By Liz Schlemmer | WUNC
What José Oliva remembers most about Mo Green, when he was Superintendent of Guilford County Schools a decade ago, is that he was patient.
Oliva, then 15, had recently arrived from Guatemala, when he was invited to be on Green’s student advisory council. The group of mostly valedictorians and student body presidents would gather in a school library.
“Then there was me,” Oliva recalled. “Who did not speak English, who had to use a translator.”
Oliva was chosen to be on the council as a representative of Guilford County’s school for recent immigrants. At the time, he knew only a few words in English.
Oliva’s mom had bought him a pocket translator the size of a calculator. He could type translations from Spanish, threading together his thoughts word by word. Green would wait as long as it took for Oliva to craft his question.
“He was always willing to just listen,” Oliva recalled. “He actually cares, and he wanted to hear what students had to say — including me.”
This was the beginning of a long friendship between Oliva and Green, who went on to become his mentor and friend.
Oliva said it’s true to character that Green, 57, is starting off his term as State Superintendent of Public Instruction — where he is the first African American to ever hold the office, and the first Democrat to do so in eight years — with a listening tour around the state. It’s billed as the “Mo Wants to Know” tour, a phrase Green has long used for his town halls with students and parents.
“Many people do something similar,” Oliva said. “The unique part is that, you know, Mo actually wants to know.”
Oliva said this openness to criticism goes well with another of Green’s favorite catchphrases: “feedback is a gift.”
“And, you know, he believes that,” Oliva said.
Mo Green reveres teachers, because he revered his mother
Green’s friends describe him as a quiet leader and a defender of public schools, educators and students.
One of Green’s toughest critics, and a guiding force in his life, was his mother.
As a child, he was equally interested in baseball as in academics. Green’s mother, Gwendolyn Green, would make him sit out a season if he didn’t bring home enough A’s on his report card. When Green and his brother did their math homework, she would look over it for cleanliness and detail.
“She would make us redo the work if she said, ‘This doesn’t look neat,’” Green recalled. “Even if the answer is correct — and she had perhaps no idea whether the answer was correct.”
Above all, she instilled in him a respect for educators.
“As a child of hers, the first thing she would talk about is, number one, you have to respect your teachers,” Green said.
Green’s mother was born on St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and grew up very poor.
“In fact, she would say, ‘dirt poor,’” Green said. “There were parts of her home that the floor was actually dirt.”
She dreamed of becoming a teacher. She moved to New York, and instead became a nurse, married and had two sons.
“It was after my father passed away when I was 10 years old that she decided at that point to go back to college and become a teacher,” Green said. “She became a special education teacher, graduating from college the same year that my brother graduated from a two-year college, and I graduated from high school.”
His mother spent her career in Georgia, helping students with disabilities receive an education. An after-school program she worked for was later named for her.
“He reveres teachers because he reveres his mother,” said Green’s long-time friend and colleague Alan Duncan, who serves as vice chair of the State Board of Education.
On the campaign trail, Green would often say that he “reveres educators” and that this would be a platform issue for his administration. This wasn’t a phrase Green adopted just for the campaign, Duncan said.
“He has said that for two decades at least,” Duncan said.
