Stephanie Freeman ’84 attended BFS from the 9th through 12th grades, and calls them the best four years of her youth. She came to the school on a New York City Better Chance Scholarship “for underprivileged minority kids,” explains the dynamic woman who grew up in Spanish Harlem and skipped the 4th grade. By the time she reached high school, she had her sights set on more distant horizons. Her strong academic standing qualified her for the Better Chance program.

As part of the scholarship, she got to interview schools to decide where to attend, rather than being assigned to a school by the Board of Education. She and her parents visited a number of independent schools in the city, including Brooklyn Friends, and she immediately fell in love with the environment. During her tour, “the kids had just come back from a little hiking expedition. I thought that was so cool.” She also remembers kids in the hall playing guitar, whereas at the other schools she visited, students wore uniforms and displayed an extreme sense of discipline she found intimidating. After making up her mind to come to BFS, she had to convince her parents. “My mother had a problem with me going to Brooklyn, so my father ‘travel trained’ me over the summer,” taking her from Harlem to BFS by subway a number of times and timing the trips.

“When I started, I felt inferior. I knew they expected big things from me. But when I got there I learned you’re just one of the kids. You don’t have a label on you. It’s what you bring to the table, and BFS made me bring a lot to the table.”

Among her favorite teachers, Freeman says she’ll never forget the time she and her entire algebra class were called into the Upper School head’s office one spring morning, all accused of skipping teacher Chuckie Greene’s class the previous day. The head was surprised to hear her response. “We were in the park with him.” All charges were dropped.

After BFS, Freeman went on to Virginia State University but only stayed one year. “I wasn’t ready for that. Everyone was so much older and bigger than me.” Having skipped a grade in elementary school made her a year younger than most of her classmates. Not ready for a culture of panty raids and raucous parties, she headed back home and enrolled at Truro College, where she completed 120 of the 126 credits needed to graduate, then moved on to the workforce.

“My first real job was in securities,” she says. She worked at Bear Sterns and Prudential Bache among other prestige firms, eventually going back to Truro to complete her remaining 6 credits. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1995. She also worked for Instinet, an online brokerage firm, which she left in 2001 because the workload “was making me physically ill.”

With time on her hands, Freeman started “hanging out” at her daughter’s school—“PTA and all that,” as she puts it. One day the principal approached her and handed her an application for the New York City Teaching Fellows Program. Although the deadline was only a few days away, she put together the required materials and sent in her application. “On my birthday I received a letter that I’d been granted an interview.”

She made the cut, and agreed to teach for a minimum of two years. In exchange, the Board of Education underwrote the cost of her master’s degree in special education from City University. “Up until last year I was working two jobs and going to school. I was teaching in the morning, then going to school from six to nine, then from ten o’clock at night to five-thirty in the morning I worked as a bouncer.” You read correctly. While attending graduate school and teaching, Freeman was also a licensed New York City nightclub bouncer. “I’d be in the clubs working on my term papers under fluorescent lights.” She worked at a variety of clubs including the famed Roxy. She also worked the last New Year’s Eve party ever held at Windows on the World.

Today, “I’m exactly where I wanted to be. I wanted to teach.” She’s in her fourth year of teaching and still loving it, working exhausting but fulfilling days at a special ed school in the Bronx with a class of twelve severely handicapped 15 year olds.

Freeman still lives in Spanish Harlem where she grew up, raising her 12 year old daughter Shaynna. “She’s my clone. I could send her to BFS and people would bug out,” says Freeman of her pride and joy. “She’s my life. We’re buddies. I’m very proud, because we’re doing this alone. Our motto is, if you do good by me, I’ll do good by you. Her job is to bring me good grades.”