9% of students in Green Bay are Black, but only 1% of teachers are. The Black Youth Alliance wants to help bridge that gap.
GREEN BAY – For Denyah Tinnon, an eighth-grader at Franklin Middle School, it's a "totally different" experience having Black mentors at the Black Youth Alliance in Green Bay.
"When you have Black educators, you can relate to them, you can learn from them, you can grow from them," she said. "They have experienced the same things we've experienced."
In a city where it's common for Black students to have only white teachers, the Alliance creates a space where kids can be supported and learn about their culture.
The Alliance, which is run through the We All Rise African American Resource Center, offers summer and after-school programming for youths that focuses on mentorship, education and economics.
It largely caters to middle- and high-schoolers who learn about healthy relationships, future career possibilities, life skills, self-advocacy and leadership.
“This is a place where they know that they can be themselves, they're safe and that we're always here for them," said James McGee, the Black Youth Alliance community coordinator. "We try to do whatever we can to help them achieve their goals and just to flourish and grow as young people.”
The Alliance is a place where Tinnon and Divine Williams, who is an eighth-grader at Washington Middle School, don't have to explain themselves, especially when it comes to Black hairstyles.
They both described a lack of cultural competency at school where they said kids and teachers alike would touch their hair without asking.
"(Adults) couldn't like experience my hair texture and my thickness of my hair because they couldn't get braids, and they would just come up and touch me," Tinnon said. "They'd be like, 'Oh, can I touch your hair?' You're already touching me, like stop touching me. I know my hair is different, but that doesn't give you an example to touch me."
The Green Bay School District said teachers don't receive any specific training on ethnic and cultural hair or hairstyles.
The Alliance gives kids role models they might not get elsewhere
The district's student body was 9% Black during the 2021-22 school year compared with a 1% Black teaching staff.
Having teachers of color in the classroom isn't just important for creating a sense of support and belonging but also for academic performance. Research shows it leads to higher academic achievement and lower discipline rates.
And in a school district that has suspended Black students at disproportionate rates, having mentors who look like the students is valuable — even if they're not in the classroom.
"The most important thing to me first, after letting them know that this is a safe space, where they can be themselves, is to educate them,” McGee said.
That education is centered around a culturally specific curriculum so students can learn about their history and present-day Black movers and shakers — things they might not get in the traditional classroom.
“It's important just so that they can understand and learn about themselves and learn about their culture and be comfortable in their own skin and be comfortable and confident with who they are," McGee said. "And it's also important because if they don't see the examples of people who look like them doing great things, then they might never see it or get it any place else.”
Students go to Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay STEM Innovation Center to explore the options of going into a trade or a science, technology, engineering or math field.
The organization also brings in Black community members to talk with the youths about pursuing entrepreneurship, small business ownership or other careers like being a doctor.
At the Alliance, kids have role models outside of their families who they can lean on and share an unspoken cultural understanding with.
“We've been in those situations where sometimes you might be the only African American person in the room," McGee said. "If nothing else it's just a comfort (for the kids) that 'There's somebody like me, that looks like me that I can see and watch or go to and just feel comfortable.' I think that's the most important thing, that you kind of know where they're coming from.”
We All Rise, which provides comprehensive services for Green Bay's Black community, originally started as youth programming in 2017, said Robin Scott, the organization's executive director.
That work showed Scott how the organization could expand and help entire families with mental health services, mentorship, housing, employment and legal assistance.
"Something really beautiful was happening here where our agency had grown into a larger agency to support the entire community," she said.
While the Alliance programming is heavily focused on education, it's also interspersed with time for kids to just be kids. They play sports, go on field trips to parks and bond with one another at the center playing video games and tie-dying T-shirts.
A lot of what they do is "Blacktivity," which gets kids connected to the community by exposing them to sports, parks, colleges, other youth programming and community activities, Scott said.
The Alliance is expanding, having recently acquired additional space next door. The plan is to provide a dance studio, music production space and a reading and meditation room.
As the space grows, so do the kids.
"I do believe that our kids are growing in confidence and also growing in knowing that they can do anything that they want to do,” McGee said.
Danielle DuClos is a Report for America corps member who covers K-12 education for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at dduclos@gannett.com or 907-717-6851. Follow on Twitter @danielle_duclos. You can directly support her work with a tax-deductible donation online at www.GreenBayPressGazette.com/RFA or by check made out to The GroundTruth Project with subject line Report for America Green Bay Press Gazette Campaign. Address: The GroundTruth Project, Lockbox Services, 9450 SW Gemini Dr, PMB 46837, Beaverton, Oregon 97008-7105.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: We All Rise offers programs, mentoring for Black students in Green Bay
