Celebrate Maya Angelou

The poem makes me feel stronger than I am right now. It also makes me feel that I can do more than I can right now.

— Elementary Student

Jensen says the reactions to Angelou’s poem were inspiring. “I think what she is trying to say is that nothing can stop her. And whatever happens, she will keep on going and going,” wrote one student. “This makes me think she’s saying she won’t give up. It makes me feel confident. She makes me feel strong,” wrote another.

The project became collaborative as students took the concepts from their personal illustrations and added them to a large class mural featuring Angelou’s poetry in both English and Spanish. By the time everyone had contributed to the painting, it was almost too heavy to hang, says Jensen.

The mural still hangs in the hallway outside Jensen’s classroom where it can continue to help students to see themselves as “active members working toward an inclusive, empowering, affirming and safe world for all.”

Q&A A GRANDSON’S PERSPECTIVE

Colin Johnson, Angelou’s grandson, was at his grandmother’s side at just about every event she attended during the last 25 years of her life, he says. She—and her friends—called him “The Grand.”

In celebration of what would have been Angelou’s 90th birthday, Johnson spoke to Teaching Tolerance about who Angelou was when she was outside of the public eye.

What would you like people to know about your grandmother that can’t be gleaned from a biography citing her work and awards?

There are plenty of people who have gotten the individual awards she has gotten. … But the difference for me is the way in which my grandmother did it and her style and spirit while doing it. She had an amazing laugh and a singing voice that was full of life. And after the tough life she lived, it’s just amazing the spirit that she kept.

We talk about my grandmother finding her voice twice: first after her mutism and then, once she grew up and had the number of experiences that she had, the voice that rose in her that would never be quieted. She felt like injustice and inequality were just not right for this world. … And she believed even before this phrase was popular that art is action, that you can move mountains, and you can move people, through your art form and giving truth.

Angelou is well known as both a poet and activist, but perhaps less well known as an educator. How did she turn art into action in the classroom?

What she said is that she thought for a long time that she was a writer that could teach, and eventually she realized that she was a teacher who could write. … My grandmother believed that books were freedom from ignorance and that they could transport you anywhere. And in that very moment, when you transfer someone to West Africa or Egypt or Rome or London, you are taking action in that kid’s life and exposing them to something and somebody else’s ideas and the beauty that comes from everywhere and everybody’s writing.

What would you say to students to help them realize the world your grandmother worked to create?

I would say that if you live with an open heart and you trust your gut and you love hard, you’re probably going to live an amazing life. And the only problems in life really come when you become calloused and you start to be jaded about what the opportunities in this world are and that people are innately great. Period. Everybody is innately great. Things might happen to them and make them worse people, bad people. … But in the heart of everybody is a really great person and everybody wants about the same thing you do. They want to eat, raise their kids, be successful, laugh a little bit, love a little bit. That’s it.

Pettway is a freelance writer and poet who lives and writes near Seattle, Washington.