Five honored at 2017 MTA Human and Civil Rights Awards banquet
Five honored at 2017 MTA Human and Civil Rights Awards banquet
Five MTA members were honored for their commitment to civil rights and human relations at a gala event on Friday, June 16.
Mary E. Custard, dean of students at Amherst-Pelham Regional High School, and Margaret Costello, a culinary arts teacher at Shawsheen Valley Technical High School, each received the Louise Gaskins Lifetime Civil Rights Award. Kevin Dua, Amber Jackson and Cynthia Massillon, teachers at Somerville High School, received the Kathleen Roberts Creative Leadership Award.
The awards were presented during the 2017 MTA Human and Civil Rights awards banquet, which was held at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Norwood.
Human Relations Committee Co-Chairs Dale Forest and Denise LaPolla welcomed the crowd of educators and other guests to the event. The awards, Forest said, are intended to publicly thank the “leaders, activists, advocates, role models, risk-takers, organizers and innovators” who make the world a better place.
MTA President Barbara Madeloni said the recipients were being recognized during a “particularly anxious and uncertain moment” in the struggle for racial equality, but that honoring those who act with “profound integrity, with courage, and with a deep faith in the possibility of human beings” is particularly important during difficult times.
Madeloni recognized longtime MTA leader and activist Louise Gaskins, who was present at the dinner and for whom the Lifetime Civil Rights Award is named, and she sent “deepest regards and good wishes” to former MTA President Kathleen Roberts, for whom the Creative Leadership Award is named. Roberts was unable to attend.
Custard serves as dean of students and is a former athletic director at Amherst-Pelham Regional High School. Forest noted that she has impacted the lives of her students in countless ways — whether by inspiring them as an adviser of People of Color United and the Minority Student Achievement Network or by attending their games and performances.
As a member of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Citizen Advisory Board, Forest added, Custard helps drive conversations about eliminating discrimination in schools and making them safer places in which to learn.
Custard voiced her gratitude to those who supported her nomination and the staff of her school, and she thanked the MTA “for the work it does every day.”
She also expressed her worry about the shortage of educators of color across the nation.
“As I contemplate retiring,” she said, “I worry that there will be one less educator of color in my school and in my district. All of our students need to have educators who mirror the diversity of our nation and our world.”
Custard said that educators can counteract the negative messages that students are receiving in these confusing times by being “warriors — for kindness and caring, truth and justice, social justice and antidiscrimination, for learning and leadership, for community building and service, for the rights of undocumented students, for LGBTQ rights, for Black Lives Matter, for education as a right and not a privilege.”
Costello was described by Forest as an activist and a teacher with a long history of advocacy on behalf of her students.
Before there were laws on the books protecting LGBTQ youth in Massachusetts, he noted, Costello was “an outstanding role model for students” on LGBTQ issues, student safety, justice and equality. One example of this, he said, was that Costello fought for Shawsheen students’ right to wear the uniform of the gender with which they identified.
Costello is also known for her compassion, he added. After Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans in 2005, Costello traveled to the city to provide food for the displaced and the volunteers helping them. She returned in 2007 and again in 2008, each time bringing along students to assist.
In accepting the award, Costello thanked those who have “provided me with help, inspiration and happiness along the way.” She credited her husband, David Costello, with “lighting the way for me with your own incredible service in Mississippi post-Katrina.” She referred to Ruth Allen, her sister and a member of the MTA Board of Directors, as “my champion and oldest friend.”
Costello said her students “continue to renew my faith in the inherent goodness of people every single day,” and she thanked her parents, “who lived their lives with open hearts and minds and inspired the same in their children.”
In presenting the awards named for former MTA President Roberts to Dua, Jackson and Massillon, Forest referred to her as an “extraordinary and selfless educator, community leader and advocate who has promoted volunteerism, creativity and an appreciation of diversity.”
The three educators are the creators of the “Matter Speaks” series at Somerville High School. The series provides a place for students and staff to openly and honestly discuss and share issues of race, ethnicity, self-awareness and identity.
Dua said students inspired the idea for the series. The students “are the reason that — in the midst of a tense nationwide climate, where it seemed that no one wanted to touch on such issues — we started to talk on these topics,” he said.
The series has turned people of all ages into empathetic learners, Dua noted. “Today, more so than ever before, it is important to us as organizers, educators, adults and people to continue to be on the right side of critical thinking, expression, truth, civic engagement, education and human connection,” he said.
Massillon said she has seen Matter Speaks instill a sense of “radical hope” in the students.
“There are many truths, many ways of knowing, and many perspectives of the same event,” she added. “Our students are resisting the verbal hegemony that tells them every day that their lived truths are false. This series is an affirmation of their voices.”
Jackson said the award is “for the kids.”
“This whole series has been so much fun because we’re seeing the kids really start to feel that their voices matter, and that’s why we go to work every day anyway — to see the kids empowered,” Jackson said.
She continued, “I have spent so much time after the event, more time after the event than the event itself, just talking to kids and seeing them excited. That is huge.”
As much as the recipients appreciated the award, she said, “I really hope that there comes a day that we don’t have to give awards for these things because they are just what we do.”