Weekend school a step beyond
By Leonard Sparks
AFRO Staff Writer
While most of the University of Baltimore's Mount Vernon campus sleeps on Saturdays, the halls of the school's academic center have been reverberating with the noises of learning since September.
During that time, 30 middle school boys have been sacrificing one half of their weekend to spend five hours moving through a gantlet of classes as part of an initiative by a Baltimore organization to combat the raw social statistics that confirm that too many Black males are destined to drop out of school or serve time in prison.
The initiative, the PRAISEAcademy (Paul Robeson Academic International School of Excellence), is an all-boys program that combines math and reading instruction with such other offerings as Spanish and tai chi, buttressing what students learn during their regular school week.
Created two years ago by the Urban Leadership Institute, a youth development organization, students are also treated to field trips, including an annual visit to Robeson's hometown of Princeton, N.J., and Rutgers University, where Robeson was an all-America football player and valedictorian of his graduating class.
Scott P. Johnson, director of the academy, said the main goal is to foster "creative thinkers" who will be active academically and able to "navigate the different trenches that are widening rapidly in BaltimoreCity for our young Black men."
"Sure, reading and math is very critical to our young men. But they also have to learn [that] it'll be OK to sing or learn how to cook or learn how to do tai chi to relax themselves," Johnson said.
"A lot of kids have talents, and those talents are undiscovered if we don't try to build as many projects as possible to give them a chance to grow in those levels."
Johnson said that PRAISE's students, who are in grades six through eight, begin with a monthlong summer program that features guest speakers, sports and a number of field trips.
During the school year, he said, the program offers six 45-minute classes -- including algebra and reading -- taught by a cadre of instructors.
But Johnson said the program's focus is also on values like respect, service and personal responsibility, and that students participate in service projects, like helping distribute turkeys as part of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis' annual Thanksgiving giveaway.
"We're just trying to bring those values back to our young men and make them think about their lives and how they can better themselves, and also think about how they can better their community," Johnson said.
Parent involvement is also mandated, and they are required to give 30 volunteer hours to PRAISE and participate in monthly meetings during the school year
"The cost to parents is involvement," Johnson said. "Since we're working on the boys, we feel that we have to work on the families as well -- to have some open dialogue about how they can raise these young men as best as possible."
Devin Muse, an eight-grader at Roland Park Middle School, said he has learned to speak and read better with the weekend boost, and Devin Reynolds, an eighth-grader at Francis Scott Key Middle School, said the algebra instruction has accelerate his
]"It gives you a boost. The stuff that we do here is more advanced than what we do in class," Reynolds said. "It puts me ahead, and I know more."
Kesha Shaw said her son, Jason Randall, an eighth-grader at the Maryland Academy of Technology and Health Sciences, has shown improvement, despite sometimes balking at forging his Saturdays and having extra homework.
"But other than that, he's had substantial personality things that I've seen change," she said. "He's more engaged in school. He raises his hand. He speaks up more, which was part of why I really wanted him to come here."
"He actually started out struggling at the beginning of the year [but] he's at a better point now," she added. "I guess it's a little bit of PRAISE, a little bit of school, a little bit of me. It just takes a village."
But the burden of learning is complicatedby the strain of resisting the temptations of the street, something the boys are constantly made aware of by instructors and by reading such books as {The Autobiography of Malcolm X}.
"Negativity is all around you, and a lot of people think that in order to be a Black male, you got to drop out of high school," said Blair Davis-Carter, an eighth-grader at WilliamH.LemmelMiddle School.
"When you need the support, you have your fellows here," he said. "I don't think they will turn their back on me when I need a helping hand."
Marcel Tracy, a seventh-grader at Canton Middle School who said he's seen students assault teachers, said PRAISE instructors are always "telling us to stay out of the streets and don't sell drugs and don't do a lot of gangbanging."
And Muse said, "The more Black males are successful, the more the stereotypes are going to fall."
The end of this year's program in April will mark a transition for PRAISE, Johnson said. September's class will be all sixth-graders, he said, and they will stay with the program through the eighth grade.
"We're going to recruit 40 young men and we're going to recruit 40 mentors," Johnson said. "
In the meantime, this year's class will travel by bus to Montreal and Quebec in April as part of a language immersion program in conjunction with the language department at DunbarHigh School.
"We'll learn how to salsa, dinner engagements, all kinds of fun activities," Johnson said. "It's going to be great."