I never meant to become the magical art lady, but I did—at least to a few Brooklyn school children stuck in a sagging school on a forgotten block. If you asked me, the real magic came from their 6th grade humanities teacher. Mrs. B was a handsome Black woman in her 50s when I met her in 2018. She kept her relaxed hair in a neat bob and always had on a smudge of charcoal eyeshadow and sheer plum lipgloss. Usually she donned a dressy jacket with a touch of metallic thread or snazzy buttons. Though she liked to laugh, she carried herself with elegance. Once, during a rare lunch period we shared, she yanked a half-turned leaf of lettuce from her sandwich and complained that “the bodega man just threw this together.” Warm mayo oozed from the chicken cutlet onto the plastic takeout container. The bread looked a bit roughed up. “I’m not eating this, but do you want the other half?” she asked as she handed me the rest of the beleaguered roll. Then she bagged up her rejected food and slam dunked it in the garbage. “Appearance is everything.”
A lot of things at Mrs. B’s school were thrown together. Teachers’ chronic absences were routine. The theatre teacher, who apparently skipped to catch auditions, was practically Hamlet’s apparition. The children were plopped with whichever living, breathing adult who passed a background check. Students seemed used to last-minute shuffling. So when Mrs. B introduced me as a visiting teaching artist and announced my regular schedule from October to May, a collective shrug rose from the sixth grade. If I was like many adults who stepped into their classrooms —especially non-Black, non-Brooklyn natives—I would not return to “the hood” the following week.
At the time, I was an eager M.F.A. student, touring public schools on contracts from New York City non-profits. The work, though creative, was draining. Most of the schools had no regular arts classes, which meant limited art supplies and facilities. Poverty, truancy, and local crime were high. Not every teacher had the training or will to persevere. At Mrs. B’s school, my task was to lead a large painting on canvas for the main lobby. Mrs. B secured me the room where we painted because there was no art classroom. An English teacher who quit the first month of the school year left it abandoned. The principal transformed it into a cave to hoard textbooks and other supplies she did not want teachers to touch. She only relented after Mrs. B explained that the school would lose funding from my client’s organization if I was not provided a place to paint. This was not a lie. It was leverage that someone who had navigated the system for years knew how to use.
One morning, I came huffing and puffing through the hallway, humiliated because I was 10 minutes late. Mrs. B. was having a stern but loving chat with a boy in the hallway. Cliff (not his real name) was a repeat offender when it came to back-talk. At this particular moment, he lied on the floor, slowly kicking his legs in the air.
Without so much as a hello, Cliff looked straight at me coming down the hall and asked, “Ms. Christine, do you live in Manhattan?”
The question baffled me. From the school’s neighborhood, Canarsie, it took an hour by subway to get into Manhattan. It was about as deep into Brooklyn as you could get. Though Canarsie has a middle-class section, this part was working-class, rent-burdened, and Black. At this time, Manhattan was, with few exceptions, a land for the well-heeled. Cliff stopped kicking his legs as he waited on my answer.
“No, I live in Brooklyn just like you,” I chuckled. “Crown Heights.” I remembered what Mrs. B. had told me about most of the kids not leaving the neighborhood, so I added, “That’s a 20-minute drive from here.”
Mrs. B. laughed and shook her head. I apologized for my tardiness and she said not to worry. Most of the class wasn’t in school yet, anyway. Those present were reading quietly or finishing their Thanksgiving crafts. I knew that she had been there for the past three hours, even without a child in sight, because she always prepared the classroom to perfection.
When I told another transplant friend about the incident, she said, “Those kids must think you’re the magical art lady; they’re in awe of you.” But Mrs. B was the one conjuring the students to the ribbon-cutting for our painted tapestry. The principal didn’t bother showing up but Mrs. B was there, encouraging the children to speak up during their public remarks and stand up straighter for photos. She urged them to behold their creation. Whatever spell she cast, it enraptured the entire 6th grade. They had reverence for their painting, which illuminated the hall with the likes of Obama and Oprah.
Less than a week later, Mrs. B told me that the principal had the painting taken down. I asked why and she said, “You know how it is here.” I did. Some of the public school principals did not want outsiders to, as they saw it, challenge their power. Ms. B welcomed visitors because she believed her students deserved to dream of a life beyond Canarsie.
Only weeks before, Mrs. B enabled me to lead her students in a Brooklyn Museum scavenger hunt. Out of 65 kids, only 4 reported having visited a museum before. But that field trip did not happen without some strife. The principal had canceled it in two other occasions without sufficient explanation. Still, Mrs. B had somehow enchanted her and the trip was on.
I showed up every week for the sake of the students. Yet I might not have made it without Mrs. B’s example: You show up because appearances matter. The children need you in view to see what is possible. Keep them spell-bound. Only then will they persist and only then will they achieve.
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