A NEW FACE IN TOWN

 

Jamel Adkins-Sharif is a new face in town. He was recently hired as Director of Education of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School of Excellence, which will begin operation in September of 2006 with grades K-2 and will add a grade each year for the next two years

       Jamel was born in Queens, raised in Harlem and South Jamaica Queens and spent the last ten years in Brooklyn, New York, where he accumulated a wealth of experience in special education. 

       His early education started at Malcolm X’s Mosque #7, where he attended through the third grade.   While his mother was a “stay-at-home” mom, his father is a devout Muslim, who recently made his hajj and currently works with mental patients in the Bronx. 

       After the third grade, Jamel attended public schools in Queens and later graduated from Brooklyn’s Technical High.  He went on to major in political science and Afro-American Studies at Queens College, after which he obtained a Master's in Special Education at Hunter College.  He also picked up a law degree along the way but expects to remain in special education.

       Jamel’s interest in education started early while he was in undergraduate school.  He volunteered to help run a Black History program for elementary age students who lived in the community surrounding the college.  A year before he graduated and for three years afterwards, he taught pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students at a school for the academically gifted.  But he sensed “more of a need” in special education and enrolled in a Hunter College program that was designed to attract non-white into special education, where the numbers were scarce but desperately needed, since a disproportionate number of special education students were Black and Latino.

       His first assignment was in East New York in a school located just across the street from rough projects where young gangs gathered and from where many of his seventh and eighth grade students came.  In his words, “It was the worst possible educational setting but the best possible experience for me.”  He taught social studies and math to students who had to be convinced to remain in school.  It was important to the students to see a person “who looked like them.”  He later taught special education and regular elementary classes in the same neighborhood for six years.

       The offer to serve as Director of Education at the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School of Excellence was “a dream come true.”  Jamel had wanted a chance to help beyond the classroom and to show how a school and community could work together.  He also understands that some people have to be reprogrammed against preconceived notions about learning and race.  He has concluded that the traditional schools “have not fully confronted the fact that they train people to reinforce negative cultural conditions.  The school can work if everyone buys into it and into the ability of students to succeed. I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

       In 2000 he was married. His wife graduated from Sarah Lawrence School of Art and taught English and writing at Kingsborough College, Brooklyn College and the College of New Rochelle.  They have two sons, two and four years old. The four year old is enrolling in public preschool but, in September, will transfer to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School of Excellence. n