"As you get older and you're listening when they're bringing up some wonderful new way of doing things, it's like, um…Things just go around in circles.” — Fern Stroud Summary: Leslie Stoval soaks up the wisdom of Fern E. Stroud, retired elementary school teacher and mother of BlackFemaleProject founder Precious J. Stroud. Originally from Berkeley, Ms. Stroud studied at San Francisco State, taught in Berkeley schools in the pre-integration 60s, and later moved up to a school in the Oakland Hills where she was the only African American teacher. In the conversation, Ms. Stroud speaks to the power of mentorship—particularly from Black educators—and the circular nature of things.
"As you get older and you're listening when they're bringing up some wonderful new way of doing things, it's like, um…Things just go around in circles.” — Fern Stroud
Summary: Leslie Stoval soaks up the wisdom of Fern E. Stroud, retired elementary school teacher and mother of BlackFemaleProject founder Precious J. Stroud. Originally from Berkeley, Ms. Stroud studied at San Francisco State, taught in Berkeley schools in the pre-integration 60s, and later moved up to a school in the Oakland Hills where she was the only African American teacher. In the conversation, Ms. Stroud speaks to the power of mentorship—particularly from Black educators—and the circular nature of things.
VIDEO of THIS INTERVIEW: https://vimeo.com/showcase/6960281/video/440419181
HOST: Leslie Stoval
GUEST: Fern E. Stroud
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Precious Stroud (00:07):
BlackFemaleProject
Leslie Stoval (00:14):
This is Leslie Stoval your guest host for the BlackFemaleProject podcast. Learn more about our work at www.BlackFemaleProject.org.
(00:26):
Hey there, I'm Leslie Stoval with another KCSM radio and we've got another edition of the BlackFemaleProject. And we've got a very, very special guest this evening. And I want to introduce to you the founder's mother, Mrs. Fern Stroud, and your retired teacher in Berkeley. And I want to say welcome, and it's a pleasure to have you here.
Fern Stroud (00:47):
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Leslie Stoval (00:51):
So are you, are you from Oakland originally?
Fern Stroud (00:54):
Actually in Berkeley.
Leslie Stoval (00:55):
Okay.
Fern Stroud (00:56):
But I ha I also, um, had a little history in Vallejo, but Berkeley is where I really grew up from first grade to on.
Leslie Stoval (01:08):
It was a Berkeley High.
Fern Stroud (01:09):
I went to Berkeley High School.
Leslie Stoval (01:11):
Great school.
Fern Stroud (01:12):
I still have some of those, uh, some of those friends were all, uh, have turned to our, uh, four score this year
Leslie Stoval (01:20):
four score. Oh my goodness. You don't look at it.
Fern Stroud (01:26):
I'm blessed and I'm, I'm thankful. And, and I'm here.
Leslie Stoval (01:31):
Every day, above ground is a good day. I that's what I always say. It's a positive thing to wake up everyday. So you, where did you study? Uh, teaching?
Fern Stroud (01:39):
San Francisco State.
Leslie Stoval (01:42):
And what was your first teaching job?
Fern Stroud (01:44):
It was in Berkeley at Lacant School Elementary.
Leslie Stoval (01:50):
Okay. And you taught the little ones.
Fern Stroud (01:52):
Second, second grade. There were about three schools that were slightly integrated and Lacant happened to be one.
Leslie Stoval (02:02):
Were you the only African American teacher on the staff?
Fern Stroud (02:08):
No, no, no I wasn't.
Leslie Stoval (02:11):
And, uh, so I understand you went and taught at a school up in the Hills.
Fern Stroud (02:15):
I was teaching in Berkeley before they integrated.
Leslie Stoval (02:20):
What year was that?
Fern Stroud (02:20):
Oh gosh, in the sixties, I went on maternity leave and when they came back, they had started preparing the teachers for the integration (whispers) slightly.
(02:32):
When I came back, I was, uh, placed at, uh, a Hill school, which was called Grizzly Peak. Uh, I remembered, I remember the drive up there with my grandmother, my grandfather, my great grandmother and my daddy.
Leslie Stoval (02:53):
Support.
Fern Stroud (02:54):
So we went up to see what, where this school was because I, I mean, I, I taught in at the flatland schools. So that was like.
Leslie Stoval (03:05):
We still configurator the same way today. The money's in the Hills and the proletariat and in the flat lands
Fern Stroud (03:12):
Hi, that was my, that I was now, I was the only African American teacher at that school and they had six classes and it was, it was quite a different little, settng.
Leslie Stoval (03:24):
Tell me about it.
Fern Stroud (03:25):
Well, instead of having room numbers, you were you're, you had the blue room, the green room, the tan room. And, you know, we just, they had different color rooms and, uh, those were different grade levels.
(03:41):
And, uh, and it only went up to third grade. So you had a kindergarten was up on a nice little hill up above us, but, um, first, second and third grade or down at the larger school, which there were only 6 teachers.
Leslie Stoval (04:00):
And how many students?
(04:02):
Oh, well, I had as many as 38 at one time. And then it, uh, 35, 30, 28. It varied. I was telling you about the right. We rode up there and everyone looked around and said, we don't want you up here. It was like, Oh, I don't know about this. When it gets dark, what's gonna happen when you better come home, you know, you make sure you go home for that, but that's like two generations. Yeah. So, uh, I was there and it went, it went well. I remember the first day, you know, usually you kind of open the door and go out and greet your children.
Fern Stroud (04:44):
Well, they told me, they asked me to stay in without, you know, going out, greeting them, but no early surprises. So I had a, a second grade class. So it went, it went fine. It really did because I had a very supportive principal.
Leslie Stoval (05:07):
That's what it takes in management support.
Fern Stroud (05:10):
Oh yes. And he was there a lot. He was there to, you know, uh, get a, straighten it out. So he was, he was a very good support person and even, even volunteered in my classroom. Some teachers didn't want him to be in there. He, he would, he felt very comfortable in my room and, uh, in it, it worked out fine
Leslie Stoval (05:35):
and he must've been a fine teacher.
Fern Stroud (05:37):
Well, I enjoyed it. It was lots of fun. We, I was able to do a lot of things that I like to do a great science program.
(05:49):
We were in collaboration with the University of California at that time. And a lot of their programs, they send them math and science and everything. But I had finished my course at San Francisco State for science. I enjoyed it. And so I said, well, I'm going to set my class up. Like, like, you know, like my class set up and in college. And I said, I'm going to use vocabulary that they would be able to understand. I enjoy doing that. We, I set things up so that the kids could, you know, go around and in, uh, with their, if I gave them a test, they would define what was the in different settings. We did a lot of, uh, biology studies and everything. Of course,
Leslie Stoval (06:39):
Disecting frogs?
Fern Stroud (06:40):
Not dissecting frogs, but you know, there there's lots of trees and everything there. So, so all the different leaves and the, the, the, the veining and all of that we were able to do.
(06:59):
But if I ran across something that I couldn't identify, I just sent a note home because most of their parents worked at the university.
Leslie Stoval (07:08):
Right. Right. What a great resource, what a great resource.
Fern Stroud (07:13):
They were so kind, we built communities and things. It was fun. And I really enjoyed it because we could really kind of dive into the curriculum.
Leslie Stoval (07:24):
Well, it sounds like you were the right. Right. I have a theory yet, the right person at the right time. And it sounded like you were the right person at the right time.
Fern Stroud (07:31):
I enjoyed it. Now, I'll tell you what, though. In testing me out, parents would volunteer. There were a lot of mother moms at home.
Leslie Stoval (07:43):
They tried to check on your competence.
Fern Stroud (07:46):
I mean, not each year, but each hour you'd have a drop inI that would come in and inhale. But then after that, they'd have their little tea party and discuss each hour that they were there and they left me alone.
(08:00):
So a little different.
Leslie Stoval (08:01):
But, you know, um,
Fern Stroud (08:05):
Parent participation was a lot. Yeah.
Leslie Stoval (08:10):
It did. The little children. Did, did they notice you were, you were different from the other teachers or there's a high, which, you know, just curious.
Fern Stroud (08:17):
I was just their teacher. And sometimes when some of the parents, I, for parent teacher conference, it's like, why he didn't, she didn't say, you know, they wouldn't say she, she didn't say.
Leslie Stoval (08:30):
you were a nice person.
Fern Stroud (08:33):
No, I was just their teacher.
Leslie Stoval (08:35):
Yeah. Isn't that interesting?
Fern Stroud (08:37):
That was interesting because it would, it was like, I'm glad they just see me as their teacher. Right? Yeah. Cause I was like the mother for the day. Yeah.
Leslie Stoval (08:48):
And, and think how privileged they were to share your company and your culture and your experiences stuff. I mean, they had a diverse, you know, exposure experience before, before they were putting the word to it. Look how many kids you really helped I mean, just by being you.
Fern Stroud (09:08):
Well, I mean, I saw some of them later, you know, in life and everything and they remembered me, but, uh, it, that was an interesting experience. But, but I worked at many other schools too. That experience was bef- just before they integrated. Cause they were putting diff teachers in different settings for a short period of time just to kind of get them acclimated to what it might be.
Leslie Stoval (09:39):
Right. Cause it is untested water. Right. Is it as an experiment? I'm on the scientific experiment.
Fern Stroud (09:46):
We had a lot of training from a lot of the, um, professors there at the university for, for training, for cultural differences in that we had the sociologists and we had all of these different classes. Yeah. And, and, and, and all this time getting into the more of the Black culture in the school.
(10:12):
And, uh, they had Ebonics along with some of, some of that. Some people were like, you know, Ebonics, but it's like, uh, it's a part of our culture, you know, it's like, who did she meet? And someone was saying, she been go and you know what? That meant that okay. That it was just those kinds of little quirky things, cultural, cultural, but, um, things have changed with teaching over the years because I did most things just by hand all the, all of the papers and things, but now everything is on computers and it's kind of.
Leslie Stoval (10:55):
antiseptic.
Fern Stroud (10:56):
Yeah. Very
Leslie Stoval (10:57):
cause it's shocked. You can feel it.
Fern Stroud (10:59):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I was teaching him how to do cursive writing, I had music, you know, so we could make those loops. They don't even know how to do a cursive, writing the manuscript, printing the nail. Can we, that was the new connector.
Leslie Stoval (11:19):
Right.
Fern Stroud (11:20):
But things were a little different as you get older and you're listening when they're bringing up this wonderful new way of doing things. It's like, um,
Leslie Stoval (11:31):
what's old is new again.
Fern Stroud (11:33):
We used to call that, you know, committee work or something like that. Things just go around in circles.
Leslie Stoval (11:43):
Yeah. They do. They do. Um, you you've seen so many changes and, um, you were such a, uh, positive and just incredible goldmine of historical, you know, knowledge and just show sharing, you know, what you, what you've done in your life and everything and what you've seen. And I'm just sitting here, I've just learned so much.
Fern Stroud (12:07):
Well, let me tell you something. I had two wonderful master teachers. African-American wow. When I was student teaching and they were both very good in, in the subject areas and they had to be, it was a lot of wonderful insight that I got being there to guide me through, uh, any, any kind of problems that they, they would say, okay, you may have this problem with something. And, uh, this is the way you approach it. You know, the valuable, yeah. That I am very, very thankful that I had the experience of having them as my master teachers when I was doing student teaching in West Oakland and in Berkeley when I was at another school in Berkeley.
Leslie Stoval (12:59):
But well, you passionate about your work and you change lives obviously by being the academician that you are and community person. And I just want to thank you for all your work.
Fern Stroud (13:13):
Thank you.
Leslie Stoval (13:13):
It's setting up, setting up the table for the rest of us and you know, your, your family, your daughter's Precious and for the outstanding women, just, just moving forward, confident, doing your thing, BlackFemaleProject. Thank you so much for stopping by.
Fern Stroud (13:28):
Thank you. I'm sorry that I didn't make the sparkles fly.
Leslie Stoval (13:32):
No, you did. You did know that. Thank you so much. Sincerely.
Fern Stroud (13:36):
Thank you.
Precious Stroud (13:39):
BlackFemaleProject.
Leslie Stoval (13:46):
Thank you for listening to the BlackFemaleProject podcast, BlackFemaleProject works to positively impact the wellness and professional experience of Black women. We celebrate women who thrive at work and share their stories with the girls coming behind us. Learn more at www.BlackFemaleProject.org follow us on social media at BlackFemaleProject. This is Leslie Stoval thanks for listening to the BlackFemaleProject podcast.