Interview with LeAnn Cornell-Burdick, History 150 Spring 2020, Conducted by Brooke Burdick, 03/23/2020.
The name of the person I interviewed is LeAnn Cornell-Burdick. She is my mom and has been a teacher in the Virginia Beach City Public Schools for 23 years. She has taught at a variety of elementary schools across the city as well as a variety of grades. She has taught kindergarten through 5th grade as well as recently becoming a gifted resource teacher. Not only has my mom spent 23 years teaching in Virginia Beach, but she also spent her primary and secondary schooling years there as well. My mom attended various elementary schools, went to Plaza junior high, and finally ended up at Kellam High School. She graduated in 1979 and is still teaching to this day, meaning her experience with VBCPS has spanned from 1968 to 2020. Additionally, all three of my mother’s children attended schools in Virginia Beach and were a part of the class of 2003, 2008, and 2019.
1.This website details a timeline of desegregation in schools in Virginia. It provides the dates of important events such as Brown vs Board of Education and how this effected Virginia schools specifically. It discussed the push back that desegregation received in Virginia considering it is a “southern” state. The article is reputable because it comes from an accredited University and was written fairly recently so it’s up to date. I used this information to figure out whether desegregation would be something that my mom would have experienced so I could form a few questions about it.
Desegregation of Virginia Education . (2017, October 8). Retrieved from https://www.odu.edu/library/special-collections/dove/timeline
2.This pdf provided me with a plethora of statistics regarding the history of education in the United States dating back to the 1800s. It includes statistics such as salary changes and the evolution of administrative positions. It lists each category by state so this information is useful to me since I can find specific data for Virginia. I used this information to gain some background knowledge of all the changes in education as well as to inspire some of the questions that I wanted to ask my mom. This source is reputable because it was created by the National Center of Education Statistics.
120 years of American Education: A Statstical; Portrait. (n.d.). Retrived from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf
3.This article details the trials and tribulations of being a teacher as well as a parent. I used this article to inspire my final question about how being an educator has affected parenting me and my siblings. While this question doesn’t have much to do with social change, it is a question of personal interest and I think my mom will have plenty of insight considering she’s been teaching as well as being a mom for over half her life at this point.
Doyle, P. (2012, August 24). The highs and lows of being a teacher-parent. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2012/aug/24/teacher-parent-relationship
Me 0:01
Okay, so I’ll be interviewing my wonderful mother for my oral history report. And we’ll be focusing primarily on education since she’s currently a teacher. So Mom, can you give me a timeline of your experience in the Virginia Beach City public school system?
Mom 0:18
Okay, um, I attended public school in Virginia Beach from the end of first grade, which was 1968 through June of 1979. Oh, I wanted to add that due to rapid growth. Although we only moved once I attended, I actually attended four elementary schools, which was kind of unusual.
Me 0:46
Especially because you didn’t really move.
Mom 0:49
Yeah, it was just the one time but because of all the Yeah, the the city was just really growing quickly. And the busing which we’ll get to later.
Me 1:04
So after elementary school…
Mom 1:07
Oh What did you need me to answer? Oh, I’m sorry. I attended junior high, which then was I well I also attended elementary school all the way to seventh grade. And junior high for us was eight and nine. Again because of overcrowding and then elementary excuse me high school was from 10th to 12th.
Me 1:41
And then after that you went to college at ODU?
Mom 1:45
Yes.
Me 1:46
And you came back and then what? How long have you been teaching?
Mom 1:52
Um, I believe this is my 23rd year I had a gap in, in my teaching time where I was taking care of my mom and such. So um all together. It’s been about 23 years.
Me 2:14
All right. My second question is can you please describe the changes in technology that you have seen in schools from your elementary years to now?
Mom 2:25
Okay, so for for us, we we didn’t have access to technology per se. It would be really considered the Dark Ages. For what happened is technology through the space program affected our curriculum. So in Virginia Beach, the effects of technology were that we tried everything, anything new that came down the pipe, so to speak, Virginia Beach was trying it um the quote unquote new math. One year, we had to do this weird sra program where I just read things, answered questions, and was basically teaching myself. Um, it you know, that’s, that’s where technology really affected us. I mean, we had schools without air conditioning and you know, it was a rural what was started out as a very rural school that we just exploded in terms of population.
So I mean, I did typewriting and in my you know, in high school that was, you know, the most exciting thing we knew about it, but it just wasn’t our buildings and and such. Were just were not, we didn’t need it per se. Even when I got to college. You know, my first year we pulled cards for our classes, that’s that’s how very low level it was. For me, you know, through my probably like, you know 80′-81′ something like that. So technology just wasn’t something that was big to us. Oh, I did remember that though that I went to the junior high I went to. I forgot about this. It was at the time the the newest junior high in the city and it did have the most up to date, AV equipment, audio visual equipment. So we had our own TV show. I know. But the building was built to handle the the these new devices and such. So the kids wrote it, produced it. They did everything. I think we even had a radio show. And what makes that a big deal is it wasn’t when I started teaching, we didn’t have our own radio, you know, like TV morning TV show at the elementary school I taught at until let me think I want to say the, like, early 90s. So, I the kids that went to my junior high, they were interested in those kind of things. You know, they we lucked out and had all of this. They had this all these really great experiences and such but nobody else in the city, we had a planetarium had had those same advantages, but like I said, other than that, it was pretty, you know, low level.
Me 5:52
So you’d say that Virginia Beach was definitely like, ahead of the curve with technological advancements. I guess. compared to the rest of the country maybe?
Mom 6:02
Yeah, it for that particular school, like I said, Virginia Beach for whatever reason, has always been for better or worse, wanting to, you know, you know, try out new things trying to be modern, so to speak. And that still continues today.
Me 6:27
I was gonna say because we at my school, we were the first to do the the Chromebooks we all had our own laptops.
Mom 6:35
Yeah. And I think you’ve even experienced that. Your experience with technology and online learning and such was far ahead. Most of the kids that you have met even in college, or even what you’re experiencing college, but it does, just like then it it has did become kind of like if you happen to live in the right. You know, school zone.
Me 7:06
Yeah.
Mom 7:08
Because when your brother went to them the interestingly enough, he went to the latest and greatest middle school that was built at the time. This was in the 2000s, early 2000s. And he had, you know, it had all the wiring all the capabilities and everything. So they were using laptops and all of that way before anybody else in the city. They were like an anchor school.
Yeah.
For technology. So again, because we happen to be in that neighborhood, he had the opportunity to, you know, experience a whole lot of different things and I think that you did as well because the teachers when you got there, the teachers were implementing stem.
Me 8:04
Yeah.
Mom 8:05
Like their all their curriculum was around stem. So although Virginia Beach has has been very good about trying to keep up with the times, it does become a matter of have and have nots.
Me 8:23
Yeah.
So how have you seen this rapid growth in technology affecting children negative negatively and positively?
Mom 8:37
Um Oh, well, before that, do you want me to talk about the changes since I started teaching?
Me 8:47
Uh Sure.
Mom 8:48
If that’s okay, just because, um, I think that might help with people understanding. You know, again, I went from using this thing called a ditto machine to make copies my first year in 89′ to between about 90′ to 98′. You know, we were, as teachers, we were taking our students to computer labs once a week, so that everybody was learning the basic skills, we were learning how to teach it. So we had to be proficient in computer as well, activities and whatnot. You know, it helped with my communication and activities. We went from floppy to hard disk or you guys might have to look those up. You know, we were able to use you know, some multimedia educational type of things, you know, through the TV, and then again, because I was at it wasn’t classified as a quote unquote, title one school, the terminology, they’ve had lots of names for it. I was at a disadvantaged school. So we did have additional money to provide opportunities for our students that I might not or, you know, been able to do in other schools. But by the early 2000s, I took advantage of like, we had a lot of different laptop carts, and a portable smartboard. And so by 2004, I was my first graders were able to use laptops in like one of their stations. But unfortunately, it just depended on the teachers, whether they were willing to embrace it and use the you know, the software and the laptops and things. I will say that besides my oldest child, because she went to a quote unquote, more economically advantaged school, she didn’t have the same opportunities that that my students did.
Me 10:58
That’s funny. You would think it was the opposite.
Mom 11:00
Right. But the thinking was that, as parents, we would have been able to provide that for them.
Me 11:07
Yeah.
Yeah
Mom 11:07
Um, and because her dad worked for IBM, he’s he actually worked on the original PC. So we did not but there weren’t very many families that had a desktop at their house.
But so, you know, it just, it was interesting for me to go to my school and use these type of things. And, you know, my student, my own child wasn’t able to use it in her school, but, you know, that’s just an observation. But like I said, you know, Kyle, he had an unusual experience and about that time is when all the SOL [Standards of Learning] testing went online for secondary schools, which was pretty crazy. And then of course, it got to the point where we’d had the we had the laptops, but then the older if the building was old, then it would like blow out the the electrical outlets and stuff that was really exciting. So that’s been an ongoing battle to today where we’re one to one.
Me 12:26
Yeah
Mom 12:27
You know, with Chromebooks and and all those things, but to go to the second question, I… it is…
Technology has and its beat. How can I say this?
Obviously, I am a fan to an extent but because of the availability and the lack of, of guidance, both at home and in the school, technology has I feel reduced my students ability in a lot of areas. Sustaining effort because they become consumers, they’re consumers at very young ages. So they, they don’t have the opportunity to produce. Which is interesting because during this time you’re seeing a lot of people trying to give parents ideas for arts and crafts and things which the education system has unwittingly taken those things out. Because children need to be producers and not just on the flat surface of a media device. Children aren’t reading as much. And if they’re reading on a device, it it’s not giving their… It’s a physical reduction in their ability to read because they’re they can’t track as well. They they aren’t, Everything has to be really fast paced, their attention span is almost null. They they have difficulty, you know, they don’t get a chance to make a decision about where to go next because they just click buttons and they have all this information flying at them. So their brain doesn’t get the chance to use, You know, that higher thinking of Do I need this? What does it mean? You know, where should I go next? It’s just that constant need to consume
Me 14:44
Yeah.
Mom 14:44
You know, they have difficulty with discussions because they don’t have a lot of experience with facial expressions, body language. You know, social media can be so passive. I have students that tell me that their biggest enjoyment in life is watching YouTube videos where the person goes, and to a dollar store to buy things. So, instead of like living their life, I know this is extreme, but this is quite a few students that I talked to. They’re just watching other people live a life.
Me 15:25
Yeah.
Mom 15:26
And it’s affected them in a lot of ways that we as schools are desperately trying to overcome. You know, these companies keep talking about soft skills and all this well, It’s be it’s going to become an epidemic. Because the bottom line is, kids don’t just learn how to collaborate because someone says poof, you’re going to collaborate here. They they need training and, and lots of experience. So what? So they learn what to do when the collaboration isn’t going well?
Me 16:10
Yeah
Mom 16:11
It isn’t, you just suck it up and take the bad grade. Or, you know, because that’s not learning. So as teachers, I see a lot of teachers, for whatever reason, forgetting how important they are in this whole equation.
Me 16:29
Yeah.
Mom 16:31
And it needs to be used as a resource, not as the teaching aid. So I’ll get off my soapbox. Okay, go ahead.
Me 16:38
To switch gears a little bit. According to my research you grew up in a time of backlash regarding segregation in schools. Did you personally witness this throughout your primary and secondary education?
Mom 16:51
Um, I did I it seems so weird now but I lived in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood because my dad was enlisted navy and attended a, a probably all white elementary school. My neighborhood I feel like probably was all white. I don’t remember having, you know, very much diversity. But in 1970 like school year 70′-71′ I was what they call bussed across town to a an all black school. And I remember me and myself and my parents thinking, who came up with this idea because they decided it was going to be the formula was three blacks for a class of whites. And it didn’t bother us any as it shouldn’t have, but I thought, you know did anybody ask those kids if they wanted to leave their elementary? You know, they’re perfectly fine elementary school and go be with these in my opinion, were stuck up people. You know, did did anybody and I don’t know as a kid how much thought went into it. I know that they were trying to to segregate everybody. But this school was called Seatack. And it’s a it’s a historical area of our city and it was a neighborhood school these kids could walk to their school. And frankly, when I got there, I loved it because they had a gym. And it was the school just seems set up better than our traditional elementary school. But I did I was a and I liked it because economically, it was more I felt like we were all more it just felt more comfortable in that respect. I was a very shy child and I did endure quite a bit of bullying. Um, some of the Black Girls, I think, thought that I was, you know, full of myself. And I didn’t realize that at the time, but when I look at my pictures, I was very, very blond and blue eyed. I looked different, you know, even for our beach town.
Me 19:36
Yeah.
Mom 19:37
And, um, that, you know, maybe that was annoying to them. I can’t, you know, put myself in their place but so that that part was tough. But I went back we moved, then I went back to I moved to a more diverse neighborhood. And economically and you know, for Virginia Beach it was anyway.And I went to junior high. And that Junior High was tough. We had a lot of racial issues. It was Yeah, it was tough a lot, a lot going on at that time. That was that wasn’t fun. But then I went when I went to high school. It was there was differences. I mean, we I don’t know if the, you know, African American students, they there. We were together, like in sports and things and different things But, um, I just It must have been hard because there weren’t as many of black students as there were, you know, white students. And many of those kids had lived there their whole lives like their families had been like the first families. And you know, good for them, by the way, because they sold all their farms and stuff and made a lot of money. So kudos. But it was we were probably one of the more diverse high schools. But it was something people didn’t talk about.
Me 21:41
Yeah.
Mom 21:44
Yeah, I didn’t put up with it but it just we knew what was happening. You knew people were saying things and it was unfortunate Because many of our African American girls had children, you know, at very young ages. And it wasn’t like we, we meaning, you know, the so called white students we’d Nobody looked down on them for but it was I hate the fact that it was just expected.
Yeah,
Ya know? like, we didn’t think it was weird. So, um you know, there was, economically there was a huge difference for the African Americans in our city. They were they did it was it. I know that. I know, there was a lot of economic differences between them. But now, our city is we have it’s gone from just being, you know, like African Americans and whites. And we did have Filipinos because of the Navy, to being like those three groups to now, it’s, you know, multiple, multiple multitude of people and cultures and, you know, races in the 90s. I had a lot of families that came from Vietnam, and you know, like Indonesia. And the focus still is on our African American boys, but I feel like that the city is going to need to start to realize that our biggest populations is going to become our two or more students and the unique set of issues that they have to deal with
Me 23:55
Yeah
Mom 23:56
because They have sometimes they still even in this day and time they they they have difficulties figuring out which group they need or want to identify with.
Me 24:10
Yeah.
Mom 24:12
And it’s amongst the different races. So and I think economically, all of all of them all of our minorities are doing better. But it’s hard because I’m not. I can’t I don’t want to speak for them because I don’t
Yeah
you know, but I just I see many types of people that are successful you know, and can live where they want to and go to the different schools that they want to in Virginia Beach is, you know, really bending over backwards trying to make sure that this is a the usual way to do business versus you know, an afterthought. We have a lot of we have a person that is solely in charge downtown of those issues, diversity, and, you know, educating all of us about what it means. What does culture really mean? It’s not just race, all that kind of stuff. So I think Virginia Beach again, is is ahead of those kinds of things.
Me 25:54
Yeah
Mom 25:54
Purposefully educating and having it in our school systems. Sorry, that was kind of long, but it’s
Me 26:01
No you’re good.
Um, we briefly talked about your experience with gender differences in school. Can you describe that again for the sake of the interview?
Mom 26:12
Um, yeah. Up until fourth grade, we had to wear dresses to school
Me 26:22
disgusting
Mom 26:24
dresses, and then they came up with a bright idea that we would wear what they called pants suits, which means your pants had to match your dress.
Fortunately, my mother could sew so, you know, because I was a bit of a tomboy so I was like, Yes. All right, um, it’s hard to believe.But I was um, when I got into 10th grade, that was the first year they implemented Title IX [1972] and it was amazing because suddenly we had all these new sports. And it was just like a huge opportunity for us. But you know, you didn’t have a lot of girls in math classes. You didn’t have a lot of girls in science classes. My parents didn’t, didn’t graduate from high school. But I was determined to go to school. But I was very odd because in junior high, I didn’t want to take home ec. I wanted to take, you know, a language because you had to have a language to go to school. So I was I was a real oddball, to be honest with you. Of course now I kind of regret it because I can’t cook and stuff but that’s neither here nor there. Um, I was in college, I was a health and PE major. And there weren’t a lot of us. There weren’t a lot of women in that. But honestly, I feel I don’t remember feeling like we were treated differently.
Me 28:25
That’s Yeah
Mom 28:25
yeah. I mean, I don’t remember feeling that way the expectation, you know, that we could do and accomplish anything that I that’s probably because at that time, we had the national the top basketball women’s basketball team in the country. We got a top like an Olympic championship champion for our field hockey team and she went on to you know, put several many women on the Olympic field hockey team. We had Martina Navratilova, she was a world class tennis player. She was on our on our campus all the time. So I think it’s because, again, I lucked out and I had so many strong female role models in our health and PE department that it was, you know, a really good experience in that respect.
Me 29:40
Alright, my seventh question, what differences have you seen between the title one schools you have taught at and the schools I attended, considering the contrasting socioeconomic levels of the respective surrounding neighborhoods?
Mom 29:56
well, In my humble opinion, I felt that your school just the teachers not that they weren’t good. It’s just they didn’t seem to feel the need to step up their game.
Me 30:22
Was this high school?
Mom 30:23
Well, this is elementary school and we were doing you know, guided reading and all these different strategies and, and all of this but you would go to school and you would do packets, lots of lots of packets.
Me 30:40
The bane of my existence
Mom 30:42
um, it was boring. And I just felt like it was so archaic.
Me 30:50
Yeah.
Mom 30:51
Um, the the, but on the other hand, we had we had an amazing amount of parental involvement.
Me 31:00
Yeah
Mom 31:00
so after school things and PTA things were were great. But your education I mean, I’ll be honest with you in kindergarten, thank God I hope none of the people hear this. In kindergarten they did so little with you that you started to like lose your you were reading when you went into kindergarten because that was your thing. You actually started getting worse and I had to start teaching you that happened several times during your the expectation I just feel like the expectation was they didn’t want to you guys did some things, you know, like in the gifted program, but it was. It was kind of fluff. I mean They because you were already reading if kids were already reading above grade level like, okay, they’re fine. If there wasn’t this idea of, you know, how can we push them? How can we challenge them? How can we, they hey need the services of the teacher. Those kind of conversations. Yeah. They identified you know, you were identified in dance, but academically, the identified kids, depending on the teacher would get some additional. But I feel like you were pretty much left to your own devices. Now, by the time you got to fifth grade, you had a fifth grade teacher who was very savvy and she’s now become a computer specialist, but where she started using different discussion programs and where I felt like it was starting to become more interactive. Now, middle school you, you had like, top of the line curriculum because of that this you went to the same middle school is your brother. And then at Princess Anne when when we moved, you know, I truly have no complaints from there. There on not there are what am I saying? From that point forward? It was elementary school where I just felt like, and your classes were huge.
Me 33:30
Yeah, at least 29-30 people.
Mom 33:33
Huge! So I mean, and I get that, but in terms of just you know, instruction and discussion and those kind of things. I felt like my students were actually getting getting better at the schools I was teaching at you know, I don’t know that’s my opinion. So I don’t think it’s that way now, but it was definitely done. Well, especially because the superintendent’s kids started going to our school. Our schools, I think they had up their game that was thank you
Me 34:17
My mom is spilling the tea of the city.
And finally, how is being an educator changed the way you raised me and my siblings?
Mom 34:26
Um I feel like that it has helped me be a better advocate for especially for the your two older siblings. I I knew I realized that I needed to hold your brother out because of his summer birthday. A lot of people weren’t doing that back then they thought I was nuts it was always about who you know. My kids so great because they’re in school at you know, four years old whoopie. So I knew because I was a first grade teacher, I knew that it was going to benefit him. Um, I feel like, you know, I was able to step in with you in terms of, of reading, you know, kind of knew what was going on, but I did really try to avoid teaching you, you guys per se. I tried to let the you know teachers do their job and support them. But I think it made me I knew a lot about technology so I was able to keep up with the shenanigans of your older siblings. And I don’t know, I can’t I think it’s just like the subtle day to day things. Exposing you guys to a lot of experiences trying to give you all you know, I purposely kept like, you know, the, the TV out of the car when that was really big, because I knew that y’all needed conversations. I try to do what I would hope the parents would have been able to do for my students. Oh, no, I can’t think of anything else.
Me 36:42
Well, thank you, mom. I appreciate it.
Mom 36:45
Hopefully.They’re gonna live through all of that.
- I conducted my interview with my mom in person, while no one else was home. I let her look at the questions in advance to try and avoid any rambling and possibly shorten the length of the interview. Even after preparing a few things to say the interview was still very long but I chose to keep it all in because I think she made a lot of interesting and important points throughout. You can probably tell that she was a little nervous towards the beginning but she became more comfortable as the interview progressed. I used the voice memos on my phone to record the interview and after uploading the interview to my computer, used otter.ai to transcribe it. After this I went through and listened to the interview while fixing any mistakes I found in the transcription.
- If I were to do this again I might ask less questions so the interview is a little shorter or at least ask less broad questions. I left a lot of room for explanation which is good in some cases but resulted in a very long interview for me. I think it flowed relatively well but a lot of my questions differed from each other so I changed topics a lot. We didn’t really go off script aside from when my mom wanted to continue talking about her teaching experiences which I think added more to the conversation so I’m glad she asked to continue with that question.