By: Candice Grose, chief of communications for Portland (Ore.) Public Schools

Before I ever understood storytelling as a profession, I understood it as survival.

I grew up as a little Black girl who looked physically different from the people around me. My skin was Black, my features were Black, but my eyes were the lightest shade of blue. At a time before social media, before curated feeds and affirmations telling us we came in every shade and expression, difference felt isolating. There was no algorithm to normalize what made me stand out. There was only the mirror, and the quiet work of trying to make sense of who I was in a world that did not offer language for it. And in a world where bullying was the exception to embracing what looked “different.” 

By the time I reached high school, that confusion had hardened into self-criticism. I carried it with me into the classroom, especially English class. Every day, Ms. Jackson, my English teacher, asked us to begin with a journal entry. No prompts. No guardrails. Just write.

And I did. Honestly. Repeatedly. Painfully.

My entries were filled with self-hate, insecurity, and frustration. I wrote exactly how I felt, unfiltered, unpolished, unresolved. What I didn’t know then was that Ms. Jackson was reading between the lines. She never corrected my tone. Never tried to soften my language or tell me how I should feel. She didn’t take my voice away. Instead, she paid attention to it.

One day, she introduced me to the book The Bluest Eye.

The irony landed immediately. A story centered on a little Black girl who longed for the very physical feature I resented. As a high school senior, I wasn’t prepared for the complexity of Toni Morrison’s prose, the way she refused simplicity, and held beauty and pain in the same sentence. The way Black girlhood was rendered with depth instead of decoration. It was the first time I encountered storytelling that didn’t explain itself to be palatable.

It changed me.

Ms. Jackson didn’t assign the book casually. She had connected my journal entries, my interior life, to a body of work that offered both mirror and meaning. She saw that my writing wasn’t something to be fixed, but something to be fed. She told me she believed I had a gift, but that gifts require inspiration and perspective to grow.

She encouraged me to make my story, my realization, the focus of my college essay.

So I did.

That decision altered the trajectory of my life. I went on to attend Hampton University, an HBCU where I was immersed, and exposed for the first time, to Black authors, poets, journalists, and media professionals who treated narrative as both art and responsibility. I learned that storytelling was about expression, context, power, and truth. I learned how history lived inside language, and how voice, when sharpened with care, could shape understanding, challenge systems, and hold institutions accountable.

I majored in journalism and communications. My personal reflection became a professional calling.

Today, I work in public education communications and crisis response, spaces where words carry weight and silence carries consequence. Black History Month, for me, not only honors the past, it recognizes how history shows up in the present. It informs how I listen. How I frame. How I decide what must be said, what must be protected, and what must be named plainly.

The journals I once filled with self-doubt taught me something essential: people often reveal their deepest truths before they know how to advocate for themselves. My job now is to create space for those truths to be heard without distortion. To tell stories that do not flatten complexity. To lead with integrity when narrative is contested and trust is fragile.

I often think about Ms. Jackson and the quiet precision of her leadership. She did not rescue me. She did not rewrite me. She recognized potential and paired it with exposure. That is what education, and communication at its best can do.

Black History is the stories we celebrate and the lineage of people who made room for us to see ourselves differently. It is the reminder that voice, once discovered, carries obligation.

I carry that with me every day.

February is Black History Month, a meaningful time to reflect, uplift and learn. Throughout the month, we’re sharing stories and perspectives from NSPRA members that honor lived experiences and explore how communication can foster belonging in our schools and communities all year round. If you would like to contribute a personal reflection connected to Black History Month or share a communications strategy, initiative or campaign your district is leading to celebrate, educate or engage your community during the month, please email Janine Thorn at vpdiversity@nspra.org.