Education Week - February 25, 2015 - S20

S20
EDUCATION WEEK LEADERS TO LEARN FROM
February 25, 2015 n
edweek.org/leaders
LESSONS FROM A LEADER
>> Committed Builders
Teachers, elders, students,
superintendents, scholars,
policymakers, and parents must
work together to interrupt patterns of
underachievement.
>> Community of
Caring Teachers
Educators must care deeply about
students' social, emotional, and
academic well-being. This demands
patience, partnership, commitment,
and the unwavering belief in the
brilliance of all children.
>> Learning
Environments
Foster positive self-esteem in boys of
color by invoking the power of the past
and legacies of resistance that have
paved the way for each generation.
meet with 18 certified black male instructors
recruited from various segments of the community-including
coaches, artists, college
professors, and a school janitor-to discuss
character development, history, and other topics
in regular, credit-bearing classes.
About 2,500 boys now participate in the
program, which started in high schools and is
now in several middle and elementary schools.
There's a waiting list of additional students who
want to join.
At "Man Up" conferences, which Mr. Chatmon
held even before he started working with
the district, influential African-American men
volunteer their time to tell stories, perform,
and spend time with African-American boys.
In the district's central office, the initiative's
staff "cross-pollinate" across all departments,
representing the needs of their students in
discussions about issues as varied as discipline,
curriculum, policy creation, and staffing.
The initiative has eight employees on its
central-office team.
And Manhood Development Program instructors
meet in a professional-development
community with other teachers, where they
give voice to classroom issues their students
struggle with throughout the school day.
"If you join my team, this is a lifestyle," Mr.
Chatmon said. "Because of the sense of urgency,
it's a 24/7, 365 sense of being."
Shaped by Experience
Mr. Smith says he recognized that sense of
urgency in Mr. Chatmon when he originally
asked him to lead the project. He credits the
initiative director's energy, drive, and focus
with the program's endurance and growth.
At the program's core is the notion that
black boys should be "imbued with and expected
to have dignity," Mr. Smith said.
"Chris carries that in ways that very few
people who I've ever met in my life do," he
said. "There's a clarity, a willingness, an extraordinary
love that he exudes."
Mr. Chatmon, 46, and his wife, LaShawn
Chatmon, have three sons, ages 17, 14, and
10, who attend Oakland schools.
Mr. Chatmon started his career as a physical
education teacher. After he completed
his master's degree at Brown University, he
taught "history and herstory" at a San Francisco
high school.
He used his own childhood experiences to
shape his approach to teaching. When he was
a youngster, his teachers sometimes refused to
see past his boisterous spirit, turning to harsh
discipline, he said.
"For two months, my desk was in a coat closet,
and when my spirit was too overbearing for the
teacher, she would just close the door," Mr. Chatmon
said of his childhood in South San Francisco,
then a largely working-class suburb near
San Francisco International Airport. "This system
worked hard to break my spirit, and it told
me that not only did I not have what it takes
to go to college, but that I wasn't even going to
graduate from high school."
Mr. Chatmon attributes his successes in life
to participation in after-school and summer
programs, a supportive basketball coach and
high school history teacher, and a mentor who
later became the godfather of his three sons.
As a teacher, Mr. Chatmon helped change
the culture through his interpersonal relationships.
He also helped his students identify influential
people of color throughout history,
filling in the gaps in textbooks that mostly
acknowledged black Americans in passages
about slavery and Martin Luther King Jr.
After his time as a teacher, Mr. Chatmon
worked in administration at ymca Oakland,
and helped it launch after-school programs in
30 schools. He had just become a principal at
an alternative high school in Oakland when
Mr. Smith approached him about his proposal
to create an entire district department for
African-American male students.
The problems Mr.Chatmon faced as a child
were evident in the district, and those problems
will take some time to turn around, program
supporters say.
"It's long, hard work, to be honest," said Curtiss
Sarikey, Oakland's deputy chief of community
schools and student services. In 2012,
the district signed a voluntary agreement
with the U.S. Department of Education's office
for civil rights following an investigation
by the federal agency to address claims that
the school system disciplined black students
more harshly than white ones.
In the 2009-10 school year, 18 percent of
black boys were suspended at least once, compared
with 8 percent of students districtwide
and 3 percent of white male students, a local
task force assembled to explore outcomes for
black boys found.
Compared with a white child born in the
eastern part of the city, a black child born on
the west side was seven times more likely to
be born into poverty, four times less likely to
be reading on grade level by 4th grade, and
nearly six times more likely to drop out of
school, the task force found.
The initiative Mr. Chatmon leads regularly
sets and evaluates goals for areas like academic
achievement, discipline, and social issues
that affect African-American males.
National Model
Since the program started, suspensions and
absences have fallen for its participants. And,
in a recent survey, 64 percent of participating
students reported that their Manhood Development
Program class is "like a family to them."
On average, participants in the Manhood
Development Program have higher grade
point averages than their black male peers
who don't participate.
"Ousd is raising the bar for the nation and
represents a model for institutionalizing efficacy
and disrupting barriers to achievement,"
Vajra Watson, the director of research and policy
for equity at the University of California, Davis,
wrote in a January report on the program.
Mr. Chatmon, who refers to his students as
"kings" and to himself as "Brother Chris," has
spoken at conferences, professional-development
seminars, and even White House events
as the profile of the district's work has grown.
Now, when he's invited to conferences, he
asks if he can bring a group of boys along to
speak for themselves.
"One thing Chris is really stellar at is being
a spokesperson for the work," Mr. Sarikey
said. "Outside of just being completely driven
around the development of young black boys,
his ability to inspire people, really get people
motivated around the issues at hand, and galvanize
the community around the issues is really
remarkable. It's very real for him in terms
of the urgency of what needs to happen."
There's been criticism around the country
and in Oakland of efforts that focus on such a
specific population and don't include girls or
other groups that may be at risk.
But Mr. Chatmon insists that addressing
the problems of the students who struggle
most will have ripple effects that help everybody.
He plans to eventually expand the
African-American Male Achievement office to
an office of race, equity, and healing that addresses
the needs of other students, including
Latino and Native American children.
"Eventually," he said, "I want to work myself
out of a job." n
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Superintendent, Salem City school district
Salem, N.J.
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Education Week - February 25, 2015

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