Dennis was back on Grounds in late June and worked all 10 sessions of UVA’s Summer Orientation for incoming first-year and transfer students. He said he wanted to be there as a listening ear for new students, especially since he’d just completed his first year at UVA. He could help.
“I also wanted to tell the new students to be comfortable being uncomfortable” because change is inevitable, he said. “I came to UVA with an open mindset, not trying to shelter myself from people. Just get involved and talk to everybody.”
Unending Gratitude for a Loving, Supportive Mother
Now that Dennis is a fourth-year student, much of his time will be spent student teaching.
Looking back to when he learned he’d been named a Piedmont Scholar last year, his mind goes to his mother, Michelle Washington. She was the first person he called when he got that email.
Washington, a single mother, raised Dennis and his two older sisters, Quamia and Quandra, in Charlottesville. “She did a great job. She still is a huge support and just growing up, we were in the church, so it was our community. I have a pretty large family of aunts and uncles, so they were always around as well. Growing up, I had a really nice childhood.”
Dennis says he was raised to value giving back and he credits his mother for showing that loving example. “She’s just so sweet and just so caring and just so giving. And [she] just is always smiling and ready to help out with anything. She’s just the focal point of where I get it from.”
“Everything that he said about me, I would say about him,” Washington said. “He loves teaching. He loves to talk to people. He just has the biggest heart. I’ve never met anyone like him in my whole entire life.”
Washington said she worried for her son when he was growing up because his father was not in his life. She pushed all of her children to go to college.
“I told them – all my kids – you’re going to make something of yourself,” she said. “A lot of young Black men, they don’t have that male figure to look up to, or the people around them are successful because they play basketball or they play football. And I knew Quana wasn’t that type of kid.”
Dennis would get puzzled looks when he told his male classmates, “No, I don’t want to play basketball or football. I want to be a teacher,” Washington said.
None of that ever bothered her son.
“He did not care what those people said. He stood his ground and he did what he wanted to do,” Washington said. “He never said, ‘Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe I can’t go to college.’ He never once said that. He spoke about what he believed in, and he did just that. I’m so proud of him.”
Looking Ahead
Once he graduates in the spring, Dennis will enter his second year as an African American Teaching Fellow. According to the local program, for every 122 students in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, there is just one African American teacher.
“The program provides professional, social and financial support to fellows,” he said. “It provides me with mentors as well as prepares me as I enter the teaching profession. After I graduate in May, I will be teaching in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area.”
UVA’s second class of Piedmont Scholars was named this summer and matriculated last week. There are nine people, three of whom are siblings. Dennis met with some of the new scholars earlier this week at an orientation meeting.
“I just want to welcome them and be as helpful as I can as they get acclimated to UVA, like I did last year,” he said.
