Call Me MISTER

An overview of a university program that helps train African-American men in how to be both teachers and role models.

Jones, the executive director of Clemson University’s Call Me MISTER program, uses his debut (co-written with educator Jenkins) to showcase the initiative, which takes its name from actor Sidney Poitier’s famous line (“They call me Mister Tibbs”) from the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. Its participants often come from underprivileged backgrounds, work with mentors and go through rigorous preparation for teaching in the classroom in addition to regular academic work. The program’s dominant theme is respect: Participants learn to respect education as a profession and to present themselves as role models that their students can admire. When Jones helped create the program a decade ago, there was a distinct lack of African-American male teachers in South Carolina. When Southern schools were desegregated in 1954, the formerly segregated schools hired few male, African-American teachers, establishing a pattern of disconnection between African-American students and their predominantly female, white teachers, the authors write. The Call Me MISTER program aims to fill that gap. The book isn’t an unbiased analysis but an endorsement by an enthusiastic leader, but readers won’t feel as though they are being subjected to a sales pitch. The book doesn’t directly contrast Call Me MISTER with better-known programs, such as Teach for America, but it does make clear that it encourages its graduates to make teaching a lifetime career—not just a brief stop before moving on. Although the authors are primarily interested in preparing young men to teach in South Carolina, they note that several other colleges and universities around the country have licensed Call me MISTER and are implementing it locally. The book includes numerous testimonials from the program’s graduates and current students, providing a personal interpretation of the authors’ theory and statistics in support of the program.

An effective explanation of a successful teacher-training program.