Extra support, encouragement helps students thrive | Holly Christensen

In the spring of 2023, I prepared three third-grade Akron Public School students for the reading section of the Ohio State Test (OST), which must be passed in order for a child to go on to the fourth grade. In preliminary testing, these students had scored close to the minimum required, and simply needed targeted small-group instruction to meet the goal.

All three were bright. One came from a family without stable housing and the child was chronically absent. The other two seemed to have missed critical learning in the first years of school due to remote-only access during COVID, a problem that has been documented nationwide.

A little over a year later, I was asked to judge a spelling bee organized by a local non-profit for elementary school children. I was delighted to discover one of my reading group students, Amina Gulley, among the 20 or so participants. I burst with pride when she came in second place. Amina clearly had studied long and hard, and with cash prizes of $500, $250 and $100 for the first three places, it paid off financially, but in many more ways as well.

How best to improve our schools, particularly our inner city and poor rural schools, is a perennial concern. And while I've heard many people, myself included, opine on various ways to support students, few put their ideas into action. Even more rare is the establishment of an organization that has a well thought-out plan to sustain its mission. LAVA (Learning Abilities for Victory and Achievement), the non-profit that hosts the spelling bees I've judged, does all that and more.

In 2004, three years after he'd graduated from the University of Akron with a B.A. in social work, Marcus Bentley's younger brother was shot and killed. The following year, he began coaching middle school basketball at Arlington Christian Academy. Coaching made him feel like he had several little brothers, which helped him process the grief over the death of his actual brother.

Bentley went on to coach football and track at Hoban where he also helped young Black athletes with skills off the field. In 2015, while working as a teaching assistant at Akron Digital Academy, he was asked to create a program to mentor life skills for students, including effective communication, dressing for success and applying for jobs.

Bentley wanted to find ways to help his students become all that they could. In 2020, he launched LAVA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that "delivers access to customized prevention, intervention, and Community Occupational Athletic Centered Health (COACH) providers to support our students' mental, behavioral, and social-emotional health."

Bentley, who is also an ambassador of the Black College Football Hall of Fame, realized most of the students he works with are not familiar with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Every Labor Day Weekend, the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic is held at the Football Hall of Fame. It includes a football game between two HBCU teams, a marching band competition (every bit as exciting as the football game), college and job fairs, music and theater performances and other events.

Bentley's vision to improve literacy rates and academic achievement in inner city youth led him to establish a culture of spelling competition in elementary schools that has become the "Road to the Classic," a final championship spelling bee held each August at the Football Hall of Fame just prior to the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic weekend.

Starting this school year, participating elementary and middle schools in Akron Public Schools will hold fall and winter spelling bees in their buildings. Two students from each grade in each building will then be nominated to compete in the semifinal spelling bee held in May at the downtown branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. The top finalists from that event will go on to the championship spelling bee at the Football Hall of Fame in August.

The semifinal and final spelling bees offer sizable cash prizes. Thus far, the money for the prizes has been earned by youth volunteers working with LAVA coaches to clean the facilities at Edge Academy. Moving forward, as the program expands into additional schools, Bentley wants to recruit more "coaches" from the community to also help students practice for the spelling bees.

It is possible that the sole reason some of the students initially compete in the spelling bees is to try and win the cash prizes. And that's okay. When judging, I sit in front of the students and look at their faces as their spelling word is announced. I know immediately which students have studied the word list because their eyes grow large and sparkle when they know that they've got it memorized.

Academic accomplishment that comes after studying hard produces a feeling that is often addictive. I liken it to sports like swimming or distance running. Yes, students compete with their school teams, but each athlete is specifically working on improving their individual PR, or personal record. At this year's inaugural LAVA championship spelling bee, multiple students I have tutored demonstrated the intelligence and agency I always knew they had, they just needed the extra support and encouragement that LAVA provides. Tapping into that potential can change the trajectory of students' lives. It also builds and benefits the entire community.

Contact Holly Christensen at whoopsiepiggle@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Extra support, encouragement helps students thrive | Holly Christensen