Students and staff at an East Vancouver school are rallying together to honour a barrier-breaking teacher, despite being displaced due to flooding earlier this year.
In 1950, the Vancouver School Board (VSB) hired Vivian Jung as its first Chinese-Canadian teacher. She then became a beloved and longtime fixture at Tecumseh Elementary School.
This year, when Jung would have turned 100, dozens of students and teachers at Tecumseh worked for months on an art and poetry project to celebrate her legacy.
They are now selling books of these works to raise funds for a school mural dedicated to Jung. They have also created an award in her name to celebrate students’ outstanding contributions to the school or local community.
Tilia Prior, who teaches a Grade 6/7 class, co-leads Tecumseh’s anti-racism committee and spearheads the project.
Prior told CBC’s North by Northwest that she finds personal meaning in Jung’s story, as a Chinese-Canadian teacher herself.
“I’ve taken it for granted growing up here that I could just choose to do whatever I wanted to do,” she said. “And hearing this, you do think about your own life … I have thought, would I have done the same thing? Would I have been discouraged enough to just choose something else?”
For Marion Collins, a Grade 6 teacher, the project is a way to help students think about their self identity and the future in which they want to live. Prior and Collins’s classes created the artwork for the poetry book.
“I can’t think of a better example than Vivian Jung,” said Collins.
Students from another class also worked with Cynthia Kent, Jung’s daughter, and Fiona Tinwei Lam, Vancouver’s sixth poet laureate, to write poems about the former teacher’s legacy. Lam wrote about Jung’s life in an article for the Tyee.
Making history
Jung was born in Merritt, B.C., in 1924.
At 21, as she was working toward becoming a teacher in Vancouver, she had to take a swimming lifesaver course to get her diploma. But an obstacle stood in her way.
Crystal Pool at Sunset Beach — the city’s only public swimming pool in 1945 — was still racially segregated, so staff denied her entry. Her swimming coach and peers stood by Jung the day she tried to enter until she was allowed. This event then sparked other acts of protest that eventually ended the pool’s discriminatory rule later that year.
It also allowed Jung to embark on her long career, starting with being hired by the VSB as its first teacher of Chinese descent. She would go on to teach various classes and coach award-winning sports teams at Tecumseh for 35 years.
“By all accounts, [physical education] was a subject Vivian excelled at teaching,” said Prior. “She was known for organizing Sports Day and fantastic dance, marching, and gymnastics routines.”
Jung passed away in 2014.
She has since been recognized by the City of Vancouver, which named a West End laneway between Harwood Street and Beach Avenue after her in 2017. The city also issued a formal apology a year later for its history of discrimination against the Chinese community, including policies of segregation in public spaces.
‘A good welcome home’
In many ways, the project itself is an act of perseverance.
In January, a burst pipe caused major water damage at Tecumseh, forcing students and staff to temporarily relocate two kilometres away to the South Hill Education Centre. Prior said the group had only their creativity to work with — and what was left on their laptops — but everyone saw the project as being too important to not continue.
“It’s been very stressful, but we’re almost there and we can see the finish line for this year,” she said.
Students at Tecumseh Elementary School in Vancouver’s Fraserview neighbourhood have been displaced following a flood on Jan. 15, forcing them to relocate. But as Michelle Gomez reports, the school has received overwhelming support from the community.
While many details still need to be figured out, Prior hopes the mural project will be completed and officially debuted next May during Asian Heritage Month.
In the meantime, the team is focusing on applying for grants and raising funds for the project, which Prior estimates to cost $20,000. A part of it is coming from the sale of poetry books, which has been extended until June 5. As of last week, Prior said they had sold about 200 copies — halfway to their goal of 400.
“We’re so excited about the mural next year,” she said. “It’ll be a good welcome home for everybody.”