CINCINNATI — About 300 people gathered at the Duke Energy Convention Center on Friday for a summit encouraging more young men of color to enter the education field.
National data shows in the 2020-21 school year, less than 2% of K-12 teachers were Black men. It's something the organization Leading Men Fellowship is hoping to change.
“They often learn better from people who look like them and share their gender, it just happens to be statistically true," said Carlton R. Collins, program director for Leading Men Fellowship Cincinnati.
That was one goal of Friday's summit: recruiting people for the fellowship which trains young men of color to be pre-K literacy tutors.
“There’s really no early on-ramps into education," Collins said. "Usually, you have to finish college or finish your associate’s degree at minimum before you can jump in so we created this platform that gives them the opportunity to start fresh out of high school."
Friday's summit featured community organizations that provide resources, information about opportunities in education and even interviews on-site for the literacy tutor positions.
For one attendee, Jerry Heard, all of this is about helping people.
“Everybody help everybody — that’s basically what the world is about now," he said.
Heard was one of the attendees who interviewed for a literacy tutor position. He said he has family members in the fellowship and decided it could be his path to help people too.
“I just want to be a custodian ... anything that will help somebody be somebody, be a better version of themselves—the best version of themselves," Heard said.
Heard said he wants to give Cincinnati kids the role model in school he felt like he missed as a kid.
