All but two of my teachers in K – 12 were white.
I never expected any of them to reach or impact me in a meaningful way.
Thus Ms. Norma Wills, my high school drama teacher, came as a surprise.
I was an involuntary member of Seattle’s groundbreaking Voluntary Racial Transfer Program. With a few dozen Black and some Filipino students, I rode buses across town from our multicultural community to up the colored quotient at wealthy white Roosevelt High School.
While many of my fellow students eagerly signed themselves up for the transfer program, my mother forced me into it hoping to cure the misbehaviors I’d exhibited in our very diverse neighborhood middle school.
“Why do I have to go way out there where I don’t know anyone?” I wailed when my mother broke the news.
“To help integrate the Seattle schools,” she said.
That didn’t make sense to my Mixed-race brain. “But I’m already integrated,” I protested.
She shot me the Mom look to let me know it was a done deal.
The school wasn’t overtly hostile to our presence, but it wasn’t exactly welcoming either.
Most of the lily-white teachers and curriculum validated my rock-bottom expectations.
I sat through classes and did the work, but none of it reached, touched, or impacted my brain or my soul.
Until Ms. Wills.
My friends and I signed up for drama class hoping to break up our boring days.
I’d never taken drama, had no idea what to expect.
We were pleasantly shocked when, instead of forcing us into the very white plays with other students, Ms. Wills pulled us aside to say that we’d be performing a Black play, “A Raisin in the Sun.”
That got my attention and respect.
After we finished “Raisin,” Ms. Wills gave us “The Great White Hope.” This was getting better and better!
When we signed up for her class the following year, she said she was sad to say that she didn’t have any other Black theatre pieces for us to perform.
Though I’d been writing poems since third grade, I’d never written a play. But buoyed by the thrills of reading, learning, and performing two Black masterpieces, I asked Ms. Wills if I could write some plays for us to perform.
She studied me for a minute, then agreed. “But they have to be good,” she said.
“Oh, they will be,” I assured her with the cocky naivete of youth.
Suddenly, school wasn’t such a dull, desolate place.
I wrote skits and plays, which Ms. Wills let us perform in class.
Overflowing with creative ego, I not only wrote the dramas, but starred in and directed them.
My friends didn’t complain about my efforts to be a theatrical triple threat. Best of all, Ms. Wills seemed to take my fledgling efforts seriously.
After the third of fourth play, she asked to speak to me after class.
“You’re very talented,” she said. “But it can be overwhelming to be the playwright, director, and lead actor in any play. Few people can do all three of those things well.”
She paused to let her words sink in. Then softened the blow with a smile. “I suggest that you take some time and think about which of those things you’d like to devote yourself to. Maybe let me know in a day or two?”
I didn’t need to give it a moment’s thought. “I already know. I want to write more than anything else.”
“Why did you choose the writing?”
“It’s the only thing I’m willing to sweat and suffer for,” I said, surprising myself with my own clarity.
She nodded, looking pleased. “I like the fact that you’re so confident about that choice. And I’m sure you’ll be very successful.”
My heart and spirit soared at her warm encouragement, which I’d never received from any teacher in my life.
There were rumors that she was a lesbian. That made her even more interesting to me.
In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, I reconnected with some Roosevelt High School alumni in anticipation of our 50th reunion. I was thrilled to learn that Ms. Wills was alive, hunted down her number, and called her from the other side of the country to share the singular impact she’d had on my life. She was as sharp and vibrant as ever. I’m sure I was just one in a long line of students with similar tales of her influence and inspiration, but it was very satisfying to give her my flowers of gratitude.
Ms. Norma Jean Wills passed away on August 21, 2022, at 95 years old.
As her obituary states, “Her remarkable and renowned lifelong commitment to theatre and teaching her art to both youth and adults changed many lives.”
She absolutely changed mine!
I often think of how radical she was to seek out the scripts for two very successful Black plays so that the handful of Black students in our class had relevant theatre to learn from, rather than shoehorning us into white productions.
How insightful she was to gently inform me that, in today’s parlance, I was doin too much and might want to focus my creativity a bit more.
That conversation provided the clarity that has fueled my writing career.
But equally important was the fact that she saw and acknowledged me in a way that no other teacher ever had.
I raise a toast to Ms. Norma Jean Wills and say Ibaye—a Yoruba word conveying respect and honor to the ancestral spirit of one who has passed away.
I give thanks that our lives connected, and that I was a beneficiary of her uncommon wisdom, grace, guidance, wisdom, and encouragement.
Rest well, dear teacher. I will forever love and appreciate the lessons with which you blessed me and my friends. In the safety of your class, we were viewed and treated as fully human—a rare occurrence. Your legacy is as magical as the life you lived.
Thank you for sharing your personal story. It has been my experience having been sent to a damn near 100 percent white junior high school, that there is usually one teacher who sees US and all that is inside of us and genuinely wants to see us thrive.