Call Me MISTER – Increasing African American teachers | Chocolate City: The Best African American Blog

Call Me MISTER – Increasing African American teachers

Dr. Kujufu at a Call me MISTER event

Call Me MISTER (acronym for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) National Initiative is to increase the pool of available teachers from a broader more diverse background particularly among the State’s lowest performing elementary schools. Student participants are largely selected from among under-served, socio-economically disadvantaged and educationally at-risk communities.

The project provides:

Tuition assistance through Loan Forgiveness programs for admitted students pursuing approved programs of study in teacher education at participating colleges.
An academic support system to help assure their success.
A cohort system for social and cultural support.

“Call Me MISTER” was developed by some of our State’s visionary educational leaders who sincerely believe can build a better tomorrow by getting teachers involved today.

The program is based at Clemson University, where it was founded with an original goal of doubling the number of African-American men in South Carolina’s elementary schools. The Call Me MISTER program combines the special strengths and resources of Clemson University with the individualized instructional programs offered by four historically black colleges in South Carolina:

Benedict College,
Claflin University,
Morris College,
South Carolina State University.

To provide even greater opportunity and access, students have the option of first attending one of our two-year partner colleges before transferring to one of the four-year institutions to complete their baccalaureate degree. In addition, the project has limited enrollment in the middle school Master of Art in Teaching program.

Call Me MISTER can be found in Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Virginia, in addition to South Carolina, where it is available to young men in 13 institutions of higher education across the state. An agreement for a program in Kentucky is pending.

Call Me MISTER will soon be in seven states. In Florida, where there is less than 1 percent of elementary teachers are black men, the program will be housed with the North East Florida Educational Consortium (NEFEC), and initially delivered at five community colleges, mostly in the northeastern part of the state. As the participants — the Misters — finish their first two years of school, they will transfer to three senior-level colleges taking part in Call Me MISTER: the University of Florida, the University of North Florida and Bethune-Cookman University.