Dr. Barbara Winfrey
By Will Jordan and Brandy Blanton
Barbara Winfrey may have retired as the administrator at Brentwood High
She spent more than 31 years as an educator in
“I was always taught that a good teacher can teach any child, period,” she says. “That’s how I ended up in special education – through
“But you don’t know anymore than anybody else. All you know is how to love a child. And when you love them, they love you back, and as a result they respond to whatever it is you tell them. And a lot of teachers don’t ever understand that that’s what’s going on – it’s just the love that we have for each other. It’s not anything else.”
GETTING EDUCATED THE OLD FASHIONED WAY – EARNING IT HERSELF…
Over the course of her career, Winfrey has worked in nearly every capacity at a school – from serving food in the cafeteria (when she was attending school), to teaching at inner-city schools, to working in special education, to guidance counseling and finally as an administrator.
“I’ve seen about every facet of education there is,” she says. “I resent people coming in from the outside and saying, ‘I can fix the school system.’ I mean, I can’t go to the American Medical Association and say, ‘Uh … I think I want to be on the board. I just feel like it.’Well, do you have an M.D.? ‘No, I don’t think I need that … I’ve got some money.’Why do we do that with education?
“All you’ve got to do is ask a teacher. When you get ready to build a building … ask the teachers what they need! People don’t ask teachers. They just build it and say, ‘Okay, make it work.’”
If she sounds fired up, she is. Winfrey hasn’t lost any of the passion for education that she developed at an early age. Originally from
“My father had a third-grade education, but he taught himself how to read and write,” she says. “He was a janitor at an elementary school for 42 years. My mother was a cook at the same school and only had an eighth-grade education. She quit school at 16 because she got pregnant.”
Winfrey says her father would bring books home, and she was always intrigued.
“I wanted to finish something that he couldn’t finish, so that’s why I was so driven to finish school,” she says. “But I’m not sure my mother understood the importance of education. She didn’t have any money to send me to school, so she would try to talk me out of going.”
Instead of quitting, Winfrey found another way to get her education – she worked in the cafeteria, washing dishes and serving food so she could get lunch every day.
“It was embarrassing, but I didn’t think about it back then,” she says. “I just wanted to go to school. I started out at
During her college years, Winfrey says she did anything she could to put food on the table. She waited tables, cashiered at the farmer’s market, was a secretary (Life & Casualty’s first black secretary in 1968) and even worked at
“Of course, it took me 10 years to get a B.S.,” Winfrey explains. “I had to go to school part-time because I didn’t have any money. It took me a long time.”
TEACHING OTHERS
After graduating from Vanderbilt with her second master’s, Winfrey taught seventh through ninth grade at
“Middle school is the last chance you have to save a child,” she says. “By the time they get to high school, they already know everything. When you’re teaching, you’re not even thinking about the impact you’ve made on a child. You just don’t have a clue. I loved those kids and still see some of my students from there today.”
She recalls one of her prize students, Louis Upkins, and says he came from a rough background, something she identified with then.
“You know we weren’t supposed to be there,” she says. “The odds were against us. We weren’t supposed to make it, but we did.” Winfrey, whose pensive way of speaking and relaxed smile almost hide the fire in her belly, says that education in
“I think the school system is going backwards instead of forwards,” she says emphatically. “It’s time for a change.”
Winfrey served as administrator at
“At
After six years of what she describes as “good ole boy
She retired June 17 on the sixth anniversary of her wedding day to Vernon Winfrey, a local barber and father to super-celebrity Oprah Winfrey.
IT’S ALL ABOUT FAMILY FOR BARBARA
Winfrey has two daughters from a previous marriage, Adrienne, 24 a teacher in
“I always told my girls the only reason I survived a divorce was because I had a career – not just a job,” she explains. “I stressed that to them, ‘School is a must.’ I mean you don’t have a choice, you’ve got to go to school. Now what they do with it is a different story – at least they’re getting it. Of course it’s up to them – and you have to remember that flowers don’t all bloom at the same time.”
While she was working at
“He had done a whole lot of stuff for those kids in the neighborhood,” she explains. “I thought, ‘It would be a good idea to recognize him for all the things he’s done to help these kids.’ See, I used to send students down to him to work on Saturdays to sweep up hair and that kind of thing – kids who were in trouble.”
She was so impressed with
Three years later, he asked her to marry him.
“He was slow,” she laughs. “He’s always been so cool and laid back.”
HER NEXT STEPS…
Winfrey pulls no punches about her future plans.
“I’m on vacation for a year and then I’m going to find something else to do,” she says. “I have some projects I want to work on. For starters, I want to teach Bill Gates how to change education. He keeps talking about how he wants to change it, and I can tell him how to do it.
“What I resent more than anything on the face of this earth is for people to walk into education and ignore teachers just as if they don’t know anything – just as if they’re not professional enough to know how to run a school. You have people on the board of education who don’t even have a background in education and others who think they’ve got all the answers and have never even worked in a school! Bill Gates wants to change education … call me.”
