There’s a portrait of Barack Obama under the American flag in Brittney Hodges-Bolkovac’s classroom.
There’s John Lewis near the pencil sharpener — the civil rights hero during his Freedom Rider days, in shades of black and white and blue.
The Dawes Middle School teacher met Lewis when he came to Lincoln in 2004. She talked about him that January in her speech at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Rally and March.
About how young Lewis was when he protested. How young he was when he was beaten and jailed fighting injustice and racism.
She said he was an example of a person who took action and inspired others.
She spoke in the crowded Capitol: If you take one thing home today, I hope it’s the motivation to go out and become part of something in your community.
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That young leader from Lincoln High is 31 now.
She’s part of something in her community.
She’s mom to Kendyll, 8, and Michaeli, 16 months.
She’s working on her second master’s degree. At Dawes she teaches Spanish and Language Arts; coaches basketball, volleyball and track. She has a summer job with Upward Bound. She leads the Spanish Club at Kendyll’s elementary school. She’s an adult volunteer helping plan the annual MLK rally — the rally she helped lead as a teenager.
Find a way, make a way, she says.
This is Hodges-Bolkovac’s second year at the school on Colfax Avenue, her fourth year in a classroom.
Wednesday, she’s wearing black pants and a royal-blue shirt. She’s walking past desks in tall, gray boots, a black educator and role model in Room 232.
Some of her students call her Miss B.
Some call her Coach B — like the eighth-grade boys on the A Team, the girls who play basketball and volleyball under her direction, the kids who run track.
B-Razzle is the nickname one of her fellow coaches scrawled on the thank-you note on her crowded bulletin board. I’m so glad you came up to the north side of town to be a part of Dawes ... your knowledge of the game and coaching experience shine through, not to mention you’re just really funny!
She’s also really smart, said her principal, Angie Plugge. “She’s got conviction. She’s confident in what she does and she is going to communicate her ideas.â€
Plugge was a science teacher at Lefler Middle School when Hodges-Bolkovac was a student who spoke her mind.
A student that some teachers thought of as difficult, the same stereotypical lens through which some adults still view her.
“There’s an internal bias in some people, especially when you’re a strong black woman,†Plugge said. “People are quick to define who you are, and there’s so much to Brittney Bolkovac.â€
All of it positive: “She’s a huge force, inside and outside the classroom.â€
Wednesday, Miss B strolls her classroom, her eyebrows rising like a question mark when students fumble an answer or appear to not be paying attention.
The teacher grew up in Lincoln. She and her two brothers were raised by a single mom, who worked long hours but found time to shuttle them to sports year-round.
Her mom is white; her father black, but the daughter went out the door every day knowing the world saw her as only one color.
“My mom was well aware that society was not going to view us as white even if that was half of who we were.â€
Her world was female-centric, says the mother of two young daughters.
“I saw my mom working hard and if there wasn’t a way, make a way,†she says. “I grew up being told my voice shouldn’t be the quietest one in the room.â€
So she used that voice in school, questioning teachers. Columbus Day? Christopher Columbus stole this land.
She spent time at in-school suspension at Lincoln High for her questions, called obstinate and insubordinate.
She once got kicked out of Lighthouse, the after-school program for teenagers. She went back and stayed.
She’d go on to be part of the staff there during college. She briefly had a job at the F Street Rec Center, too, working with neighborhood kids.
It was a job tracking students at risk for entering the juvenile justice system — or kids who were already there — that led her to the classroom, one of three black teachers at Dawes.
“Three strong,†she says.
She gives credit to mentors and sounding boards: Pete Ferguson and TJ McDowell; Joan Mendoza Gorham and Jake Kirkland Jr.
"Here's a young lady who had a vision," Kirkland says. "People along the way helped shape and direct her and we're very, very proud."
She’s the mentor now.
“She’s that person you can go to for direction,†says Azcia Fleming, 16. “She continues to give back because she loves it.â€
“She’ll give it to you straight forward,†says Jaden Ferguson, a junior at Southwest and MLK rally participant. “She always says if we have the opportunity to have our voices heard, we should take them.â€
The message is bigger than you, the teacher tells them.
Miss B has a mission for kids.
It’s why she coaches, why she goes to her daughter’s school, why she returns to help with the MLK march.
It’s why she teaches at a school where half the students get help paying for lunch, where kids are white and black and Hispanic and Asian and Native and biracial.
“They need to know someone has their back,†she says. “I want to see how many times can I see these students each day and remind them: They are someone.â€