Monday, June 12, 2000
Grads may be back as educators
Middletown 'grows' its own teachers with help from grant
By Sue Kiesewetter
Enquirer Contributor
MIDDLETOWN — Briana Everhart has wanted to be an elementary school teacher since she was in the sixth grade.
Her alma mater, Middletown High School, is helping her reach her goal through a 6-month-old program that gives grants to graduating seniors and others who agree to return and teach in the Middletown Schools after college graduation. Those who don't complete a three-year commitment must pay back the grants.
The renewable, $5,000 grants are awarded to students through the ENABLE program — Enabling New and Bright Leaders in Education — paid for through a $50,000 Ohio Department of Education (ODE) Diversity Grant the district was awarded last November. This is the third year ODE has awarded such grants, said spokeswoman Marilyn Braatz.
The competitive grants are given to Ohio school districts that encourage minorities to consider teaching as a career, Ms. Braatz said. Three specific groups of underrepresented teachers are targeted: males who want to teach in elementary schools, females who want to teach math or science, and people of color.
“The idea was to bring people into teaching and then send them home. A kind of "grow your own' teacher,” Ms. Braatz said.
Ms. Everhart, an African-American, is eager about the opportunity to teach children in the community where she grew up.
“Nothing else interests me like little kids,” said Ms. Everhart, who also assists and sings in the Bethel AME youth choir and does volun teer babysitting through the Middletown YMCA's Leaders Club. “I think it would be exciting to teach in a school I went to.”
In Middletown, the program not only meets the state's goals, but brings teachers to the district at a time when the number of minority education majors is declining. For example, only 2.5 percent of recent Kent State and 3.3 percent of Miami University education graduates have been minorities, said Brenda Long, director of human services for the Middletown schools. The district's percentage of minority teachers declined from 7.7 percent in 1982 to 5.6 percent in 1998, yet the minority enrollment rose from 13 percent in 1977 to 16 percent in 1998.
“These are our kids,” Mrs. Long said of the scholarship recipients. "If they come back to teach I think they will stay.” Other recipients: Middletown High graduates Stephanie Patrick, Summer Gates, Lester Gates and Andrea Smith. Also: Erik Wilson, a Lemon-Monroe High School graduate; and Daniel Jones, an adult aide at Garfield Alternative Center.
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