Reality infused into Livingstone's teacher education program: early successes seen with African American male instructors - Livingstone College in North Carolina

Black Issues in Higher Education, Nov 27, 1997 by Craig T. Greenlee

"We have to bridge the gap between the people retiring and the new people coming in," says Fleming. "Teaching gives students the chance to make a difference. Every successful person - regardless of gender or race - had a teacher who played a key role in his or her life."

Unlike the education curriculum at most other schools, CTE provides its students with plenty of early exposure to the total spectrum of teaching. Even as freshmen, CTE students must log at least twelve hours of field experience, which involves working with teachers in the classroom as observers and then as teacher assistants. During training, they also learn how to implement effective strategies to maintain discipline in the classroom.

They also serve as mentors to at-risk kids - those who, for one reason or another, have been classified as difficult to teach. As these teachers-to-be advance from freshman to senior year, the fieldtraining hours increase accordingly.

"We don't want our students to wait until their junior or senior year to find out what teaching is all about," Fleming explains. "The way we go about it, we put our students in situations to help them decide if a career in education is what they really want. Other programs wait until the last year or so before students are exposed to real-life situations. I think that's too late."

The Livingstone program also puts a lot of emphasis on students getting involved in non-instructional duties as part of their career preparation. Those duties include serving as monitors in the school hall, in lunchroom, and at bus stops. They also make themselves available for PTA meetings.

"We stress those non-instructional duties because it helps them get tuned in to all facets of the field," Fleming says. "They learn to develop good communication skills with their peers and with students' parents. They also learn how to deal with different rules and regulations of their respective schools and school boards."

The Beginning of the Pipeline

Six months have passed since CTE had its first graduating class. But even in that short span of time, it's clear that Livingstone has taken big strides in developing a reputable pipeline for future educators.

All five May graduates are now working as teachers. Three members of that class - Nakia Douglas, David Johnson and Mistor Williams - all landed jobs in Winston-Salem. They agree that the CTE experience has prepared them well for what they're facing now as everyday teachers.

"There's a family-type atmosphere at Livingstone," says Douglas, who teaches kindergarten. "You're looked at as an individual and not as a number. All the instructors - at one time or another - were in the classroom, so they know what's going on. They care about your success as an educator.

"Being in education is more of a reward than I thought it would be," he continues. "I see kids growing in so many areas. As a Black male role model, I have a lot of roles to fill. I'm a social worker, father, preacher, big brother, all those things."

Johnson, an elementary school teacher, acknowledges that without the Center's program, his desire to attend college would never have materialized.