Image courtesy of Geveryl Robinson.
By Peturla Scarlett
To Geveryl Robinson, teaching is more than just a job. It’s a way to help the next generation find their own voice and grow into individuals who can improve society. It’s a way to guide the youths of today so there might be a better tomorrow.
“I advocate for speaking up for yourself, speaking out. Every voice matters, especially young people and I say this with everything that’s going on now…at the forefront of every movement in this country has always been young people so just having them understand the importance of their voice, that it matters [is important]. Speak your mind even if your voice shakes,” Robinson said.
Apart from being an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, Robinson is also a member of the faculty senate which makes decisions regarding the welfare of the university as a whole. She is also vice president of the Black Faculty and Staff Association as well as the co-chair for the Enlightenment Workshop Series.
According to its website, the workshop focuses on the “intersectional perspectives related to bias, cultural competence and systemic racism, with an emphasis on current trends facing Black communities across the African diaspora.”
Robinson has a strong passion for spreading awareness and speaking up for overlooked groups in society.
“There’s a reason why I’m on all these different committees and I was asked to be a faculty senator; it’s the passion that I have for standing up for things that aren’t right, speaking out against things, oppression of any people —it doesn’t matter whether I’m a part of the group or not,” Robinson said.
This passion doesn’t just involve the outside world, it also involves her students.
“She makes the class very inclusive and interactive. I really enjoy that. As an international student, she gives me the opportunity to talk about my background and just feel proud of where I come from,” said Emely Hyde, an international student from Roatán —an island in Honduras— majoring in Marketing.
Robinson has made an impact on students outside of USF St. Petersburg as well. When one of her students was murdered in Savannah, she wrote a letter expressing her feelings about the situation to an editor of the local paper and they published it. She was also offered her own column to write about other issues as well.
“A year after my student, John Weldon, [passed away] someone from the community wrote a letter to me wanting to know if I had thought about having a scholarship in his honor, and I hadn’t. In her letter was a check for $200. I went to the president of the college, and I said, ‘is this something we can do?’ And he said, ‘Yeah’ so then I wrote about it, and people just started sending in money,” Robinson said.
This led to the creation of the John Antonio Weldon Memorial Scholarship which Robinson said was for young Black men who grew up in the same area her student lived and was also a first-generation college student, similar to Weldon.
“By the time I left Savannah in 2008, there was enough money for a year’s worth of scholarships for students,” Robinson said.
Although her letter was well received by the public and even mentioned in several well-known news publications like the New York Times, she has faced criticism for other things she’s written on her column which varies from her feelings about Christmas to her views on hypocrisy.
“People would email me just hateful things. A lot of them would leave a phone number and I called them. What I learned was a lot of them said they didn’t think I actually read the emails…I would call them or I would always email them back and have conversations,” Robinson said.
By talking to the people who harshly criticized and threatened her, Robinson showed the public that she was in fact a real person with feelings and emotions. She also stood up for herself, which is something she always advocates for.
“Bullies bully who they can bully, they bully people who they feel are vulnerable or who they think they can intimidate. Once you stand up to someone who’s trying to bully you, they normally are gonna back down,” Robinson said.
Among her many accomplishments, Robinson has a self-published book titled From the Ground to God which eventually ranked number 1 on Amazon. The book was originally a thesis for her Master of Fine Arts degree (MFA).
“I published it in 2015…I tell people if I had written a book of the Bible, it would have been that because I’m the daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter and great-great-granddaughter of preachers and pastors so it’s like a non-traditional Bible story,” Robinson said.
Currently, Robinson has a lot planned for the future, including a documentary about women in doo-wop —a style of pop music that originated in the U.S. during the early 1900s. There will also be a virtual program with Oh! Sharels, the only doo-wop group in Japan, and Mama D who helped Berry Gordy start Motown.
Aside from the projects she’s passionate about, Robinson’s main focus has always been her students. “I love interacting with the students in the classroom…by nature, I’m an introvert. It’s just that when I’m teaching when I’m in front of the classroom, I’m in my zone,” she said.
Santiago Salazar-Parra, a sophomore marketing major that takes one of Robinson’s Composition classes, agrees with this sentiment.
“She knows about the topics and she knows about what she’s teaching…and she has a lot of knowledge within sociological, political aspects. I learned to be thankful of where I am in my position; seeing all those issues and understanding that I am very privileged on where I am as a person right now and how I have the power as a student and as an overall resident to just use my voice for a greater good,” Salazar-Parra said.
