St. Paul’s Benjamin E. Mays school to launch afrocentric program this fall

Benjamin E. Mays IB World School has announced a new Afrocentric program launching this fall. The program, transitioning the school away from its International Baccalaureate curriculum, will teach through Black history with the goal of instilling self-determination, excellence and fostering literacy.

Benjamin E. Mays was selected because 69% of its students are African American and because of its location in the historic Rondo neighborhood. The school held a community dinner on March 27 to share details about the program, where SPPS board members, the superintendent, community members and the new principal all spoke.

Dr. Stanley, SPPS superintendent, recalled her mother attending a meeting advocating for an Afrocentric school in 1976. “And here we are now,” she said.

Jeanelle Foster, SPPS board of education director, spoke about the long effort members of St. Paul’s Black community have made toward a program like this one. She and others saw a need for teachers that reflect the students, something for African Americans, by African Americans.

“As a board member we were talking about the Spanish immersion programs, we were leading the way in dual Hmong and Hmong curriculum across the country and every time we tried to do something around Black … curriculum, staffing, all of that, the anti-Blackness would always appear,” Foster said.

When the idea was brought to Stanley, she said “we have to be unapologetic about this,” while acknowledging that some people wouldn’t understand the need for it.

“There is power in the stories we tell our children about who they are and where they come from,” Stanley said. “I am talking about the type of power that changes how a child walks into the room, the kind of power that makes a scholar look at their own reflection and recognize greatness staring at them. That’s what the Afrocentric program at Benjamin E. Mays is committed to.”

Danielle Hughes, the new principal of Benjamin E. Mays, expressed her enthusiasm for the program, sharing her own experience in a school district that failed to understand her son. One that told her he would need help for the rest of his life and placed him in special education. After leaving that district, his performance improved and he is now at grade level.

The Afrocentric program is “an opportunity for us to finally be highlighted and show up in greatness,” Hughes said. “I think unfortunately the way the educational system is set up right now, it doesn’t highlight our brilliance. This program gives us the opportunity to show up unapologetically ourselves and to show up in a way where we get to learn about our history, where we get to build our identity.”

The program will be community led, she said. “It’s a different approach to education but it has to be that way.”

Chreese Jones, principal on special assignment, and Gevonee Ford, founder and executive director of the Network for the Development of Children of African Descent (NdCAD), are co-leads of the Afrocentric program committee on curriculum, assessment and professional development.

The committee designed a curriculum that teaches through Black history, not one that simply teaches Black history, Jones said. It is based on foundational principles including the Nguzo Saba and the Eight Principles of Black Historical Consciousness.

“The challenge in the work is not so much the children… The real challenge is going to be helping us adults reclaim our minds so that we can be intentional about what we’re pouring into our children,” Jones said.

Teacher guides were crafted to provide insight and background, allowing teachers to implement lessons with “fidelity” and “intentionality.”

“This is a curriculum where we have hard conversations, there’s hard topics, but we also talk about the joy, Black joy, and that our timeline doesn’t start at enslavement,” Jones said.

Stanley called the curriculum a declaration. “A declaration that education through the lens of Black history is not supplemental. It is essential that our scholars know they are the descendants of greatness and it is our job to make sure that they know it.”

“We are connecting our students to the full arc of the global African diaspora from the brilliance of ancient Africa to the heroes who lived and worked right here in St. Paul,” she continued. “This is a humanizing, complex education that asks young people to think critically about their own power, their own identity and their own place in history.”

The March 27 event also included the unveiling of the Toni Stone Atrium at what will soon be Benjamin E. Mays Afrocentric Magnet. Stone was the first woman to play professional baseball in the Negro American League, and her home once stood where the school now sits.

“The fact that we are standing in this space, in a building named for one of America’s great educators and civil rights leaders and in a foyer positioned where the very home of another great African American pioneer lived, that is not coincidence,” Stanley said. “I believe that is continuity. That is the ancestors saying your story matters, your ground is sacred and we will not be forgotten.”

Sonya Douglass, director of the Black Education Research Center (BERC) at Teachers College of Columbia University, noted that African centered education is powerful for Black students and benefits all students. BERC helped develop the first-ever PK-12 Black studies curriculum for New York City Public Schools.

“Overall, African centered education is really powerful for Black students because it focuses on the role of culture in learning and ensuring that there is alignment between the cultural values of students and typically of their families and communities,” Douglass said.

“What we believe to be true is that this knowledge benefits everybody,” she added. “It’s just a different way of looking at the world.”

Damenica Ellis welcomes reader responses at dellis@spokesman-recorder.com.