100% College-bound
She stared down at a muddle of D’s and F’s on his eighth-grade report card and threatened to kick him out. He had barely passed elementary school, and high school wasn’t even on his radar.
“Something just clicked,” Alexander, now 18, said. “I knew I had to do something.”
On Friday, Alexander proudly swapped his high school’s red uniform tie for a striped red and gold one — the ritual at Englewood’s Urban Prep Academy for Young Men that signifies a student has been accepted into college. 100 percent of its first senior class has been accepted to four-year colleges. What an accomplishment, this is something all parents and teachers must demand from all educational institutions.
When a teacher friend of mine fought the LAUSD for a Black male program to separate and focus on the the particular issues this demographic faces, he was denied due to a perception of inequitable “reverse discrimination”.
Do you think an all male classroom setting with a strong recruitment of African American male teachers with shared and practiced values and expectations can make a difference in the lives of urban Black males who are dropping out of high school at a faster rate than graduating?
So there is HOPE. That is excellent.
That’s what’s up for sure! Nice article , I absolutly love it
Absolutely! We often hear there are no positive African American male role models for our young. I totally disagree with that statement. The ability to powerfully impact these young men’s lives by surrounding them with other young men who have a desire to tap into their unlimited potential is an awesome concept. Through the leadership and educational guidance provided by men who look like them, came from similar backgrounds and have faced the same societal challenges they may currently be facing could make all the difference in whether or not these young men are raised to be successful men.
Englewood”s Urban Prep Academy should be a blueprint in the formation of other schools of this nature.
Thanks for sharing this information with us.
This is a sign of accomplishment for each of the students, as well as a great success for the founder of this school, Mr. Tim King. Not just lip service, not just a display of a one day event that generates a simple photo op and ends in a return to the status quo, but real and true paradigm shifting that will equate to a rise of a tide. My hat’s off to Mr. King and the students and staff that carried a common vision to fruition.