one year, so I did that. And, my mother fell during that year, and I applied. I was going to apply to be Dean and my mother fell. It was going to follow- up to what had happened with my brother in the fire and my father had died in an accident in ‘81 and when my mother fell I knew that I couldn’t continue wanting to be Dean; it would have been too much. So, I had asked to go back and so for a year I went back to being Department Chair and then I became – they had the offer for Cree-Walker Endowed Chair I apply for that and it was the national search and I got it. And, the Dean who came in said, “Well you can’t keep wearing all these hats and do that to – you know, you could no longer be Department Chair,” and I loved being the Department Chair. We developed the Counselor Ed program and, you know, some things that I thought were really good and so I decided he was right. And, my mother never got well so it was good that I did that and even with that, that I can backtrack and tell you that when President Wallace was President, he came to me once because I

was teaching the Reading courses and he said that the Board of Regents, they wanted the colleges to do a community project and they especially wanted it to help adults in the community. So, we thought could I work on a program that might be like teaching adults to read and like a pre -G.E.D. program. And, I told him I would be really glad to do that. I went out to the schools and they found some, some ladies who definitely were early – I mean late teens to early 20’s, and there were like five or six of them and a graduate assistant I had worked with the same time. Well, and so we would move in our old buildings from room to room every hour working with the ladies who wanted to learn to read. And, I’ll never forget one of them was – she had five children under the age of five and she wanted so much to learn to read and she said, “Wasn’t there somewhere we could even consider having some program sometime when we were with the children.” And, in my mind, I thought, you know, that’s really where we need to start, you know, it’s great to be helping their mothers. But, certainly keep that up but it would be really good to help the children so that they would be stronger for when they started school and stayed that way. So, the Literacy Center evolved from that idea and I was moving it around from room to room and, um, Vice President [INSERT NAME] whose name you’ll find, who had been my Math teacher for Trigonometry as an undergraduate, said he knew of a little place over by the Newman Tennis Center, The Forest Hills Golf Club, half of it still had a golf student and his wife living in it; it’s a duplex. (36:15)

Dr. Christodoulou: When was that? (36:15)

Dr. Harris: That was early 90’s, okay? Early 90’s. And, at that would be a great place for me to be able to do the literacy center. And it could be really a place, you know, rather than a moving literacy center, a local center. So, I went over there and looked at it and I had been the advisor for Student Georgia’s Association of Educators, which I still am. Dr. Linville always helps me with that – with finding students and that sort of thing. But anyway, I thought well she was the President and an Undergraduate student majoring in Early Childhood said, “let me go take a look at it with you.” And, I was glad because I would have probably turned away and never gone back, because there were dead squirrels on the floor and remnants of old pizza pieces up on the roof and on the ceiling and, I mean, it was really – it need, it needed a lot of cleaning, a lot of sprucing up even for people to be able to walk in it. But, she said, “You know our organization could come in here if they’d let us and we can paint, clean…” And I’ll never forget her name was Cynthia and I told her, I said, “If you think you could get a group together to do that?” and she did and so from the start it was always students who, who did everything that made such a difference. And, they went in and they took that side, its side, B that’s why the office part’s always been in side B, because we didn’t have where we would have put it – nearer to the parking lot and everything. And so, ever since that time we been in that location and the program from very small to much bigger. Right now, as of this week, we had like 127 on our waiting list for the forest hills that part of it and 120 for the program we’re doing down at the library. So, the program grew; it grew, and grew under many different Deans and many different people who were here and they allowed me to continue to do it. And, I’ve always loved it along with teaching my classes and along with most of the time until the last few months. I always taughtfull-load and did that, which was fine, because it was my whole life, you know, wasn’t a problem for me to do that. And um, then, um, we were able to get the other side Dr. Bob Heart had another call to me that I wanted to take a look; it looked a lot better because the couple who had been living in it you know-so over the years we’ve changed it a whole lot. We’ve removed the kitchens and used that part; we even closed the patios on the back and turned them into...; but,

my thoughts have always been back to where I started in those early years of integrating the schools and that I wanted to always – when I would be here, that it would be a free program for children. We had Deans who told me work out a sliding scale it would, you know. And, I always worked on a sliding scale, but I always tried to write grants where we wouldn’t have to use that sliding scale. And so fortunately from people who donated and other resources we always been able to get our resources and we worked with of federal work study and, um, under President Clinton they started a program during his administration, and I found out about it. And, I told them over at financial aid, and it provides federal work study tutors for programs like our literary program, and they get paid. I mean, they started off with like five dollars an hour and then seven and then eight. I don’t even know if you knew, but I was surprised the semester went up to 12 an hour, which is really good. And, they’re majors from all over campus who’ve been able to come. Many of whom, if not most, needed money on campus as an undergraduate. And that experience has been really good. And so, we’ve had a lot of athletes who come, and service tutors and the students always love the basketball players kind of think, you know? And, volunteers … (39:59)

Dr. Christodoulou: You mean they were participating? The basketball players? (40:00)

Dr. Harris: As tutors. Yeah. I have one tutoring right now. Yes. And, you know, they, they have to come around their schedules so they get to end up working with multiple students, because if a tutor is out they fill-in kind of thing and we even had a Dean of Students who, um, would make sure during the summer that she sends me two athletes for the summer program. And, it was always good because, again, the role modeling in that, that they gave. But they get to keep the children, many of whom, are the children that I would have wanted. They were very much like the children I first taught, very much like the ones who couldn’t add, and so I made a portion of the program – I took if you were to look at my transcript two courses called Reading Mathematics and I always felt that if you can’t read, and you get to word problems, it doesn’t matter how good you are with Math. So, we’ve kept that program. Actually, it’s down at the library, now the first floor, and we call it Reading Math Medium – kind of a catchy alternative to kind of encourage the students it has a lot of, um, room for growth there, and the need for growth because there are so many who call us. So, these years that I’ve been here all tie back to those first years that I taught. And, I think back to when I was an Augusta College undergraduate student when I went with [INSET NAME] to France, and to see that – yeah, that was great and I still love foreign languages are still are my favorite. But, I always say that you’ve got to learn your native language first, before you go out, and you need to read it, and I’ve always felt that as a teacher, one of the inspirations I would like for my students is that they would want to read – doesn’t matter what you read or how they did it. But, they, they read, and that’s why I like to read with them; starting that, I mean, it’s just great. So, I probably told you more than I ever wanted you to know. But, these are kind of highlights, and they all do go back to the integration and how the schools changed and how there was a need for a community center like the Literacy Center in the area and I still feel like there’s that need. (42:04)

Dr. Christodoulou: Tell me a little bit about this need. So why – so the need was because there were like big numbers of … (42:11)

Dr. Harris: We started small with those five ladies who wanted to work on their G.E.D. that the school set up for me. And, as we worked with them I – and we still do some pre- G.E.D. People

come to us and ask. We have a couple of retired Augusta College, Augusta State faculty who come over and do that right now. The need was that there is that program, and I’m on a lot of boards at Augusta Tech, so I’m saying this in a very positive way. They have a, a, an adult literacy program and they work on G.E.D. But, ones who’ve come to us and because I’ve let them know what we do because of my work with the childcare there and other program is that we work from the kind of pre, pre, pre- G.E.D. we start where they are, and we work with them one on one. The programs that we have in the area other than the ones we have are full classes, and you go in, and you’re on a structure, you know. You’ll know that if you start now, you’ll probably be able to G.E.D. by a particular time and successfully pass all the tests even as they change. With the ones we have, we’ve had a lot of students who are adults, who are different ages. And, they some went to programs like Augusta, and I’ll never forget. That’s an answer to your question. One lady came to me, she said, “You know, I would work, I could name the department store, and I’ve always needed more help with learning to read; but, I’ve always been able to say, Well I forgot my glasses, can you help me with, this when I had something I couldn’t manage to read.” And, she was kind of an inspiration for me to know that there are programs out there and they - they work really well for the majority of people who want to do it; but the ones who are flagellant and they are really on the bottom... they tell me – their hands go up whole lot and they're really glad when they hear they’re moving to us, because they need so much help and they really need one-on-one so that idea of that need... (44:08)

Dr. Linville: How closely does the Literacy Center still work with uh Richmond County or other school districts? (44:16)

Dr. Harris: Very much, I speak to many, many schools um I go to schools and tell them about the programs that we have. Many of the students we get, especially with our new program, which is the National Exemplary Model Program, um, has made such a difference. Um, I mean it’s, it’s totally 21st century, it’s being used not only in the U.S., but in China, and India, and other countries where English is being learned as a second language. And, that program has spoken for itself. We have students – well let me just give you an example. We have a student when we started the program somewhere like a year ago. And, um his father came to us and wanted us to tutor him if at all possible, because he had been accepted for the [INSERT WORD] program at Richmond Academy. But, his scores were right on the edge, and reading was the lowest part of it. And, his father was so afraid, and we think probably rightly so, that he would have gotten in, and wouldn’t have lasted over a month, because he wouldn’t have had the reading skills to keep up with all the homework, etc. So, he was one of the first in our new program that we kept at the golf club and while we expanded to the library, so, that we would add more students to that program, and it’s the teachers at Richmond County, for instance, have heard about it, many have sent their students and it – we haven’t had students who haven’t entered that program where in like a month’s time there making a year’s progress. I mean it’s just been in three month’s time, three year’s progress, we had a fifth grader who started months ago. Not many, and she has just mastered out in the program at the 12th-grade reading level. I mean it’s just been for some students; it’s not for all, because, because – we started this program – we’ve also started another new program that we started two weeks ago at the library. We had a media specialist who I know in Richmond County who said she liked to help us if there’s something she can do. And we said, “Well, what we need is we have these students who come to us for a new reading program, and they have some major reading problems. But, they’re too low to even start it.” I mean you have to be at least reading at first-grade level. And you know, their emergent reading

levels where they’re learning the alphabet, you know, that sort of thing. So she started with the –we call it our pre-emergent program two weeks ago. She’s working with four children; she was doing it on Wednesdays from four to six this Wednesday. She told me, “ You know; I want to stay for four - seven down at the library like everybody else that’s there and, you know, after we have the Spring Break, it might be that I can come two days a week.” Now, [this is] totally voluntary –totally voluntary. We just took her in and went over everything we could about what pre-emergent means, what she does and it’s just been, it’s been almost miraculous that we get a lot of people who come up, who don’t want to leave, because of um the program that we have. So much so, that um with our advisory board, I really just come to individual people and ask them for special help because we don’t even have time to call them together. It’s like, we been so busy with trying to get all these programs going and keeping going and off the ground. And, they’ve just done extremely well. Almost never do we have a major problem we always keep a certified teacher present and with any group of students, the others aren’t, but we got a tutor for instance at the library she was up here – wasn’t sure she was going to move to the library, she said. You know, because she liked it here we’re sure it was safe and, you know, parking would be fine, you know, in her 70’s who retired from teaching in Charleston – been teaching here, tutoring at the Literacy Center I’d have to ask her, but I’d say about 10 years as a school volunteer like and did do any of the pre-emergent she likes a little bit of both but it’s been just unbelievable. I think about how well the program has done and when that man hired me all those years ago. I, I had no background when he said, “You can be the Reading teacher,” but I’ve always felt like it has been a big move and that the integration of the schools was pretty smooth. I want to go back to that. Everybody told me when I took that seventh grade Math, you know, they have police walking the hallways, you know, because they had anticipated there’s going to be major problems. We bussed these, you know, students where they are and I talked to my father at that time. And I said, “You know I certainly don’t feel any problems here. You know, I don’t think it is,” and he said, “If you don’t anticipate problems, there won’t be.” And, I never will forget that seventh-grade class. The only problem I ever had was I never will forget one day a desk turned over it was just in an accident and that policeman ran to my door, you know, he obviously thought we were about ready to bring out the guns or something. I don’t know. But, I never will forget when we were talking about guns on campus, and I thought I will never forget that, those months when I was there. And, they were walking outside and I just kind of kept my door closed and thought, we’ll just not even imagine that they’re there, and we told my students that, you know, we’ll be fine and we were. And you know, those were seventh grade students and a lot of people would have thought, oh they would be so hard to handle, and they were no, no more difficult than any other students anywhere; it was a transition for them just like it was for me to suddenly be in a new building but, but we did fine. And um, it shouldn’t have taken since 1954 for us to have done that, but the experiences I had told me that after that there were many pluses that came with what we had done. And, I like to feel a little – what I did, you know, I did what my heart told me to do, and I think that’s what we often had have to do and do so. I will wait for any questions you have. But, that kind of tells you my history there would be a lot of things I can tell you, but I'm no prouder of anything than that fifth grade class that I taught the first year. (50:20)

Dr. Linville: Um … I was going to ask you … (50:35)

Dr. Harris: I have something I might add to (nods). (50:39)

Dr. Linville: … was, was your fifth-grade class in an elementary or in a junior high? (50:42)

Dr. Harris: It was an elementary. (50:52)

Dr. Linville: That was an elementary. (50:43)

Dr. Harris Yes (nods). (50:44)

Dr. Linville: And then, you moved to a junior high … (5:45)

Dr. Harris: It had been age-grade. (50:47)

Dr. Linville: ohm hm. (50:57)

Dr. Harris. Yeah, age grade wise. And they, they coupled them, you know, as such. They coupled – so the seventh grade that I had, um, many of them had not been seventh grade there that year before though they brought them in from other places. And honestly, I never worried about where they came from; we just – we just meshed. Then, as I told you, I had different students every year. I do want to mention one other thing that I did that I think is important and fits in with this is – you probably remember my husband who died – taught at Paine and about seven or eight years ago. Now, he started a project that taught History and Geography – taught a project called the Cedar Grove Project about the cemetery that found by Magnolia. And, I just did my – I did that last year, and I did it again this year. I done it all these years when he was there and I was like helping the tour guides, and I’d help the students practice their, their roles and that sort of thing. But, I did it last year and did it again last, um, in March I have to look it up – in March 12th. I think we did it and um the students are all African-American and they remind me of those first students that I had during the integration who, who wanted to move up and weren’t sure that they would, because they never had parents or others who might have been college educated. And, I worked with this last group of students at Cedar Grove I’ve been a little worried about Paine because of the accreditation and, you know, certainly I think they’re going to be fine and I certainly think they are to be. But, I as I worked with them their enrollment dropped from 999 to, I know, it wasn’t like 300 and something this year. And so, I wondered if – I was working with Mr. Jones who was a History teacher with my husband, a good friend, and he wanted me to come and help him one more time. And, I wasn’t really pleased that they wanted me to and so we got in there and I told him I said, “I know, you know, the enrollment’s a lot lower and everyone we had every year we always had carry-over students from year to the next to do the reenactments at Cedar Grove,” and we didn’t have a single carry over among them. Apparently, they all graduated last year it so happened and so I didn’t know but one student who was there and she actually had transferred to us and she comes by to see me all the time. So, she kind of, she had been the President of the History Club the last year my husband did it. And so, we have a special affinity there and so she said well, “I’ve been in it for two years I’ll go and help.” And, she did and they carried it off and it went over so well and I thought to myself all this worry that schools had had about integration, all you know back in the 60’s and 70’s and all that as far as I’ve ever to tell, it really wasn’t necessary, you know? Um, it seems so unbelievable but they, you know, being a part of the Peace Education Group that we have here. We know that peace is still not fully out there. So, if there’s anything that I would wish that we could continue to do would be take movements like the Peace Education that the group has

started here under [INSERT NAME…Dr. Kuo] and really be able to make such a difference because I saw with the students I’ve thought that when you don’t think about their difference between you they don’t look at you and don’t see differences either. And, we can look at you and see differences that are there we can build upon in the richness of it; I know it seems very simplistic but for me it’s always worked. And, you know, I, I just think that it can work and I, you know, want to know there’s so much more still to be so frightened about when we hear it, but if we can only get in small groups we can overcome that. And, and, I feel like through the teaching experiences I’ve had, I’ve been able to not even have to deal with it for the most part if it came up to build upon it and the differences that we’ve had. So, I was mentioning Cedar Grove, because I want you to know that here in Augusta, there are many famous Richmond County educators out there. And, my goal is to find a grant for them when they can put a little museum for them at that cemetery and they could recognize – um, I don’t know if you know but C.T. Walker, um, um, who else is there? Oh, and A.R. Johnson, he was the first person to be certified as the teacher who was African American in the whole state; um, T.W. Josey, Dr. T.W. Josey is there. Dr. Stoner, who was the, um, you know, one of the first at University Hospital and his wife, – no, no, his daughter who became a physician was the very first African-American to be a full-staff physician at University. I mean there are and, of course, the students’ favorite, Amanda Tummer who, you know, when she died was the richest Black female probably in the world, they say. And so, all those famous people are there and if that project hadn’t have started then with the students doing the reenactment so many people wouldn’t have wanted to, wouldn’t have known, about it, and wouldn’t have come and so, you know, one of my desires is to see if we can do something permanently and maybe that goes back to those first African-American teachers in that school when I moved who took me under their wing and taught me so much that I needed to know. And, that we need to make sure that people are aware in Augusta-Richmond County community that we had so many unbelievable, outstanding people like um, um, … the persons from whom the … the chapel is named um … the Gilbert [Lambuth?] at Paine College, you know, who were actually in Africa and, you know, were there when so many strides were being made so people that just that are in the history books that I think we let them go away from our history and in this community. I never studied any of them as a student when I graduated in 1967. And, I should have known about all those people. So, I probably taken more time than you wanted to. I’ll just say that there're lots still to do, still lots more we can do, and lots more our students and younger people can do to continue some of these strides we made little as the may be to make a difference. (56:57)

Dr. Christodoulou: Yes. Um well, you gave us a big - like many, many good things, um, and I - correct me if I didn’t understand... So, there were gender-segregated schools when you were … (57:14)

Dr. Harris: Well actually, Richmond Academy has been segregated by gender for years and years and then it came back and they um decided that they were going to put the males and females together. And, apparently, now and again, this is my interpretation, but Mr. Roland as Superintendent, and I do know his son, too, - so, I don’t think he would mind me sharing this on the tape; he thought the best thing to do was probably go back to the gender difference that they had before the separation of gender. And, of course, there’s some research out there that separation of gender can be very positive. I always tell people, you know, that maybe I did better because I didn’t have males in my classes in 11th and 12th grade, you know? Maybe, it was a plus but now when people say well I was there did, you know, me almost with a part I don’t because

it was such a small little group that I seem to go to school with, almost like a one room schoolhouse type of thing. (58:10)

Dr. Linville: Right. Right, and such a big school. (58:12)

Dr. Harris: It was, I mean, you know, and that big school it was a very, very small group. And we have our 50th anniversary in … you know, from ‘67 to 2017 next year. And so, when I – and I’ve always gone to each one in the past when they held them, like every five or 10 years, and they would always be people that I met in the community. But, I never met an African American student there because of that. But, I’ve done a lot of research on gender-based and, you know, our path to Math for girls that we did at the Literacy Center on the math that, you know I did with Stacie and Susan and we worked with the moms. I’ve shared many conferences at other places, because I do feel there a lot of females who don’t do well in Math – even today, the research bears that out. And, if you want them to really talk to their own girls in a very positive way about Math, you need to work with them so they feel more positive about that. So maybe, that comes from my 11th and 12th… I’ll never forget I had Mrs. Boles for Geometry and then in 12th grade I had Trigonometry and when – So, when I, um, had to take the navigation courses, … I could remember all my Trigonometry and I could apply it. So, maybe being in that all-girls class made us all successful in subjects we might not have otherwise. (59:41)

Dr. Linville Ohm hm. (59:42)

Dr. Christodoulou: Alright. (59:43)

Dr. Harris: Well, I’ve enjoyed talking to you. (59:45)