John R. Lewis Library: Introduction to Maya Angelou: Educator

Educator Timeline

1942	Teacher Bertha Flowers helps 13 year old Maya talk again and encourages her interest in literature
1977	Awarded honorary doctoral degree from Wake Forest University (she received over 50 honorary doctorates in her lifetime).
1982	Named Wake Forest University’s Reynolds Professor of American Studies, a lifetime teaching appointment. During her time at Wake Forest University (through her death in 2014), Angelou taught a variety of humanities courses, including: “World Poetry in Dramatic Performance,” “Race, Politics and Literature” “African Culture and Impact on U.S.” “Race in the Southern Experience” “Shakespeare and the Human Condition”
1986	Received Fulbright Program 40th Anniversary Distinguished Lecturer award
1995	Received the Frank G. Wells American Teacher Award for excellence in teaching
2002	Wake Forest University created the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity to study racial and ethnic disparities in health care and health outcomes.
2011	Angelou taught her last class at Wake Forest University
2014	Challenged Obama to reform and reducing standardized testing in schools

Maya Angelou on Teaching

Some of the greatest teaching I ever had started very early with Mama saying, “When you get, give and when you learn, teach. That will take you all over the world.” I used to think I was a writer who could teach. Now I know I am a teacher who can write. And when I get a class together I look at them and think, “you poor dear, you poor little darlings. You think that you’ve come to be taught by a celebrity. I promise you’ll never work as hard in your life as you would in my class. But you’ll never be the same either.”

The theme in my class--all the classes, no matter what I am teaching, is “I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.” That statement—if you look under Terence with one “R” in the encyclopedia you will see beside his name in Latin “HOMO SUM, HUMANI NIHIL A ME ALIENUM PUTO.” This was stated by an African, Terentius Afer. He was a slave. He was sold to a Roman Senator. He was freed by that senator. He wrote the most popular plays in Rome. Five of those plays in that one statement have come down to us from 154 B.C. I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.

I tell my students when you can internalize that, you can never again say—when the person commits the most horrific crime—you can never say, “Oh, I could never do that.” You can say, “I intend never to do that.” You have the same components in you. But if you can do that with the negative, just think what you can do with the positive. If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody, writes a stunning book, does an important movie, you can learn from it.