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May 22, 2006

Minority teachers often inspire by example

By LINDA TRIMBLE
News-Journal Education Writer

It was all about the girl.

Against his guidance counselor´s advice, Nick Prince spent the summer before he started ninth-grade begging his way into Volusia County´s most rigorous academic program. He pestered Spruce Creek High officials. He read three literary classics in two weeks.

All to be near the girl he was sure he would marry.

But Prince found much more than puppy love beyond the boundaries of the poor, black neighborhood where he lived. He found new academic challenges that pushed him to become the first person in his family to graduate from college. He´s now back at Spruce Creek, fulfilling his childhood dream to be a teacher.

It´s the kind of success story both he and Volusia school officials hope will inspire other minority students to dream bigger dreams.

Too often, Prince said, parents´ expectations for black children are limited to them finishing high school and getting a job.

"We need to have a college expectation," he said. "Their boundaries don´t have to be the boundaries of their neighborhoods."

Low expectations are one of many factors researchers say help explain the difference in academic performance between white and minority students.

Just as there may be many causes for the problem, school officials are trying many different ways to address the achievement gap, a top priority both locally and nationwide.

Prince´s story is revealing both in how it illustrates some of the difficulties minority students face and one of the approaches educators hope will address them.

In a school system where only 10 percent of teachers are black, Prince is a rarity. Eighty-five percent of Volusia classroom teachers are white although minorities make up a third of the student body.

School officials actively recruit more minority teachers -- against stiff competition from other districts -- from historically black colleges and Puerto Rico, saying it´s important to provide role models for minority students. That´s just one of the strategies in their overall plan to address the lagging academic performance of black and Hispanic students compared to their white classmates.

"Most teachers come from fairly stable, middle-class homes," said School Superintendent Margaret Smith. "I believe teachers are caring and empathetic, but they may not have all the understanding of what a child brings to school."

Prince, on the other hand, can easily relate to students who come from less-privileged backgrounds.

"You can say, ´I understand what you´re growing through. I know where you´re from, and you can do this program,´" he said.

LANGUAGE BARRIERS

The same principle can help students who come into high school knowing no English, said Zenaida Denizac, who teaches English at Deltona´s Pine Ridge High to students for whom it is a second language.

"I´ve been there. When I came here, I knew enough English to get by, but I couldn´t carry on a conversation," said Denizac, who came to the United States 20 years ago with her husband and three young children and was elected to the Deltona City Commission this past November.

Denizac worries about how Spanish-speaking students will catch up quickly enough to pass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test required for a diploma.

A lot won´t, Denizac knows. While she said it´s up to Spanish-speaking students and their parents to give "100 percent or more" to learning English and fitting into their new surroundings, Denizac wishes more teachers would be "more sensitive to the needs of the kids" while they´re doing it.

Paving the way to such acceptance is where the diversity training included in efforts to close Volusia´s achievement gap comes in. All principals, assistant principals, guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists and many teachers underwent such training this school year.

Barbie and Ken Reed, consultants from Port Orange, led the training that emphasized how educators need to do away with stereotypes related to race and poverty and nurture the potential in each child.

Barbie Reed grew up in Daytona Beach, attending all-black schools until her father enrolled her in Mainland High School in 1966 with a handful of other black students before it was fully integrated.

"I knew what it was like to walk in and have people not understand your culture," she said.

"I felt lost," Reed recalled. "I felt, because they didn´t understand us, we got labeled. I didn´t get the support and the help I needed."

"What I´m concerned about now is you´ve got to look at the mindset of teachers," she said.

SEEKING ROLE MODELS

Spruce Creek Principal Tim Egnor, who recruited Prince to teach in the International Baccalaureate program, hopes teachers like him will provide role models for minority students who can help close the gap.

Prince credits his teachers at the former Highlands Elementary School for inspiring his career choice.

But Prince said it was as a student in the same International Baccalaureate program at Spruce Creek where he´s now the only black teacher that his life really changed. After attending Highlands and Campbell Middle School, Prince found himself in a mostly white school for the first time.

"One of the most important things was being around people who were different than myself," Prince said. "It was a lesson in learning to deal with everyone."

He found himself acting differently to fit in.

"At Creek, I could be a different Nick than I could be at home," Prince said.

"The Nick who went to Spruce Creek talked differently; his attitude was different. I was educated, white Nick. I spoke correctly; I had different friends. Nick at home had to speak the way everyone else did and carry himself the way everyone else did."

By his 1996 senior year, Prince gave up playing the dual roles and decided, "I´m not going to please all those groups, You´ll have to accept me."

Now, he´s found a way to fuse those worlds to help encourage more students like himself -- even those who aren´t smitten by puppy love.

Next year, he´ll add a course in African-American history that Spruce Creek had offered but dropped because of a lack of student interest. Prince hopes to rekindle that interest among students of all races.

As for his girl, she dumped Prince two weeks into his freshman year. He stuck out the tough IB program anyway.

Prince couldn´t bring himself to tell his mother the reason he´d enrolled.

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