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They're pretty public about their "secret sauce", which is to offer a pretty neat ladder up Maslow's pyramid, especially for the parents. Any family worried ab
by sudhirj 8y ago
They're pretty public about their "secret sauce", which is to offer a pretty neat ladder up Maslow's pyramid, especially for the parents.
Any family worried about food / clothes can come into the pantry and take whatever they need. Physiological needs, check. Barbershop available. That's really interesting.
Safety needs: see above, with heavy emphasis on dealing with conflict situations. Celebrate coming to school, make sure it's always a safe place, extra hours and days to keep them off the streets.
Belonging and love: everyone in the school are the "chosen ones", they have a tribe, the teachers are on their side, the parents are involved and accountable.
If you handle the first three levels for a person, hitting self esteem, accomplishment (at a personal level, need not be state's best or world's best) can come much easier, even with average quality of teaching. They're also making the parents baseline role models (they clean, clothed, putting food on the table and looking into their own self improvement) and plastering the environment with a topline role model LeBron James (if he can do it you could at least try as hard as he did).
- azernik 8y agoThe inclusion of a barbershop is very much an African-American cultural thing - these are traditional male social gathering places in that society. So this is probably not just providing a haircut, but also some things a bit higher up the Maslow hierarchy like that belonging you mentioned.
- codebolt 8y agoAs a white male, the barber shop is one thing I always envied African-Americans. Seems nice to have a place where you can always drop by for some loose banter with the local guys.
- mac01021 8y agoLast year I walked into a McDonald's at 8am and a bunch of old white guys seemed to be using the place as just such a venue.
- nozzlegear 8y agoI live in a small, predominantly white town in northwest Iowa and this is true here as well. Every morning, all of the tables and seating areas at every gas station in town are full of older men sitting around chatting about the town, school, sports, politics, etc.
- dajohnson89 8y agoI live in a chinese neighborhood, and bakeries serve the exact same function for older locals.
- ikeyany 8y agoWhat a strange stereotype...is this something people get from TV? How many black people do you know that use their barbershop as a place other than to get a haircut? Black people go to their friend's house or a bar, just like white people do.
- c0vfefe 8y agoI would guess that's fiction imitating reality. I'll only generalize about my own race's behavior here, by saying that most people reading this are probably white and therefore less likely to have useful input into your question.
- ikeyany 8y agoOn what basis do you say it's imitating reality?
- c0vfefe 8y agoI found some more information on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCbRfoWgmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCbRfoWgmQ https://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_ravenell_how_barbershops_can_keep_men_healthy https://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_ravenell_how_barbershops_ca... https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-empowering-evolution-of-black-barbershops/ https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-empowering-evo...
- codebolt 8y ago> is this something people get from TV? Well my wife is Nigerian, and she claims they have similar type barbers in her country. But mainly through TV, yes. I recently watched the latest Barbershop movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3628584/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3628584/) which really made me think about it.
- ikeyany 8y agoAsk your wife how often Nigerians men hang out at their friends or a bar, versus how often they hang out at a barbershop.
- MicahNance 8y agoThe barber shop is a "third place" after work and home. https://theartofcharm.com/art-of-personal-development/what-is-a-third-place-and-why-do-you-need-one/ https://theartofcharm.com/art-of-personal-development/what-i...
- ethbro 8y agoMy mother taught at Title 1 schools for years. She said the biggest gap was always family support. Teachers don't have enough time to make up for a missing home environment, and (said in seriousness) it's a misuse of their time to play social worker (because there's no one else / no funding for anyone else). We do a lot of dumb things in American public education, but one of the worst is misdeploying resources we do have and focusing on symptoms instead of root causes. There was a school district (Kansas? Nebraska? Maybe?) that got stellar results just from co-locating county social services for parents at the school (unemployment offices, food stamp distribution, clinics, etc). If a community needs help, don't send only teachers to fix it.