After seeing her son lose his zeal for school, one mother joined forces with other parents to form an organization that fosters a culture of high achievement for Black males.
When Gabrielle Carpenter became a guidance counselor in Northern Virginia nine years ago, she focused on the academic achievement gap and furiously tried to close it.
At first, she was compelled by tremendous professional interest. It “was hit or miss,” she says of her efforts. “I would find one Black boy who was very smart and making good grades, and he felt isolated because there were three or four others who were not focused on academics. So I thought, ‘maybe if I could create a peer group for young men who are striving for excellence, then that positive peer pressure would transfer over to other boys and they would not feel alone.’”
The urgency to do something was magnified when Carpenter noticed changes in her own son that made her uneasy. “In kindergarten, he was excited to go to school everyday. He was making good grades,” says Carpenter, an eighth-grade guidance counselor at Stone Hill Middle School in Ashburn, Va. “By fifth grade, he was still making good grades. But that excitement was not there.”
Eliminating the gap was now of critical personal concern to her. Carpenter welcomed the parents of nearly every Black male sixthgrader in her county, cohorts from the future high school class of 2012, to her home, and together they formed Club 2012.
That was three years ago. Since then, Club 2012 has become one of the nation’s most innovative and thriving groups working to eradicate the factors preventing Black boys from excelling. Through this club parents have kept their group of boys busy with regular tutoring sessions, a speaker series, field trips and community service activities, and the schools busy with their constant and unyielding demands for teaching brilliance and high expectations.
“Our main goal is academic achievement and eliminating the achievement gap,” Carpenter says. “We all operate on the same issue, which is to see that every African-American male graduate from high school in his designated year on time and equipped to successfully pursue any academic or professional option that he so desires.”
