FEATURE
Timothy Spicer
SIDETRACKING POOR QUALITY THE MURDER OF his brother finally got DeShawn Adams’ attention. He was a self-described “trouble maker” whose teachers didn’t expect him to amount to much. “I was unsure of myself and what I wanted to do. It came out in my behavior,” he said. “I didn’t have many teachers who were taking me seriously or were willing to look beyond some of the behavioral issues that I had.” The loss of his brother made him take a long, hard look at where he was headed. Education, he decided, could put him on the right track. But to get the type of education he desired, he had to leave his neighborhood. “I decided to go to a high school that was in the next city over to get away from my environment,” he recalls. “I had to focus.” Adams attended the Black Male Summit because he plans to pursue a career in education policy. He is now a junior English major at Morehouse on a full-tuition academic scholarship. He will be the first in his family to graduate college. He understands that his success will not be his alone. “My family, they look up to me. They are looking forward to my success,” he said. Unlike Adams, Timothy Spicer Jr. wasn’t a troublemaker, but acknowledges that his teachers didn’t know how to deal with his “energy.” Still, as the son of a college-educated single mother, and a father who graduated from North Carolina A&T, he valued his education. Which also meant that, when he was ready for high school, he too had to make a location choice: Arlington, Va., or Prince George County in Maryland. He had previously attended schools in both areas. He recalled MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE
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how, in Maryland, with any infraction, a student was immediately sent to the principal’s office. “There was no talking,” he said. In Arlington, teachers and administrators had “a different demeanor,” he said. “They would talk to you and your family.” For him, the choice was obvious. He was successful in Arlington. He was the SGA president, president for both his freshman and senior classes, a member of a minority honor society and of the swim team. And on the first day of school in 2009, he was tapped to introduce President Barack Obama when he made a nationally broadcast address to students across the country. Ironically, however, it is the failing schools he saw in Maryland that drive Spicer’s career choice in education about as much as the successful schools he saw in Arlington. In fact, after he graduates in May, he is returning to a Maryland school system similar to the one he rejected. He will teach for four years with the Urban Teacher Center, which collaborates with Lesley University’s Graduate School of Education to prepare teachers to work in high-need, inner-city schools in the Washington-Baltimore area. He will earn two master’s degrees in education and in elementary literacy from Lesley. His goal is to help write policy that addresses the “inadequacies of what African Americans have to face.” “I know there are answers to the questions. And that goes deep into how I view education policy,” he said. “It’s part of why I want to go into education. They give you labels when you’re young, and those labels go with you throughout the rest of your life. Those labels set up barriers,” he said. n Aileen Dodd contributed to reporting for this article.
David Johns, executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, with young boys at the Summit.