Celebrating 25 years of success

Quick! If I say, 'black kids”, what is the first image that pops into your mind?

How about Scholar? Student? Volunteer? Employee? Award winner? Author? No?

Amid all of the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth surrounding the various 'gaps” - achievement, ability, poverty - usually ascribed to students of color, I wonder at the absence of awareness regarding a program that does not accept the validity of 'gaps” - a program that focuses abilities rather than disabilities, on knowledge rather than scores, and on self-worth rather than income.

The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success encourages students of color to understand and take responsibility for their educational advancement, and it does that by combining a rigorous curriculum with cultural awareness.

I was recently quoted in The Gazette as stating that a student of color can complete his education in Cedar Rapids without ever having been taught by someone who looks like him. Interestingly, I was quoted in the same vein more than 20 years ago. Twenty years before that, it was my own experience. That the quote is still true is regrettable and points to the need for the program to which I make reference.

This summer, The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success will celebrate 25 years of programming aimed at cultural enrichment combined with academic rigor. It is the only program of its kind in the state, and the only program for minority students that has survived for 25 years.

There are a couple of 'musts” to this program: Students must be taught by teachers who look like them, who are grounded in the culture, and who can relate, yet who have achieved in ways that many of our students cannot imagine. Parents must be involved. They must attend conferences and volunteer. Students must be willing to be students. And if they don't know how, to learn to be.

An important by-product of Academy classwork is the relationships that grow among the students. Bonds of friendships are formed among students of color who, even in this relatively small city, have not had the opportunity to meet one another.

In the academy, African American, African and mixed race students not only get to know one another, but as they study math and science, and literature and history, and conduct research, they also talk about cultural issues about which they are curious, that have remained unresolved since I was a child - the 'n” word; interracial dating; skin color; hair; and more - issues that are seldom broached in the metro schools, and if they are, are treated very differently with only one brown face in the room.

The Academy is compiling recollections from past students in honor of our 25th. We can count attorneys, teachers, financiers, scholarship winners, and all-around good kids among our numbers. I am gratified to hear from successful adults who spent one, two, or three summers in The Academy, who recall their experiences with pride, and talk about the value they took from the experience and the fun they had while learning invaluable lessons.

These 'Academy Kids”, past and present, exemplify, not the images that too often proliferate in the newspaper paper or on TV, but rather those of the intelligent, resilient and perseverant upstanding citizens we urge them to be.

' Dr. Ruth White is founder and executive director of The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success. Contact: