LIVED EXPERIENCE HOPE TEACHER
SERVES STUDENTS WITH EYE TOWARD EMPATHY The students in Hosea Born’s 7th Grade math class seem especially engaged. It may be a love for circles, radii and diameters – or it may be Born’s enthusiastic questions as he scrawls formulas on his dry erase board.
neglect throughout the hous. School was always that consistent thing for me.”
With the lights down low, the kids’ eyes are fixed on the shapes, but in the back of the classroom, a blue bag with LAUNDRY written down the side offers a hint that math problems aren’t the greatest challenges some of these kids face.
“The typical love that a teacher shows was to me more than the typical love, because I wasn’t seeing that at home,” he said. “It was through school that my teacher showed me I could do more. I could be whatever I wanted to be.”
“Over 70 percent of our students, live below the baseline of poverty,” Born said. “You’re not going to be able to meet achievement [goals] until you’re meeting their basic needs.”
Born graduated near the top of his class and went on to college with scholarships. He decided he wanted to give back to the profession that changed his life.
As his class works on their daily assignment, one of his students from another period stops by with a question about her homework. Born answers this question with a question and waits patiently with a smile while his student works through it on her own. This patience should come as no surprise for anyone who knows Born. He enjoys working in the high poverty school because he was once in the same situation as some of his students.
“Thinking back through elementary school teachers, middle school teachers, high school, I constantly saw the teachers seeing a little extra and giving a little extra,” he said. I realized that if it hadn’t been for those teachers I would be in a similar position that I was raised in and that wasn’t a position that I wanted to stay in at all.”
“Education for me has been the way to escape poverty,” he said. “I grew up in a house where I was the youngest of ten. My parents did not believe in government assistance... There was a lot of abuse,
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ARKANSAS EDUCATOR
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Growing up in Goodman, Missouri, a tiny town just north of the Arkansas border, Born says his elementary teachers countered the emotional and physical abuse and neglect in his home with extra attention and encouragement.
Born graduated from the University of Arkansas in 2018, and through Arkansas Teachers Corps ended up in Hope, Arkansas, the birthplace of President Bill Clinton and home to the Hope Watermelon Festival. Now in his second year at Yerger Middle School, Born said being single in the town with a population of less than 10,000 offers him a chance to fully invest in his students.
