Learning to Give, Philanthropy education resources that teach giving and civic engagement

Yes, I have taught for quite a long time and enjoyed it immensely.

Well, my name is Florida Jackson Yeldell. Georgetown, South Carolina, is my hometown. I attended Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina, and that is a small Baptist school. I graduated from Morris with a major in English in 1936 and I started teaching in a small town that is near Georgetown. The name of that town is Andrews, South Carolina.

My first teaching job was with the fifth and sixth grades, and I enjoyed it immensely. I’m so glad I began at that grade level because that’s the grade level at which students really appreciate you and love you. So that’s where I began. I taught there for two years. Then I went back to school. I went to Howard University in Washington and earned a master’s degree in history, and I came out with that degree in 1941.

We were getting into World War II, so my first job was in the government. I worked in the War Department with dependent benefits and that agency was moved to Newark into the new Prudential building that has just been completed there. I stayed there I think until possibly the end of the war, but by that time I had gotten married. I left that because my husband and I had a son and we lived in Montclair, New Jersey, and then we lived in Jersey City.

Unfortunately our marriage did not last, so when my son was six we were divorced and after the divorce I was concerned with what I would do. I was fortunate I was in the New York area. I went into one of the employment agencies for an interview and there was a Mrs. Axtell there whose husband was on the staff at NYU and she said well, I can get you a job at NYU in the collection office and if you would like to go to school you can get tuition [reimbursement] and take at least two courses each semester. So my sister came and got my son and brought him to South Carolina and I went back to school.

Yes. I worked from 9 to 5 and went to school from 6 to 10, and I enjoyed it. It was very challenging but I got an offer of a job from an ex-classmate at Howard University who was president of a small Baptist college in Texas. The name of the school was Butler College. When he offered me that job, I was glad to take it because I was a little tired and wanted very much to be with my son. Now I did not get a degree from NYU, so I went to Butler and taught two years, then came back and I think I went to NYU for a couple of summers, but then after that I was working in the summer.

Now while I was still married to my husband we had come to South Carolina. We had both taught at Morris College in Sumter, and we stayed there for two years. But we left because he needed to return and go to school but then we were later divorced. I went to Texas in the early 50s and worked at Butler College for a couple of years and then I came back to South Carolina and taught in my hometown at the high school here for one year, but I came back to get my son.

Then I got an offer of a job in another religious school in Texas, Jarvis Christian College at Hawkins, Texas, as director of student life and teacher of social studies. So I went back to Texas and took that job and that was in ‘54. And I stayed in Texas until 1988. Now I did not stay at Jarvis all that time because I left Jarvis and went back to Tyler, Texas, and taught in a Methodist college for several years. Then I got an offer of a job at Prairie View A & M in the very early 60s and I stayed there until I retired from Prairie View in ‘79. Then I worked part-time in the Houston Community College for a while and in ‘88 I came back to South Carolina and I have been here since then.

I’ve enjoyed teaching, I’ve learned a great deal, I’ve met some wonderful people, and had some wonderful and exciting experiences. The greater part of my teaching experience was in college. I taught for two years at the elementary school level and one year at the high school level and all of the other years I was in college work.

When I was at Morris College I taught English and I loved that. That had been my major. When I went to Butler College, I went there as dean of women. I was not particularly anxious to be dean of women but I wanted a job that would make it possible for me to live with my son, and I taught in the social sciences. Let’s see, I think I taught economics and history and I even taught a course in public speaking at Butler. Then when I went to Texas College, my experience after that was in history because history was my major and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach history. When I was at Jarvis Christian College, I went there as director of student life and taught in the social sciences but predominantly history. So most of the time I’ve been teaching history.

Then in 1970 I went back to school. I went to California State University in Chico and earned a master’s degree in geography and came back to Prairie View A & M and continued to teach history and geography. After retirement when I was in the Houston Community College part-time as an adjunct professor, I taught history. History and English have been the love of my life and I learned later to appreciate geography because I always felt you could not adequately teach history [unless] you also taught geography.

Yes, it really is.

Well, that’s wonderful. I know you are.

It does make a great deal of difference for the students and for the teacher.

When I came back to South Carolina, at Carolina Coastal University where Sally [Hare] works, they had a program that they call third quarter program and it was a program for senior citizens. I would say more or less, for people who just wanted to take courses for their personal education. They offered several courses and I registered in the third quarter program. I think I was in that program for about two or three years.

At that time Sally was dean of the graduate school and this program was in her school. The young woman who was in charge of the program saw to it that I met Sally and we became acquaintances and she knew that I was in the program. So when the Courage to Teach program came here and with her first Courage to Teach, she invited me one Saturday and come and talk to them. I didn’t know what would I have to say to them, but I went and it was a very interesting experience.

After that they invited me to become a part of the group, and I was flattered and pleased and so very, very grateful because it turned out to be one of the most meaningful experiences that I have ever had in life. We met for a period of two years. The camaraderie and the real friendship that blossomed in that group and the growth and the changes in all of us and what we all shared and what we all learned has been extremely meaningful for me. It has made me feel even better about teaching and teachers than I felt before. And Sally and I have become very good friends. I’m so grateful to her and bless her heart, whenever she has programs at the University she pulls me in some way as speaker or consultant or to come [and participate]. I have been flattered and pleased because of the contacts and because of the growth and the learning that it has afforded me. For some reason she has felt that I had something to give and share and I have been very grateful because I knew that I had a great deal that I could learn.

I’m an old lady on a cane now and she takes time, she comes to see me, she takes me, and I’m just so grateful.

Thank you, but I have a great deal to receive because this is a section that a large number of retirees come to. More and more people retire here and whatever profession there is from the highest level to the most humble, someone out of that profession is here. There is a thirst for information and people take courses like the third quarter program for continuous development and continuous intellectual challenge. Now the third quarter program, that name is changed now. They still have it at the university, but I don’t go because the distance is too great.

Right here in this community where I am they have started that program. They started it at Brookgreen Gardens. Now Brookgreen Gardens is an open air museum. That’s what they bill themselves as, a sculpture garden that first began the work of Anna Hyatt Huntington. She and her husband, who was a millionaire, gave the gardens to the state and they have exhibits of sculpture and that’s what they specialize in. For a short time they were offering courses, so they asked if I would be [interested in teaching] and I consented to teach if they would permit another person to teach with me. The other person was David Drayton who was chairman of a group that called itself the Committee for African American History Observance. The area that we live in is extremely rich in history and there was a group that had been collecting information and sharing information and I felt that that was the group that would have the information on Georgetown County. Though I had taught history, I could not begin with knowing as much about it as they would.

So he and I taught that course at Brookgreen Gardens for about five years. Then later the young woman who was in charge of it started a gallery that she called Artworks. In connection with that gallery she stated offering courses in a very casual classroom setting for the pure joy of learning, and David and I have been teaching there for the last three or four years. So I’m still teaching though the class only meets for a period of six weeks once a week, and we teach it about three or four times a year. The only time that we don’t teach it is in the summer.

Well, most of the people that take it are what we call the snowbirds, people who have retired here or people who are here for a part of the year who are interested in the history of the section. We have received some very, very satisfactory compliments.

I’ve enjoyed it. He was the last principal of the Negro high school in our town before we went into integration and after his retirement, he started working with this group, the committee for Negro history, and he has worked that for several years and has done excellent work. He gets a great deal of support and respect in the community. I’ve enjoyed that and I continue to enjoy it because I think the real love of my life is history and the continuous learning. I have had to do a great deal of studying in connection with this course because it was not something that I was familiar with or had ever taught before. There was not a great deal of information when I was in school, but at this time there is a great deal and it’s almost hard to keep up with it, so I have the excitement of continuous learning.

Well, I hope. We’ve had some wonderful experiences in that class. At 88, I hope I can go on for as long as I can.

Well, I think it just came with how I was reared. My father kept us and there were four girls my mother had. My mother died when I was nine and I was the oldest of the four. He kept us surrounded by books. He had a library in our house and almost every magazine that was published during the time that I was growing up at some time I saw it and read it. Some of them regularly, old magazines like the Literary Digest, the Evening Review, and Progressive Farmer and Redbook and Cosmopolitan. And then more than that, children’s books. I remember one Christmas my father gave each of us a children’s magazine and we had those for years. I remember my magazine was Every Child which is no longer published. One of my sisters had Child Life. Another had Youth Companion. I don’t remember what the fourth was, but when those magazines came, I read every one of them cover to cover. We always took at least two newspapers as well as the magazines. So it was the environment in which I grew up, and I can remember my mother always used to read to us before we went to bed at night, and I was just fascinated and intrigued by words and the pictures that the words drew. I was always wanting to know more and more and more.

Yes, it really has.

Oh, yes. All of us graduated from Morris College in Sumter and each of them did additional study. I had one sister who graduated in social work from Howard. Her name was Hilda Jackson. Another sister who did special work at Temple in reading and she got an advanced degree from South Carolina State. Her name was Goner Jackson. My younger sister attended Howard and took some advanced courses there, and she taught. When she retired she was teaching English at the high school here after integration. So three of us became teachers and one of us became a social worker.

Well, you know, our father reared us that education is a service and he would not let us take unto ourselves any airs.

You know, I really don’t know because my father just linked throughout my whole life with everything that I did. When I came back here and they asked me to teach that course, I did it not for myself. I did it for my father who has passed long since, but I remember when we were growing up he used to say if I were a young man, I would go back to school and major in history because there is so much of it here and there really is. It’s very rich in history. I just looked at him because at that time there had not been written what I considered a good history of South Carolina. The Negro was roundly neglected except for special study that we put into the curriculum ourselves as Negroes of special information. And so I did it for Papa.

Well, I’m sure I didn’t do it as well as he could because I have always felt that if he had had the opportunity of a college education, he really would have done exceptionally well.

Well, I hope.

I learned to teach by teaching. It’s more than just having a class. It’s getting to know the students in the class, to know their interests, and to get an idea of their potential. Then to challenge them to do the very best that they can do and not accept excuses. One of the things that I tried so hard to teach was don’t look and say they took this from me, that they didn’t give me…. Nobody takes from you anything that you have. You might give it up, you might become overwhelmed. But no one can take it from you and you have the responsibility to develop yourself to the highest. But it’s work. It’s not a game. And you don’t look for the excuses and you don’t blame somebody else. Now some people understood that and many people did not.

Yes.

Oh yes, because I remember he told all of us that he expected us to do the very best that we could and that he did not ever want us to take any advancement except if we merited it. I think that became almost a foundation with each of us.

Yes, I always say the only thing you have and get are the things you give away. I keep telling myself because I have not always been an appreciated teacher. I was too hard. I remember on one occasion when I first went to Prairie View and we were registering students and a young lady came to the history desk to register in the course that I was teaching and there were several sections of it. So when she came to the desk, she says I want to take such a thing. She says I’ll take it from anybody but Mrs. Yeldell.

I’ll take it from anybody but Mrs. Yeldell. That’s all right, I said. Unfortunately, the only class that is open is Mrs. Yeldell. And then when she found out that I was Yeldell, poor girl. I felt so sorry for her.

Yes, she took it.

Well, I don’t know. I don’t think she ever got over the fact that she made that faux pas. It didn’t bother me because I was not taking advantage of the students. I was just holding them to performance.

No, not directly. In a quiet subtle way. Sally has a very effective way of teaching by insinuating values and ideas that you don’t even know until after you’ve had them. I think the one most important thing that I learned from the Courage to Teach is that there is no death. We do not fail. We do not die. We just continuously unfold and move from stage to stage and stage to stage. I noticed in the Courage to Teach nobody condemned anybody about anything. Nobody blamed anybody about anything. Nobody found fault with anybody about anything. Within that group there was a large number of people who changed from one position to another or who made very major changes in their lives. They had come to a point that it would seem that I’ve got to do something from here but they didn’t die. They just went on into another phase, into another stage. There’s just continuous unfolding and growth, but you have to trust yourself to be yourself and to let yourself choose where you will grow and how you will unfold.

That I learned by observing those wonderful people and the many changes that came in their lives. The transformation after the change was as though—this is what you’ve been called to do and you’re not trying to impress anyone, you’re not trying to distress anyone, you’re just being what you are led to be and do.

Yes.

We had shared everything with each other. What was that committee that we used to have?

The Clearness Committee is a cleansing experience, and you come to see yourself and you come to a point at which you decide about yourself. Another thing I learned—I learned not to find fault with the students. I would listen to teachers complaining they don’t do this, ya-ya-ya, until one day it dawned on me well then, what are you here for? That’s why you’re here, to lead them out of that, to help them, to correct them, to help them to see that is not the position. If that is what they are doing after you have taught them, then you have not really taught them.

I’ll bet she’s an interesting young lady.

And to look at them and say, “Gee, they’re sister and brother and very different.” My father used to always laugh and say that each one of us was so different and we are.

My father realized that he needed a wife and he remarried. He married a lady who was teaching in my hometown and who impressed him that she was interested in children, and I think for that he married her. She was an interesting stepmother. Then after he married her, they had two children, a boy and a girl.

That’s why he sent all of us to boarding school before we finished high school here. None of us graduated from high school here because we were all in boarding school.

I had wonderful teachers all along the way from the second grade on. Miss Millie Frazier I remember as my second grade teacher and my fifth grade teacher, that’s where I learned to love history and that was Cleo Thayer. And then my eighth grade teacher, Bertha Sawyer, that’s where I learned to love literature. She was an excellent teacher. When I went to Morris College, we had good teachers. My teacher of history, his name was Bus Williams. He was very good and my English teacher, Mildred Gilliad. Then when I went to Howard, the teacher that I admired the most was Rafen Logan.

He taught history. I took nothing but history at Howard. Charles Wesley. I had excellent teachers. I’m very grateful for the teachers that I’ve had, and you know when people complain about teachers, I don’t have ever go that route. I look with great appreciation on the good teachers I’ve had.

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