Before the basketball team existed, Silas Hardiman would have slugged a kid for less.
A classmate this month made an offensive comment about the boy’s appearance. But the 11-year-old considered the consequences before making his next move.
“If I would have hit him,” Silas said, “I would have been kicked off the team or benched.”
Sixth-graders across Akron are learning to behave and believe in themselves through a new public-private partnership that uses their love of basketball to achieve the community’s desire to see boys grow into respected and respectful men.
Silas is among 76 students at seven Buchtel and East elementary schools who participate in the extracurricular character-building program. Basketball and other sports normally aren’t available until seventh grade.
Administrators see promise in targeting more resources not only in middle school, where disciplinary actions spike as pubescent males undergo problematic physical and emotional changes, but also to East and Buchtel, which together enroll 23 percent of the public school system’s students yet account for 36 percent of its out-of-school suspensions.
The basketball program — costing less than $10,000 this year and funded in part by a $1,540 grant from Akron-based DC Heating & Cooling Inc. — already is paying off, said student support director Dan Rambler.
“Honestly, I don’t know that there is a perfect answer,” Rambler said of Akron’s above-average student discipline issues, concentrated in Akron neighborhoods where police tell him crime is more rampant.
“I think we all connected on the idea of combining mentoring and athletics to positively impact school climate. It was really a perfect marriage of all the things we want to do in student service,” Rambler said.
Full-court program
Students in the program gather once a week after school, normally spending 15 minutes on the court and 105 minutes in a classroom helping each other catch up on homework and assignments while listening to mentors who specialize in minority youth. Each Saturday, the seven teams square off at Helen Arnold and Mason, each centrally located to the west or east of downtown Akron.
The first game tipped off in early December with more than 200 students, parents and educators crossing the city from east to west, or west to east.
The weekly practices began in October. The final match is set for March 5.
As the six-month program progresses, student-athletes are coming to realize that if they get in trouble or fail to meet weekly academic goals (set by teachers and testing software), they don’t get to play. The boys are behaving and excelling in reading and math, administrators said.
“I decide if they’re eligible to play,” said Kyle Earley, who reviews weekly progress reports and makes the kids run suicide drills for bad behavior.
The youth pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church graduated from Firestone in 1998 and coached middle school basketball at Reidinger after high school. Having witnessed truancy and behavioral issues last year as a mentor, Earley bounced the idea of creating a sixth-grade basketball league off Crouse Principal Angela Harper, who passed the notion along to Rambler and others in charge of student discipline, programming and athletics.
Earley brought in his sister, Ciara Dennis, a psychologist at Minority Behavioral Health Group on Copley Road near Buchtel High School.
Dennis’ curriculum helps the mentors, mostly counselors and case workers at the mental health group, teach the boys to own their actions, to redirect anger, to understand and respect others and to be proud of who they are, liberating them from the circumstances that keep many inner-city youth from their dreams.
The health agency focuses on the needs of under-served populations by providing training and support to children and adults in churches, schools, homes and throughout the community. “We want to touch what they touch and be where they are,” Dennis said of a sincere, holistic approach to mental health.
Changing minds
The after-school basketball program is part of a larger effort to get mentors, especially black men, in a position where they can positively influence students at a critical age.
This year and last, school climate specialists have been deployed on a daily basis to develop meaningful relationships that positively affect student behavior and, ultimately, improve learning.
During the school day at Crouse, the affable John Hafford inspires students who get off-track. After school at Leggett Elementary, he leads children in a basketball program that falls outside the scope of Earley’s project.
On top of the strategically placed mentors in schools where discipline rates have dropped, the district has embraced a broader iCare Mentoring initiative spearheaded by Jonathan Greer, the founder of the faith-based Man-Up movement. Greer has been training mentors monthly. He aims to recruit 500 mentors by May. He’s got 183, so far.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @DougLivingstonABJ.