A new educational initiative will debut in Fayette County this year when the Carter G. Woodson Academy, a traditional college-preparatory program serving at-promise male students, begins at Crawford Middle School.
The academy, named after the African-American educator who is known as the father of black history, will provide an advanced, rigorous curriculum that meets the common core standards through the lens of African-American history, culture and culturally responsive teaching and learning strategies. However, the academy is not exclusively for African-American
students.
“This program is open to any male in Fayette County,” said program director Jaynae Laine. “There was a selection committee that went through all the applications and scored them with a generic rubric, and that’s how the students were selected. We are targeting at-promise males. An at-promise male is one who might have flatlined academically, or it could be a student who needed a different learning environment.”
The Woodson Academy is an offshoot of the BMW (Black Men Working) Academy at Bracktown Baptist Church. This program, created and supervised by Dr. C.B. Akins, pastor at Bracktown, and his wife, Roszalyn, invests in the lives of young African-American males in order to prepare them for a better future. BMW Academy participants meet every Saturday for sessions focused on literacy, math, spiritual growth, leadership skills, ACT and SAT prep and more. BMW’s top priority is the students’ academic, behavioral, social and emotional development. Rosz Akins is the academic dean for the Woodson Academy.
“I’ve been involved with the BMW program since it started,” said Laine, who has been in the educational field for nearly 20 years and has served as an academic dean and sixth-grade principal. “The Woodson Academy program became a reality based on the success of the BMW program.”
“We’ve had a seven-year partnership with Bracktown Baptist Church and the BMW Academy,” said Fayette County Public Schools (FCPS) Superintendent Tom Shelton. “As we continued to see the success of the students who participated in the BMW program, we thought, ‘What can we do to expand this and create more opportunities for our students?’ The Woodson Academy was just a natural evolution of the partnership. We really believe it can be successful based on what we’ve seen with the BMW program.”
The academy will follow the standard FCPS curriculum, but it will also emphasize social and leadership skills.
“The goal is to take some of the things that we do on Saturday with BMW and put them into our daily routine at Carter G. Woodson,” Laine said. “For example, every Saturday at BMW, they start off with a motivational speaker, usually a minority from the community, who comes and shares their story. At the academy, we will have somebody share the power of their story every day.”
Service learning will be a prime component of the Woodson Academy.
“We want the kids to learn about giving back to the community and being involved in the community,” Laine said. “We have a community liaison, and her sole focus is to have the kids involved in either on-site or off-site service-learning projects.”
“The main focus is changing the way we teach,” added Shelton, who is beginning his second year as FCPS superintendent. “It’s adding new things to improve the way instruction is delivered and meeting the individual specific needs of the students in the program. We’ve already had a lot of interest from our own schools as well as other schools across the state and across the country.”
Shelton listed some of the goals the district has for the academy.
“We want to see obviously lower dropout rates and higher engagement from the students,” he said. “We want to see them involved in more extra and co-curricular activities.”
Laine believes the academy will have a positive impact.
“I’m looking forward to turning the statistics around for African-American males,” she said. “In this district, this is a student population that is performing way below (potential). It is a group of students that seems to be disengaged and disconnected. I’m looking forward to being able to change that and chip away at that statistic for this district.”
Other entities partnering with the academy include United Way and the University of Kentucky. In this inaugural year, the academy will serve students in grades 6 through 9, but each year another grade will be added until it has classes through grade 12. The Carter G. Woodson Academy’s Website is www.cgwacademy.fcps.net.