An Artist-Educator Takes Creative Helm At Betsy Ross

By Lucy Gellman | Newhaven arts

Cyanotype exposures in science class. Dance as a way to crack algebra equations. Painting and sculpture in social studies, so a land mass becomes more than a concept on a map. Theater and spoken word as a pathway into world languages. 

Those are just some of the ways that Tavares Bussey, the new arts coordinator at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS), envisions folding arts education into curricular development as he begins his first year at the Kimberly Avenue public school. A published poet, spoken word artist, longtime educator and self-described “micro-influencer,” Bussey sees it as giving back to a community that has nurtured him for years. 

He takes over for Sylvia “Ms. Pet” Petriccione, who retired last summer after 23 years at Betsy Ross, and almost four decades working for the district. Later this fall, the school plans to dedicate its auditorium to her in gratitude. 

 “I didn’t know a role like this existed,” Bussey said in a recent interview at BRAMS, in an office tucked off the school’s first floor hallway. “When this position opened up, it married everything that I love about the arts [and administration]. 

“When I tell you, I am excited to get up in the morning and come to work, because I get to have a hands-on impact on the thing that gets them [students] up in the morning. That makes them want to be creative. And to be a co-laborer with my colleagues, to support these dreams coming true—I don’t think you can beat that, honestly.”  

Dancers at BRAMS last spring, during rehearsal for an end-of-year dance showcase. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

Bussey’s love for both education and the arts reaches back to his childhood in Edgefield, South Carolina, a small, rural town that is historically known as the birthplace of segregationist Strom Thurmond. Growing up, Bussey was surrounded by educators, including his aunts and great aunts. As an only child, he fell in love with dance, music, and theater, using it to entertain himself at home and at school. His mother, who later went back to school, put her own education on hold to raise him.

Despite a town that clung to its segregationist mythology—including a high school that to this day is named after Thurmond— “I was very fortunate,” Bussey said. He had Black teachers from kindergarten all the way through high school. His uncle was the town’s sheriff. In and outside of school, he had a support system pushing him to excel. 

“Even though we had issues, I saw success,” he said. “So for me, what I’m doing is expected. And I want to show that to other kids.”

He credits the arts with a significant part of that growth. When Bussey was in middle school, he discovered poetry through the words of Maya Angelou, while listening to a community member perform “Phenomenal Woman” over and over again. By high school, he had joined the school’s gifted and talented choir and show choir, where he was able to build up his confidence. When he wasn’t singing, he was excelling in his classes, ultimately motivated by the work of his teachers to become an educator himself.   

It led him to his undergraduate work at Clemson University, where he pursued a degree in elementary education and also jumped into creative writing. After a professor introduced him to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, he began writing poetry—and didn’t stop. He found that the art form, just like theater and voice before it, unlocked in him something that he couldn’t access any other way. Years later, it would earn him the sobriquet “The King of Vulnerability.”   

BRAMS strings students performing at BLOOM in June. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

“I often give poetry credit for saving my life,” he said. “Poetry has a way of engaging emotions, helping you navigate through those emotions, helping you convey those emotions without being raw and stripped, but while being able to be vulnerable. It shifted my trajectory in terms of the joy and how I honed my skills.”

His journey as a poet took off alongside his path to education. As he continued writing, Bussey’s list of role models grew to include Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin (he has the recording of Giovanni’s interview with Baldwin saved to his computer, so he can watch it whenever he wants to), as well as the contemporary voices of Kendrick Lemar, Warsan Shire, Sonia Sanchez, and Suheir Hammad.

At the same time, he was building his love for education. After finishing his studies at Clemson, Bussey taught elementary school in South Carolina for close to 10 years, then moved to Connecticut to pursue a graduate degree in education at Post University. The East Coast was a culture shock, he said—Connecticut’s cities were much more diverse than what he had grown up with—but it was also a place he fell in love with. 

In 201o, Bussey began working in New Haven’s public schools, part of a wave of teachers trying to turn schools around as they struggled to keep up with their statewide counterparts. After teaching third graders at Brennan-Rogers Magnet School, he switched to middle school students with the goal of becoming a math coach. Meanwhile, he continued to grow as a writer, publishing his first book of poetry soon thereafter.