Journey in Learning and Teaching Science: Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Is Where My Story Begins

By Dr. Sondra Barber Akins

The author tells her life story through journals and real life vignettes written in the first person. She describes her experiences while growing up in a segregated, mid-twentieth century African American community. Nurturing relationships and activities in her working class African American home, learning in segregated African American schools, and strong connections between her home, schools, and other community institutions are described. Family history and customs, community characteristics, and socio-economic and political circumstances and events that affected her early life and her upbringing are described.

Included in her story are prominent people, places, events, and circumstances that facilitated her holistic development from early childhood through adolescence. Readers will be able to infer how all the above factors and enriched learning activities in and outside of school resulted in her a positive self-image and outlook on life as well as her determination to pursue chemistry studies in challenging higher education institutions. Throughout the book the author provides commentary in which she explicitly connects her early life with events and experiences (academic, professional, and personal family life) that occurred along her journey in later years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369413166

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Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Sondra Barber Akins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 02/06/2024

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1My Childhood Home and My Most Memorable Homecoming

Chapter 2Our Family History in North Carolina

Chapter 3Informal Learning in My African American Home and Community

Chapter 4Elementary School Learning Experiences (1950–1958)

Chapter 5High School Learning Experiences (1958–1962)

Chapter 6Epilogue

Chapter 7Science and Engineering Journeys of Other Atkins High Schoolmates

Annotated Bibliography of Further Reading

Preface

The Road to Writing this Book

Ideas and tools for writing this book, like the subject matter in it, evolved over many years, beginning in my childhood. Probably one important step was when I received my first diary, at the age of nine. However, I will describe the process as beginning in September 1983. At that time, I had concluded the first decade of my working life (eight years of teaching and a short stint in industry).

As a result of a family relocation, I found myself teaching in the high school of a culturally diverse New Jersey school district, just a few minutes away from New York City. At first, I considered it to be a temporary arrangement until I found a job more in line with the experience on my resume. In time, I began to be amazed as I realized what was happening to me. Memories from my early life were revived by the atmosphere of the school, the subject I was teaching (high school geometry), and the characteristics of the students. When I looked into the faces of students, some of them reminded me instantly of kids I had known when I was in high school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Moreover, I was reminded of myself and my aspirations at that age. Even the dominant school color, maroon, and the high-stepping band struck a nostalgic chord, although the mesmerizing steel drum band was something new to me.

Getting from my house to my new job in the high school required only a four-minute walk just as the walk between my childhood home and my elementary school and high school had been a short stroll through my childhood neighborhood. In my new community and workplace, there was a significant African American population; the new high school principal and the departing district superintendent were African American women. There was one African American woman, also a new teacher in the mathematics department, with whom I built a friendship right away.

I was living and working in a place more like the one in which I had grown up than any place I had lived during the previous twenty years, notwithstanding the fact that this place was racially integrated and I had grown up in a racially segregated African American community. I was beginning to feel a deep connection, which I fought at first because I had my heart set on getting a job like the one in the industry I had to leave due to my family relocation. As it turned out, I remained in the district for eighteen years.

I assumed teaching assignments (mathematics, chemistry, and physics) and administrative positions that impacted grades pre-K through 12. I delved into studies pertaining to how the brain works and how attitudes and prior experiences affect learning. I had the opportunity to observe and study teachers’ practices and perspectives. Pursuing my doctorate, which was totally related to my work environment, I became familiar with social science research methodology used by anthropologists, which complemented my background in the natural sciences.

The knowledge I gained enabled me to learn how students were thinking and learning and how teachers were thinking, learning, and working. I acquired a background that would help me to reflect on my childhood learning and thinking through the lens of an educator and researcher. It was altogether possible because I have always been blessed with good autobiographical memory, and I also had access to many materials pertaining to my school days located in the childhood home I visited regularly.

Between 2001 and 2015, as part of my teaching and research agenda as a science education professor at a New Jersey university, I continued my reflections and I encouraged students in my science and mathematics methods classes to inquire into and write about their prior experiences relative to learning science and mathematics. Beginning in 2005, I revealed my approach in a publication and a series of presentations of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) titled Bringing School Science to College: Modeling Inquiry in the Elementary Science Methods Course. I was encouraged by the process when my students won recognition for their writing through the college’s writing across the curriculum initiative.

During a 2007 sabbatical, I began systematic research with the goal of identifying specific factors that affected my motivation and achievement in science while I was growing up. I considered home, school, and community influences. I looked at teaching materials from the 1950s, and I revisited venues where my learning occurred, talking to former schoolmates and teachers who had known me. I wrote vignettes based on my memories of learning experiences in school and informal settings.

In 2012, when I shared my life story in a videotaped interview with The HistoryMakers, I had many early life experiences still fresh in my mind. As a result of learning about the impact of The HistoryMakers organization and the vision of its founder, Julieanna L. Richardson, I was convinced of the importance of showcasing African American experiences not only as oral history but also in the form of published, written work. I began working on an autobiographical essay, Learning and Teaching Science: A Chemist’s Journey. It was published in the book, African American Women Chemists in the Modern Era, which was authored by Jeanette Brown and published by Oxford University Press in 2018. I was appreciative of the nearly twenty pages allowed in the book. But there was much more that I felt the need to share.

In 2020, when the pandemic curtailed much of my activity in the outside world, I intensified my efforts to complete an authentic autobiography. Pulling together all the elements and sharing my entire story in an interesting and creative way would be a great challenge because I was looking back on nearly three-quarters of a century, and there had been much more than subject matter dealing with learning and teaching science. However, I had the time and I had key people in my personal life who have been daily sources of inspiration and to whom I am thankful.

Dr. Daniel L. Akins, my husband of sixty years, has been by my side and a part of the journey, every step of the way, since our meeting in college when we were brought together by our common interest in chemistry. Our daughters, Dana Akins-Adeyemi and Meredith Akins, the love and joy of our lives, have been inextricably connected to the journey by virtue of our family life. So have their children (our four grandchildren—Tinuke Adeyemi, Nathan Adeyemi, Naomi Adeyemi, and Niko Pena-Akins.)

The group of people with whom I share the entirety of my life’s journey and family lineage, who have helped to keep alive some of the oldest memories featured in this book, including information about our family history, includes my siblings, Alexander Barber Jr. (Gene), Freddie Barber Sr., and Mary Barber Worthy.

I am thankful for the support and inspiration of all those mentioned above, and I give the highest thanks to my parents, Alexander Barber Sr. and Mabel Sharpe Barber, the two people who nurtured my siblings and me in a loving home, provided guidance, and formed a link between our home and the nurturing community in which we grew up as well as many supportive relatives. Even though neither of them was a teacher or a scientist, together, they supported and encouraged me when I reached for a future in science, which was commonly considered to be out of reach for a girl like me. Science was not my only goal. I also wanted to fill more traditional roles as a spouse and mother. My parents modeled best the attributes needed for making a home, making a living, and making a life.

Book Chapters

Chapter 1, My Childhood Home and My Most Memorable Homecoming, describes my most memorable return to my childhood home in the summer of 1968 after my husband and I finished our education in California. From that point, I reflect back to earlier times in my life, describing features of the home where I was born and spent the first eighteen years of my life and the human activity that occurred there among my parents, siblings, and me.

Chapter 2, Our Family History in North Carolina, describes my parents’ early lives, the story of how they met, married, established a home, and started a family. Stories are based on oral history and checked for historical accuracy.

Chapter 3, Informal Learning Experiences at Home and in the Community, is developed from stories and vignettes about real learning experiences I had outside of school. It demonstrates how engaging activities in a working-class African American family during the mid-twentieth century were educational, supportive of strong family bonds, and had relevance to my life later on and relevance to the lives and education of children in modern times.

Chapter 4, Learning in Elementary School, reflects on the benefits I derived from my days at Skyland Elementary School between 1950 and 1958. Memories of elementary school teachers, school practices, parental involvement, and interactions with classmates are revived. Glimpses of teacher’s work—teaching and assessing learning and creatively fostering holistic development—are based primarily on my memories and supported by primary sources, including newspaper articles, report cards, and curriculum information from that era. Chapter 4 concludes with a long postscript that reviews curriculum recommendations of the 1950s and an interview with a former elementary school teacher.

Chapter 5, High School Learning Experiences, is written in the form of a four-year journal pertaining to the first serious leg of my journey in learning science, which occurred at Atkins High School from 1958 through 1962. It includes rich descriptions of teachers and specific science courses and extracurricular activities that had an impact on me and my thinking and processing of my education as it was occurring. As well, I include experiences in language arts, social studies, and related activities that complemented science and mathematics and promoted well-roundedness. My memories, school yearbooks, newspapers, and report cards are sources for this chapter.

Chapter 5 also describes my experiences immediately following high school—my first year of college at Howard University where my husband and I met and our life at the University of California at Berkeley, which is partially disclosed in Chapter 1.

Chapter 6, Making a Home, Making a Living, Making a Life, comprises an epilogue to this book. It follows my husband and me and our two children across different venues in the country after we left Berkeley through our life in New Jersey and the connections kept between us and our families throughout.

Chapter 7, Other Atkins High Schoolmates Who Pursued Science and Engineering Careers, is a bonus chapter that I included to share the stories of others who were similarly inspired to pursue science as a support to, or central to, their chosen careers. All persons who are featured in this chapter were schoolmates whom I knew very well while I was attending Atkins High School. One of them, my brother, Freddie Barber, tells a poignant story quite different and much more challenging than mine. But it is similar to my story in that it includes parts that describe the role my parents and other family members played in supporting him during a very difficult time in his young life.

Introduction

Journey in Learning and Teaching Science focuses on my early life between 1944 and 1962, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and it makes connections between what happened then and what happened in my academic, professional, and personal life after I left home in 1962 to attend college. It is about much more than learning and teaching science. It is an autobiography that gives a description of the setting in which holistic development, including learning and teaching, in general, and learning and teaching science, specifically, occurred during my high school years. Earlier chapters include relationships and experiences that occurred at home and in the community, which supported growth and development and family history. An entire chapter follows my adult life in different venues where my husband and I were engaged in science careers and rearing children.

Growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I received a quality, child-centered education at a segregated, neighborhood elementary school between 1950 and 1958. Between 1958 and 1962, I experienced the first leg of my journey in learning science, along with general learning and development. After one pivotal year at Howard University, I continued on to earn a BS in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, which was unusual at the time among women and minorities as were my academic studies and career that followed. Many people have been curious and even incredulous as to how such achievements were possible.

A primary motivation for sharing my life story is to pay tribute to people and places that contributed to the foundation I acquired while I was growing up, as it was the springboard for my many endeavors after I left home to attend college and continue my life’s journey. I want to shine a light on nurturing relationships, human determination, and dedication as well as auspicious circumstances that worked against negative forces such as racism and other distractions that could have derailed me. I also want to show, as I realized upon deep analysis and reflection, that the seeds for accomplishments for which I have received recognition throughout my adult life were actually planted during my early years and before I was born, if my family history, including yearnings and deeds of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, are considered.

I believe those who read this book will grasp how special relationships and influences are. Some within educational institutions among teachers, co-learners, and mentors, some among family and friends, and some that go back to early beginnings have had an influence on decisions I made at every stage of my journey. They will also see how accommodations and corrections were made at different junctures and how supportive relationships all along the way remarkably allowed me to have a rewarding life while pursuing a path chosen when I was a girl in high school, struck with the idea of becoming a scientist.

Chapter 1

My Childhood Home and My Most

Memorable Homecoming

I have a spiritual connection with the house at 920 Ferrell Street in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. My parents and my two older siblings moved there in the summer of 1943. Eight months later, I was born in the family home on March 16, 1944. As a young child, I explored every nook and cranny inside the house, and I was allowed to run and play in every part of the big yard outside.

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, my parents dedicated a great deal of energy to maintaining and improving their home as well as rearing my siblings and me. They implemented many improvement projects, first to accommodate the needs of a growing family and later, as our family finances improved, to modernize the house and enhance our lifestyle. There were small projects beginning in the early 1950s. There was a large renovation in 1956. In 1967, after the last of four children went off to college, the house went through another renovation. Later on, they added two bedrooms and another bathroom.

By 1967, my parents had three grandchildren who were living with their parents in Winston-Salem and three who were living with their parents in other states. Evidently, they envisioned that in time, my siblings and I would come home for rest and relaxation from our busy adult lives, and they would have grandchildren coming from other states for summer visits. That is exactly what was made possible by the enlarged house. My parents never stated explicitly their desire for the use of the house beyond their lifetimes. But it was obvious from the way they behaved and the way my mother talked to herself out loud that they expected the house to serve the family in that way for a long time.

Fortunately, my parents had plenty of time to reap the benefits of their home investments. Both of them lived into their nineties. They spent their last years in the comfort of their first and only home, which they transformed from a modest five-room house with two bedrooms and one bathroom to a sprawling, ten-room house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. They enjoyed their home with family, friends, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. After they passed away, my siblings and I continued the tradition of several homecomings every year with at least one occurring while everyone was home at the same time. For me, the house has been more than a faithful gathering place. It has been a repository for furnishings and artifacts, a kind of stay-in museum, which for years has allowed me to reflect and write about my early life in the very setting where it all happened.

When I was growing up on Ferrell Street, it was a time of stability in my community. However, it was far from boring because it was also a time of exciting and positive change. My address and telephone number never changed except for a prefix of the telephone number many years after I left home. Neither did the loving relationships among those in my family. However, the physical structure of the house changed continuously. I had the greatest fun being in on my parents’ home improvement plans and seeing the projects completed. I also experienced the excitement of change in my neighborhood. Just as I had the good fortune of growing up at 920 Ferrell Street, I have had the good fortune of returning for more than six decades from the time I left home to attend college in 1962. My most memorable homecoming was in the summer of 1968.

My Most Memorable Homecoming

In June 1968, I returned home with feelings of joy and redemption. I was joyful because I was coming back to my parents and my home after an absence of four long years. I felt redeemed because my actions just before I left and my long absence had caused my parents a great deal of worry. The following is what happened during the five years preceding my return to Winston-Salem in 1968:

On August 21, 1963, I married Daniel Akins after completing one academic year and two summer sessions at Howard University in Washington, DC, where I received a four-year, full-expense scholarship. It was a jolt to my parents because I had told them, months earlier, that I would not marry before completing my undergraduate education. According to the plan I had communicated to them, I would have a BS in chemistry from Howard University by June 1966, and Daniel Akins, a Howard University graduate, would have his PhD in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. Instead, we got married at the end of the summer of 1963, a few weeks before Daniel left to begin his studies at Berkeley.

After our elopement, my parents were concerned, to say the least. But Dan and I insisted that we had a plan and nothing would keep me from getting my bachelor’s degree. So they stayed calm, and they immediately sent a marriage announcement to the Winston-Salem Journal. It must have shocked everyone in Winston-Salem who had known me during my early life when the announcement was published early in September 1963. The marriage announcement revealed the post-wedding plans Dan and I had described to my parents: I would return to Howard University and resume my studies and Dan would work toward his doctorate in Berkeley, California. That is exactly what we did at first. But six weeks after Dan arrived at Berkeley, he informed me that he had found a studio apartment near the Berkeley campus where we could live. He said that his research professor was very supportive of the idea of my joining Dan at Berkeley and enrolling in college there.

I dropped out of Howard University to join Dan. First, I went home to visit my parents in Winston-Salem. After reassuring them that I would not let anything interfere with my college education, they gave me their blessings, and they saw me off as I boarded a Greyhound bus. I arrived in San Francisco and met Dan on November 24, 1963—two days after the assassination of President John Kennedy.

By January 1964, I was enrolled in brutal undergraduate science courses, including calculus, organic chemistry, and physics with calculus. Fortunately, I was acing German but the same could hardly be said about the other courses. Dan was continuing his research and coursework in his doctoral program. After my first semester from January to June of 1964, I traveled back to Winston-Salem to see my parents for two weeks. Upon returning to California to continue my undergraduate studies, I resolved that I would not let up on my studies or go back home until both Dan and I had completed our studies and were ready to return to the East Coast together. Our goal was a PhD for him and a BS for me, not one without the other. We would not disappoint ourselves or my parents.

On March 3, 1965, our first child, Dana, was born about a month after I completed sixteen credits of work during the first semester. Fortunately, she was a healthy baby with a sunny personality and that allowed me to complete my studies, full-time while working part-time in the chemical storeroom in order to afford childcare costs. I received my BS degree in chemistry in June 1967. Not even for a short visit did I go back home to see my parents and show off our daughter who was two years old by the time I graduated. I wanted to wait until Dan completed his research and dissertation. So I worked as a technician for nearly a year in the same research laboratory in which Dan was completing his doctoral studies.

By the time Dan received his PhD in June 1968, he had an offer of a postdoctoral fellowship at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. I was accepted into a new program at Florida State through which I would earn a master’s degree in chemistry and a minor in higher education. We flew from San Francisco to Tallahassee and found an apartment close to campus. After that, we flew to North Carolina to see my parents. Our mission had been accomplished. I had a BS in chemistry, Dan had a PhD in chemistry, and we had a beautiful baby daughter whom they had been waiting three years to see. Moreover, we had a plan. We knew exactly what we would be doing for the next two years. As we had done during the first five years of our marriage, we would be doing everything together.

I can still remember my father’s face when he met us at the Greensboro airport in the summer of 1968. He was overjoyed to see us, and he reached out his arms to hold the three-year-old granddaughter whom he had never seen. I can still remember how I melted into my mother’s arms when we got to the house on Ferrell Street where she was waiting.

A Tour of My Childhood Home

It was wonderful to be back home and to have my husband and my child with me in the safest place I had ever known. After years of longing for home, being home was surreal. Once back and reunited with my parents, I had the urge to reconnect to every single space in the house. I went into each room and lingered there. Many good memories of what it had been like during the early years of my life came to mind.

The Old Living Room

In 1968, I found the old living room to be comfortable and immaculate like Mama always wanted it to be when my siblings and I were youngsters. The room had been a vexation for my mother because she wanted it to be tidy when guests entered the front door.

One stressful day in the late 1940s, Mama broke down in tears when she discovered that Freddie and I had