In the mid-80s Odis Richardson wanted out of teaching. He was a special-education instructor and debate coach at south-side DuSable High School, which draws most of its students from the Robert Taylor housing project. And he’d been teaching in the Chicago Public Schools since 1965.
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The profession does seem to be in decline, at least according to a statistical portrait painted by the Golden Apple Foundation. Older faculty are retiring; an estimated 5 percent of Chicago public-school teachers bow out every year due to age. Meanwhile, the supply of new teachers has declined radically; the number of new elementary instructors in Illinois dropped by 55 percent between 1975 and 1986, just as the demand for such professionals, fueled by a mini baby boom, was rising. Worse, according to a 1989 report by the National Education Association, only 5 percent of education students plan to teach in the inner city.
DuSable is just the type of place education students want to avoid. The school, which has been educating black students since it opened its doors in 1935, was where Harold Washington went. But Washington came in a great reader; few of those who enter now read well. According to principal Charles Mingo, only 16 of the 500 freshmen arriving this year were reading at national norms. Scores on the Illinois Goals Assessment Programs tests, released in late October, placed DuSable among the worst city schools in reading and math. The dropout rate is 58 percent–an improvement of 15 points since Mingo’s arrival three years ago.
Richardson, a native of Louisiana whose laborer father only went through third grade, was the first black graduate of the University of Tampa. On a stopover in Chicago in 1965, an aunt encouraged him to apply for a teaching job. His first assignment was as a substitute at Parker (now Robeson) High School.
Like other Golden Apple winners, Richardson has taken under his wing two scholars, both Northwestern students. “You take urban black boys and put them in a place like Northwestern, where everyone else comes from privilege and has certain kinds of social graces, and they could quickly become dropouts,” he says. “So I try to give my boys some little advice.”
The exchange grew out of Richardson’s friendship with a psychology teacher at Stevenson, Barry Bernstein, a fellow Golden Apple winner. Twice a year the students, all seniors, attend class together and talk in groups. Richardson says the program is valuable because the ghetto kids and the middle-class suburbanites come to appreciate their similarities as much as their differences. He recalls a young man from DuSable telling him, “This is the first time I’ve spent any time with a little white boy–and he’s OK, he’s all right.” Bernstein says the program has created “some nice lasting friendships.”
