A production of the South Carolina Educational Television Network.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Hi, and welcome to this edition of The JobMan caravan, a television program designed to do some good in your neighborhood.

Just building a stronger community.

I'm Bill Terrell, and this week, we'll take a look at what's happening in classrooms in which our children are being educated.

Black teachers are disappearing and there's reason for concern.

We'll also take a look at a special program designed to get more African Americans in the administrative levels of public education.

And our viewers will tell us what they think about the importance of black teachers being in the classroom.

But first on the job, man caravan.

We'd like for you to meet a man who is loved and admired by his fellow teachers and students as well.

A teacher who inspires the best in his students and teaches them to know that they can.

♪ ♪ Heroes make the sun ♪ ♪ rise in the morning ♪ ♪ and heroes make the moon ♪ ♪ shine bright night.

♪ ♪ Heroes make our lives.

♪ ♪ In the solar river.

♪ One guy, one boy.

Get up and walk across the road.

You say I love you.

I'll go off and ride him up.

I don't do that.

If you marry my room, I don't ca what you love for.

So I don't have no violation of my rule.

And we are there to learn when instincts come back, I learned.

Oh, come on, we come to learn this.

Sit a rock.

You know we can multiply this land by that.

We can get a wide.

So we can get down here and get away.

They can get rid of one B plus one B matters.

Do you know of last name?

Henry Isaacs no nonsense approach to teaching has been his hallmark for 35 years, and has gained him the respect and admiration of his students.

But beneath his tough exterior lies a warm, gentle giant that quells the fears and insecurities of its subjects.

Enable them to conquer any problem they may face.

Lydia Bailey is one in a long line of students who has been touched by his kindness.

When you go in, it's like first she gets you very comfortable, and then if you're afraid, you like some people going to question you, afraid to ask questions you know they don't understand.

You know, he he makes you, he urges you to, you know, be comfortable and open with him.

So, you know, if you have any problems, you know, ask him.

Before I came to Mr.

Isaac's class, I was not very good in algebra or algebra two.

And because he took the time and he had the motivation to help me, I gradually became better and better in that class.

And in that area.

He doesn't treat you as a child.

He treats you as a human being, and he doesn't stay away from you in that way.

I mean, he cares for you, he loves you, and he wants you to do the best he can.

He really cares.

And you feel that.

You feel that in his teaching, in his is preaching, in the way that he asks about you every day.

If you're absent, he misses you and he'll tell you so.

Yes.

Who I. I like to expose myself to Henry.

Isaac teaches more than math.

He teaches his students to look beyond their definitions of themselves and their community, and to begin planning for a better tomorrow.

Which he feels starts with a good education, with one thing for sure.

He definitely stresses that college is very important and that, you know, a higher education is something that's very important.

And he stresses and that don't play attitude, that that's exactly what college is going to be like, that you won't have the time or the, the, the, the reasons to play around.

And that's one reason why that's made a big difference, is helped me to realize that when I get to college or when, you know, whatever I do after I graduate, that life is out there and it's no, there's no time and there's no money to play with that.

It's definitely a serious business, like, mostly just classes.

You want to just stop.

You just don't want to do any work, you know?

And.

But in Mr.

Isaac class, he works you.

He works you, and you like you learn.

So when you're learning, you're, you're when you learn, you don't think of the time and everything.

You just go on learning.

When you're learning, you're happy, you know, and you want to come to school.

As I come to school more than I used to now, so I've taken his eyes.

Class.

I think that first of all, that I only know of 2 or 3 of them here at Eau Claire that I can go to in the same way that I can go to Mr.

Isaac, you know, and talk about things, and get extra help on, you know, subjects like that.

And it's really one of the main things that have probably been, causing other students who may have looked at teaching once upon a time to be discouraged about it because they feel that they see the teachers that they have today as the teachers that they could if they went into that field, and that maybe one of the things that discourages them about it, becau teachers as, you know, being helpful and somebody that they can go to as a friend.

So maybe that's what they see themselves possibly being some day, and that's what discourages them about it.

But no, they're definitely not enough people like him, whether you're a teacher or whether you're any other profession, he that you know definitely needs to be more people like him in the world, you know, that.

Mister Isaac's reputation both in and out of the classroom, he goes on tarnished.

Just ask and you will find that he is liked by all.

I have really never heard of any bad rumors about Mr.

Isaac.

Everybody that I've known that have taken him, you know, whether it's been for SAT math or any of the other courses that he, you know, teachers, they've never given me any, you know, bad or negative views of him at all.

All I've heard is that, you know, he's a good teacher, that he's there for you when you need him, whether it's to find a part time job or whether it's extra help on a subject that you may be having trouble with, even in other math class that you may be taking, he's willing to help you with.

I've never heard anything bad about him so far, although his 35 years as a teacher has earned him high marks from his students and colleagues alike, Henry Isaac does not rest on his laurels.

I will improve, improve my teacher.

Maybe, like I tell my students, I will learn something every day.

Every day.

Then I can see progress.

I want to be able to do what I say, what I'm truly able to get a lot better when I start.

And I'm not saying that for some student time, if I said, blessed do, I never give no student.

Okay.

Hello?

Hi.

Person news.

What?

Where do you come for some of this class?

A word of a I never give when a student might take me a little longer.

But gradually I find an actress that has some kind of way.

I'm gonna find out some way a reaching that child, through his...through some way, getting to them when I get to them, show them something.

The more is for learning.

Reason for learning.

I want to be somebody, and I get the job done, and I start doing my teaching towards.

I think it would not be an overstatement if I said he was perfect.

He is a wonderful human being.

He really is.

By the year 1990, it's predicted of all classroom teachers will be African American.

Find out next what that could mean to our children and their education.

It intensifies the feeling of inferiority when this, when the authority figure is always of another ethnic group, suggest that we're always in the inferior role.

You're watching the Jobman caravan and we are gonna do this.

We're taking him to the street to let me know.

Only way our viewers respond to questions of community interest.

Most black kids, oh by whites.

And that's not necessarily a serious problem, except that they never have the opportunity to really get a feel for who they are and sound.

The whites take the opportunity to to try and understand the black community and understand why, black students, for the most part, have not developed a, a consciousness to say that I am a real person, that I am an important person.

Many of us today, when looking at the progress we've made over the years, can often attribute our success to the African-American teacher who went beyond the requirements of teaching and instilled in us a sense of pride and gave us the determination to exceed those limits placed before us by others.

Over the past five years, the percentage of African-American teachers in the classroom has been reduced by 25%, and it is predicted that the decline will continue.

What can be done to reinstate and equip the African-American teacher in the classroom with the necessary academic skills for instructing, as well as the consciousness needed to provide black students with a true sense of self.

Teachers for a long time have felt underpaid and overworked.

I don't believe that, that pay is necessarily an incentive to go into the education field, but I think it has a lot to do with today's world, today's mores, today's attitudes about money, upward mobility and so on.

We don't have curriculums in the schools, right now, in my opinion, that produced the kind of consciousness that we really need.

In black studies is not does not really help students understand where they are in terms of time and space.

All the political, ramifications of their, livelihood.

And as a result, we're having some real problems in terms of trying to, find really good teachers.

I believe that educators can increase the number of right teachers in the classroom by reminding them of the value to the students and, and, their community needs, a common needs that they see in the community.

We're happy you're with us and sharing this experience.

Next on the Jobman Caravan, we take a look at a very serious problem.

And that is the tragically alarming rate of the disappearance of black teachers in classrooms that educate our children, and why we must reverse that trend.

Three out of five of my classroom instructors are of European descent.

Once viewed as a position of honor among African Americans, the teaching profession is no longer considered a career of status for many blacks.

It has been predicted that by the year 1990, minorities will comprise less than 5% of the teachers in the classroom, a composition that, if not reconstructed soon, may lead to the death of a nation.

High school teacher Nina Dana.

It intensifies the feeling of inferiority when this, when the authority figure is always of another ethnic group, suggest that we're always in the inferior old college professor, Doctor Aretha Pigford.

Also, you get into the whole issue of role models.

And teachers are tremendous role models for kids.

When you don't have black role models, somehow we're going to not have for that black child, someone whom they can look at and say, I'm going to be like her or like him.

It wasn't until integration did we begin to see African-Americans move out of the classroom in great numbers.

Doors began to open in the busin that were once close to the educated black, and no longer did the teaching profession look as attractive as it once did.

And for those who remained in the classroom, new problems manifested as a res in forcing some of our teachers out of the school system, elementary school teacher Cheryl Washington explains.

Teacher standards were revamped and geared toward the white standards.

Teachers were moved about.

I think there was, a loss of pride.

Positive self-image.

I think, in essence, the effects of desegregation and the negative aspects or loss of control, loss of power and loss of leadership in our schools for whatever the reasons may have been that removed and are keeping African-Americans out of the classroom, their presence remains crucial to the growth and development of our children because we know the black experience.

I think we tend perhaps to push them perhaps somewhat harder than we might otherwise if we had not shared that common experience.

We know that for most of our kids, education is the only way toward upward mobility and we also recognize that some of our kids come from homes where education is not stressed.

So with that recognition we push.

We insist that our kids do as much as they're capable doing.

And again, by the 1990s, one of four children in the classroom will come from poverty stricken homes, one of three will be a minority.

And the most frightening part is not that 80% of the people now entering the teaching profession is white and female, but it has been noted that some of them have expressed the unwillingness to teach the disadvantaged or the minority and or the special needs child.

They perceive that their discipline problems, they perceive that they're not going to get support from the home, back, well, and all that kind of thing.

And that may not, in fact, be the case.

So many of them are going in with a negative expectations or negative perceptions, and that's causing them to be very hesitant about going in working with, with those students recently, there was a great report done on two students like high school senior Keely Baldwin, are a part of a new program resulting from the Educational Improvement Act.

The teacher cadet Program, now in its second year at Eau Claire High School in Columbia, South Carolina, is designed to attract bright and intelligent students to the teaching profession so that they will be able to meet the needs of the public school population of tomorrow.

We allow them to get you get a firsthand glance at what education is like, and we hope that through this experience, we might be able to encourage some who might otherwise have looked at other professions to consider teaching as a profession.

Term three very good miss used to being in this class.

I've looked at all the aspects of teaching, not just advantages, everything that I want to see, but also the disadvantages of teaching.

But even though I did look at all aspects of it, I still feel that I do want to teach, and I like to see people take in knowledge.

I want to work with elementary because when I when you're working with the little children, you're molding them for what's to come.

And by doing that, I think I'm going to be doing something in society, by helping the children and molding a better world for them and let them see themselves as being, you know, I'm okay.

You're okay.

Everybody's okay.

You know?

Also, recruitment efforts are being made to reinstate black teachers in the classroom.

And who better than Cheryl Washington named a teacher of the year by Richland School District two, would know more about the qualities of prospective teachers should have.

We are looking for teachers who demonstrate, not only mastery of the content area, but also mastery of performance in teaching.

We are looking for teachers who are positive about their profession and who can impart that to students every day.

We need thinkers, and somehow we've got a fine teachers who are thinkers and who can teach other kids to be thinkers.

And if you're going to get thinkers into the classrooms, then you must give those people more autonomy.

You must allow them to make their own decisions about how they're going to teach.

You must, improve the work environment, whereby teachers are relieved of non-teaching duties.

And there are lots of reports now that I'm talking about, you know, how we've got to restructure the whole work environment of teachers and providing an environment for teachers that will attract some of our brightest and creative students to the teaching profession, is an effort that must be made by all.

If we expect to continue to produce some of the world's most talented leaders, parents have to be aware of the problem.

They have to work with the school system, with the school districts, with the school principal, and bringing in good teachers, finding and employing good teachers.

And then once tho they are particularly the minorities who might be, in predominantly white situations.

I think the community has to make those people welcome.

They have to take the time to find housing for them and their families.

I think they have to go little further.

Then they would have to do maybe for a white teacher who might live in the area, you know, whatever it takes, I think it's important that we do it for our kids, for our schools, for our society, for the job.

Man.

Caravan.

I'm Deborah dir.

Reporting from.

Watch job man.

Caravan because it's informative and it gives you up to date information what's going on in the community.

And of course, entertaining.

A tradition of community service, the latest job and career information challenges facing our community.

You're watching the job, man.

Caravan.

Because of the seriousness of the loss of more and more black teachers from the classroom and the implications of that fact, more and more efforts are being made to, on the one hand, to curb the loss of African-American teachers from the classroom and on the other hand, to attract more to the classroom.

In this our next feature, we take a look at a special program that's designed to get more African Americans involved at the administrative levels of public education.

Two years ago, the Department of Education, leadership and Policies at the University of South Carolina decided to do something about the lack of black administrator in the public school system and started the Minority Administrators program that would help African Americans map their course to principalship maps coordinator Doctor Aretha Pigford.

What we're trying to do basically with math is to, first of all, recruit, identify, train and then help in the placement o in becoming school administrators.

Now, what we do is we meet with those persons who are interested, and we take them through a very rigorous comprehend and selection process.

During the program's first year, six out of more than 125 applicants were chosen as Map interns, which meant they were relieved o and assigned to work closely with the principal for one year.

And now five of those six interns are in leadership positions in various school districts throughout the state of South Carolina.

We are very pleased with the success of the interns.

To date, I am in constant contact with them.

One of the interns is here in Whitson School District one, Evelyn Cohen, and Evelyn is serving as principal of Watkins Elementary School and is having a marvelous time.

I understand and is doing a marvelous job.

The girls that came in this morning, do they work with your class this morning?

Map gives us a lot more hope than we would normally have had.

It gives us the feeling that there's somebody out there who wants us to do well, who are.

There are people who are saying, I'm convinced that we have qualified blacks who can do the job, and we are willing to support you, and we're going to stand behind you.

When I entered the program, I thought, wow, I don't have the skills to be a principal.

I'm going to need to work on those things.

Well, Matt pointed out my weaknesses and my strengths, and I realized that I had a lot more strengths than I thought I did.

So it gave me the confidence I needed to become a good administrator.

If you if you don't pass the basic skills test, there's oftentimes you have questions about things, and either you don't know where to go to find the answers.

Oftentimes you're a little bit skeptical or about asking somebody, but I think map is giving you the support.

And you at least you have, the relationship between the other entrance and so that you can go to those persons to find information, substance abuse.

And we really hit on it hard as one of 12 interns, now a part of the minority administrator's program, Janie Phillips knows the invaluable lessons she is learning as a principal's apprentice.

It's one thing to say, oh, I can do it.

And then it's quite another to get in there and to never realize all of the tasks that they have to the principals have to do.

And Mr.

Young has always been very supportive.

He's been there.

He's trusted me to take on some things that I've wanted to do.

He's had faith in me, and often he's initiated some things that, he thought that I could do.

Well, it used to be that if you had a feel for people, if you were big, you know, maybe and could yell loud and, at a fairly good gift of gab, someone would say, well, you look like an administrator.

The job has changed.

Tremendously.

You have to have the technical skills to know how, to go along with those people skills that we've always known that administrators had to have.

So this program, provides that kind of experience.

But the experience of principalship has not always been viewed by some African-Americans as one that they could take part in.

Well, just thinking about myself as a person, I think back about the typical principal.

Ten, 20 years ago, I saw that as a male, and well, ten years ago I saw it as a white male.

I saw that as something that I would probably never do and an older person as well.

And to see myself in a position like this and compare myself with that type of person, I, you know, I could never have thought of being a principal at that time.

And the same thing applies now is, blacks do not see people, who are in these positions, who they can identify with.

They're going to feel discouraged also.

So if you look at the typical, black university student, he goes into, a school and what he sees is something other than a black principal.

He's going to say, well, why should I go in education?

I'm not going to be able to achieve much more than, being in the classroom if I choose to do something else.

I don't see, you know, a way, if you have fewer black administrators, then chances are there may be an absence of sensitivity toward the need for black teachers.

You may find that teachers, black teachers, do not gravitate toward situations where there are no black administrators.

So if you had more black administrators, they would be more sensitive to the to the, issue of employing, recruiting and employing black, teachers, the minority administrators program, mapping the way for African-Americans to enter the school system in leadership capacities at a time when their presence is greatly needed, a presence, says C.A.

Johnson High School Principal Henry C Young, that will be most beneficial to our youth, but I think we bring up qualified minority, administrators on board in all of our school districts that we strengthen for our youngsters and our communities to self-concept that role models cut across racial lines.

And I think in the long run, that's going to be the saving grace of the program, that it leaves role models there so that youngsters can feel comfortable and not that they don't feel comfortable crossing racial lines, but they're often they feel more comfortable going to one of their own to discuss personal problems and that sort of thing.

So I'm confident that this program will continue to grow.

And it's the first graduating class who comes out of this program will provide the impetus for the next class.

And in the next 4 or 5 years, we should have 80 to 100 qualified, administrators who, to add to our pool for the Jobman Caravan, I'm Deborah Durr reporting.

Remember, parents, your child's teachers should not only serve as a good role model, but should display a sensitivity toward your child's welfare and a desire to motivate your child to maximize his potential.

And parents, be sure to attend t and to let them know that you will settle for nothing less.

That's our program for this week.

Until next week, I'm Bill Terrell on behalf of the staff of the caravan.

We love you and we thank you for joining us.

♪ ♪