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African-American males recruited to return to classroom — as teachers
On a warm afternoon in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, students at Berkeley Middle School are restless, distracted by each other and the nice weather. Up and down the halls, teachers are maintaining order with varying degrees of success.
In Mr. Joyner’s math class however, all eyes are on the young teacher.
It’s late in the day, but Herb Joyner’s students are paying attention, attempting to understand the rudiments of statistical variables.
The class, with more than 20 boys and girls, is a favorite of Joyner’s, a popular, first-year teacher who coaches the eighth-grade boys basketball team.
“I’ve had this group all year, and we get along well,” he said of his math class.
More challenging was building a relationship with his previous class, which he picked up midyear after the students drove another first-year teacher to resign.
“You can’t let the kids run over you. Ninety-five percent of teaching is discipline,” Joyner said, as his class filed out clutching backpacks and tomorrow’s homework assignment. “The first month I came into this classroom, I was stern. I didn’t give a lot of smiles.”
Joyner’s quiet confidence in the classroom did not come naturally. It is, he says, the result of his participation in the Call Me MISTER program at his alma mater, Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Call Me MISTER takes its name from a line made famous in the 1967 Oscar-winning movie, “In the Heat of the Night.” The program is the creation of the Clemson University Research Foundation and three historically black institutions in South Carolina — Claflin, Benedict College and Morris College.
The program was initiated in the fall of 2000 to “recruit, train, certify and secure employment” for African-American men as teachers in South Carolina’s public primary schools. Since 1999, the Mott Foundation has provided $650,000 in support.
Joyner is a member of the original class, which graduated in 2004. Despite offers from wealthier school districts, he opted to return to the Charleston area to teach.
“His decision to go back home and make a difference says a lot about his dedication to children, family and community,” said Dr. Roy Jones, lecturer and project director for the Eugene T. Moore School of Education’s Call Me MISTER program at Clemson.
Based on the premise that well-trained, African-American male teachers can exert a positive influence on multiple generations of students — particularly African-American males — Call Me MISTER was developed using data gathered from about 100 African-American male teachers. The program enhances the standard teacher education curriculum with one-on-one mentoring and a variety of leadership development activities.
Joyner, like his fellow “Misters,” represents “a new breed of teacher — trained as a servant-leader,” Jones said.
“We’re looking for men who are prepared to teach children, not subjects. We’re looking for men who will be role models in the classroom. We want men willing to take responsibility for their profession, who are dedicated to the value and worth of teaching.”
While children of all races benefit from teachers like Joyner, the need for strong role models is particularly critical for African-American youth, Jones said. Compared to any other racial group, African-American male students are the most at-risk, medicated, disciplined, suspended and expelled. According to the National Education Association, when teachers of color are missing, minority students land more frequently in special education classes, have higher absentee rates and tend to be less involved in school activities.
Tom Parks, former director of Call Me MISTER, said:
“Future efforts to reach and teach tomorrow’s children will be increasingly dependent upon a racially and culturally diverse pool of teachers who are trained to deal with an increasingly diverse classroom.
“Lifelong patterns of achievement or failure are established and nurtured in elementary and middle school. It is clear that the weight of such responsibility must fall on the elementary teacher.”
Currently, 13 percent of all public school teachers in the U.S. are minority, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. And more than 40 percent of schools have no teachers of color.
When Call Me MISTER was implemented, less than 1 percent of South Carolina’s primary school teachers were African-American males.
One of those, Herbert Andrews, had a profound effect on Joyner.
“Mr. Andrews was one of the biggest influences in my life,” Joyner said of his eighth-grade teacher.
Thanks to Andrews, teaching was one of several careers Joyner was considering when he applied to Claflin. The summer before he entered college, Joyner received a call from Jones, then chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Claflin. Jones was recruiting 20 young men to participate in the university’s first class of “Misters.”
“Academically, Herb was solid,” Jones said. “But I was looking for other qualities — fortitude and strength — that would indicate that he could be a leader. I wanted men who wanted to make a difference, even if they weren’t quite certain what that meant.”
The ability to identify strong candidates is critical to the success of the program, Jones said. About two-thirds of the 60 men who participated in the first cohort at the three campuses graduated, and 15 “Misters” are in their first or second year of teaching.
Many of those recruited were first-generation college students.
“We intentionally recruit from a population that has the ability, but often lacks the reinforcement they need to complete a degree,” Jones said.
“This is a population that needs to find out who they are in order to develop confidence and the right mental attitude to guide younger children. They need to understand the power of their own stories — to understand that you can make mistakes and not be a failure — for their sake and for their future students.”
Call Me MISTER provides an average of $5,000 in annual scholarship assistance for its recruits. But it is the development of a unified, self-reinforcing and mutually supportive cohort group that Jones believes is the major factor in retaining students and quelling the anxieties that prevent them from achieving success.
“We have to help these young men learn how to rely on each other, recognize the talent in each other, to leverage the strength in each other,” Jones said.
“We have to give them the tools, exposure and opportunities they need — not just to develop their own sense of confidence, but each other’s.”
Joyner still keeps in touch with the “fraternity” of friends he developed during his years with Call Me MISTER. The tight network of support, and the opportunity to travel and to participate in summer leadership seminars added to Joyner’s sense of maturity and self-confidence.
“I’d never traveled out of state before,” he said of the opportunity provided to intern in Texas and Virginia between college semesters. Equally helpful were the extra workshops and the campus adviser available during the school year.
Call Me MISTER recently expanded to South Carolina State University and five institutions offering two-year associate degrees: Greenville, Midlands, Orangeburg-Calhoun, Tri-County and Trident technical colleges.
“Call Me MISTER has become the ‘go-to’ program for men who want to teach,” Jones said, noting that 139 “Misters” currently are enrolled in the 10 partner institutions statewide. With a $1.3-million appropriation from the South Carolina Legislature, the program is projecting an enrollment of 175 this fall.
The program is attracting interest from colleges and school districts in other states. In March 2005 with funding from Mott, Call Me MISTER sponsored a national conference on “Innovations in Recruitment, Training and Retention of African-American Male Teachers.” Clemson currently is working with the Washington, D.C.-based Phelps Stokes Fund to disseminate the model to a broader national audience.
Back in South Carolina, the work to refine and sustain Call Me MISTER continues. About 35 percent of the state’s African-American male students do not graduate from high school. To counter this, the program seeks to establish a “first wave” of perceptive, highly skilled teachers who will not only change the way children are taught, but also create a path that will lead to success for generations of young African-American black males and their families.
“The ‘Misters’ have a different perspective than most of the other teachers,” Jones said. He noted that a number of potential candidates are recruited from communities that area socio-economically disadvantaged and/or educationally at-risk.
“We’re focusing on young men who want to work with kids like them.
“We’re not looking for men who want to be comfortable. We’re looking for men who understand they may be the only one standing between a child and a hospital — or a jail cell.”