Project Fatherhood Builds on Strengths
It is not just the education sector that seeks simple solutions for complex, interconnected social problems. Schools aren't alone in hoping that cheap and easy silver bullets will solve intertwined challenges so that we can avoid difficult discussions of uncomfortable dilemmas. But, I read Jorja Leap's Project Fatherhoodfrom the perspective of an inner city teacher. For a less teacher-centric overview, read"Project Fatherhood."
Guided by the farsighted ex-felon "Big Mike" Cummings, Leap and the other founders of Project Fatherhood relearned that "'Everyone longs to connect.'" They organized a community of ex-felons in Watts and helped them face the deep wounds they suffered when growing up without fathers. As Leap learned, "These men - who routinely used guns and dealt drugs and brutalized women and went to prison and had no clue how to father their own children - needed first to be fathered themselves."
As inner city teachers should understand, there are complex reasons why so many of our students challenge us, defying our authority until we show that we are tough enough and, more importantly, care enough. Many students test us, but as with the case with these fathers, a key reason is a lack of trust. Our students are like Leap's fathers who challenge her in order to ask "are you 'for real?'" and "'are you gonna leave us, too?'"
Similarly, urban teachers rarely hear a negative word by a student about their mother. These fathers echoed students' devotion to their mothers which serves as the "protected territory of the hearts, demilitarized zone in lives of conflict."
Domestic abuse is deeply rooted in the lives of Leap's and Big Mike's fathers. As one said, "My daddy hit my mama, and my stepdaddy hit my mama, I guess I was used to it." The same dynamics perpetuate child abuse. Project Fatherhood is especially Project Fatherhood Builds on Strengths | John Thompson:
