Rosalyn Akins insists that she started out as a teacher 30 years ago. But about 10 years into it, she said, something changed, and she turned into what she now calls "an educational missionary."
"If you're going to be a teacher these days, you've got to be a missionary," said Akins, who taught social studies for 21 years and served as the dean of students with Leestown Middle School for five. "You've got to get to know these kids and accept them for the way they are, but at the same time hold very high expectations for them. Even if they come from a home that's not the best, you've got to believe that they can learn and that they will perform for you."
It's that "you-can-do-it" attitude that led Akins to form a nonprofit to help the specific group of students whom she saw as consistently having the most difficulty in school - African-American boys. In her experience as a teacher, Akins noticed firsthand that the same group of students was consistently in the principal's office with behavior problems and also made up the majority of the population in the special education classes. Across the board, the African-American male population suffers from what Akins calls an achievement gap.
"This is a national problem," she said. "We wanted to do something to help the school close that achievement gap - to increase test scores, to help with the state accountability test."
Starting with a group of 40 Leestown Middle School students five years ago, BMW Academy, a colllaborative program of the Fayette County public schools and First Bracktown, Inc., was born. (The acronym stands for Black Males Working, which is the program's ultimate goal.) Having now grown to include 140 young men from 18 middle and high schools across the region, the group meets every Saturday at Bracktown's First Baptist Church for a program that focuses on math, reading, foreign language, enrichment, social skills, motivational speakers and more.
"The mission is to educate, motivate and activate for the excellence that lies within for every African-American male," she explained. "It's in them; they just need someone to help bring it out of them."
One of the key components of each session is to incorporate an inspirational speaker. Past speakers have included Dr. George Wright, a former Lexingtonian who is now the president of Prairie Young University; First Lady Jane Beshear, who last summer initiated the dropout prevention program Graduate Kentucky; and local architect Randall Vaughn, director of architecture with Gray Construction.
"(The boys) didn't know there was an African-American architect right here in Lexington who has designed some really cool buildings," she said. "You can't be what you don't see."
The group has also taken field trips to places many of the boys had never been - from out-of-state college campuses to the CNN broadcast room in Georgia. This summer, the program's scholars are going to Europe for the first time.
"I've got one mom who has sold almost 1,000 candy bars for her son to go to Europe," Akins said, adding that the group has been blessed with a number of donations, including $10,000 from Magic Johnson's foundation.
One of the program's biggest rewards is that every student who completes the program receives a college scholarship through a participating university, which includes several of Kentucky's high-profile colleges and universities.
The program is a labor of love for Akins - and she has no shortage of love.
"You've got to love kids," she stressed. "A lot of the time they aren't lovable, but you've got to do whatever you can to reach them. And that means you may have to do some home visits, you may have to buy some tennis shoes. You have to do whatever it takes to sometimes just meet their physical needs, and that helps build the relationship."