by Brandy Wilson
What do a record-breaking pilot, a Harvard scholar, and a civil rights activist have in common? All have found unconventional ways to successfully educate young people around the country. These educators found a way to engage and educate students where traditional methods had failed. From starting a movement to starting a school from the ground up, they’ve proved there is more than one way to break through and that good teaching goes beyond books.
Robert Williams
Social psychologist Robert Williams coined the term Ebonics (a combination of ebony and phonics) in 1973. He followed it up two years later with the book “Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks.” “We need to define what we speak. We need to give a clear definition to our language,” Dr. Williams said. The term had become increasingly irrelevant until twenty years later when Oakland’s school board controversially decided to recognize it as a primary language of its Black students. Dr. Williams has published over 60 professional articles, three books, and several culturally specific intelligence tests.
Jabali Sawicki
Jabali Sawicki, the former kid with the boombox, is now the founding principal of Excellence Boys Charter School. Excellence Boys is the first all-boys charter school in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. It was developed to combat low graduation and high dropout rates among low-income African American boys. He has called the education of lower income boys “the new civil rights movement.” The 27-year-old former Boston science teacher, also founded a competitive soccer program. He has a dual degree in Biology and Philosophy from Oberlin College and a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from Columbia University.
Roland Fryer
At the age of 27, Roland Fryer was an assistant professor of economics at Harvard. At 30, he was the youngest African-American to receive tenure at the prestigious university. Henry Louis Gates said, “He was destined to be a star.” Today, Fryer is CEO of Education Innovation Labs at Harvard, which works with economists and social scientists to determine formulas for closing the education gap. One controversial program tested how giving cash incentives to students impact their test scores and behavior. Fryer earned his Ph.D at Penn State University.
David H. Swinton
Benedict College president David H. Swinton had an unusual plan to stop the increasingly high rate of first-year students flunking out. What if students were graded more on their effort and less on actual knowledge? Swinton enacted SEE, Success Equals Effort, a grading policy requiring students who met specific effort requirements never fail a class. The controversial policy applies only to freshman and sophomores. Swinton has said students benefit from the policy because the additional effort creates better study habits which lead to better grades. Swinton received a Master’s degree in economics and doctorate in Philosophy from Harvard University.
Tim King
When the first senior class at Urban Prep Academy graduated this spring, every single student had been accepted to a 4-year college. Four years ago, 96% of these same students entered Urban Prep unable to even read at their grade level. Tim King founded Urban Prep Academy, an all-male charter school, on the south side of Chicago in 2006. Students at Urban Prep attend class 8 hours a day in ties and blazers. Their course load is comparable to a college student. The school has recently opened a second location and another is set to open next school year.
Barrington Irving
Barrington Irving wants to take students to a higher plane literally. Irving is the founder of Experience Aviation a learning center and program with the goal of encouraging students to pursue careers in aviation. Irving broke records as the first Black and youngest pilot to ever fly solo around the world. If that is adventurous enough, a year later Irving did a solo flight on a plane designed completely by Miami high school students. He is currently is travelling and promoting careers in flight as well as conducting the S.T.E.M. summer program, which accompanies math, science and engineering lessons with aviation.
Bob and Omo Moses
Add this father and son team together and it equals a powerful team in mathemathics education. One afternoon volunteering at his daughter’s school turned into an award-winning math literacy activism campaign. Civil rights leader Bob Moses created The Algebra Project to supplement and improve math that was being taught in schools. Through field trips, games, and real-life experience, students learn math and science. Bob’s son Omo followed in his father’s footsteps and created his own math literacy project, the Young People’ Project, which trains high school and college students to teach math to elementary and middle school students.
Gloria Ladson-Billlings
Scholar and educator Gloria Ladson-Billings has worked to make education “culturally relevant” for all students. Ladson-Billings coined the term and the concept of “culturally relevant” teaching, which encourages teachers to focus their teaching to student’s unique strengths, home life, and background. Her book “The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children,” followed eight teachers and schools who had successfully implemented “culturally relevant” teaching methods. She has been published in more than 50 scholarly journals and books and this spring Ladson-Billings recently earned an honorary from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Benjamin Wright
Benjamin Wright is a passionate advocate for single-sex education. Wright earned Washington state’s Principal of the year for successfully implementing a single-sex education program in Seattle that dramatically increased test scores and decreased disciplinary issues in students all without any additional funding or change in class sizes. That led to a job in Nashville, where the single-sex schools program was met with criticism. He’s since written the book “Yes We Can, If We Choose” and serves on the board of directors for NASSPE (National Association for Single Sex Education). Wright is currently the regional superintendent of alternative education in Philadelphia.
Geoffrey Canada
It seems that Harlem’s Children’s Zone, the program and school led by its CEO Geoffrey Canada, is an overnight media darling. But the Promise Academy of the Harlem Children’s Zone has been around since 1990 and now is the time for Canada’s educational experiment to shine. “The Zone” is a 97-block neighborhood in Harlem, which offers social, medical and educational services available for free to 10,000 children. The Promise Academy charter schools services children kindergarten through the 10th grade and enrollees are selected through a lottery system. At least 97 percent of third graders scored at or above grade level on a statewide math test in 2008, outperforming the average scores of both black and white children in New York City and New York state. Canada has a B.A from Bowdoin College where he graduated in 1974 and a master’s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
