I don’t mean to refer simply to areas like teaching and coaching. I want to truly communicate the power of our personal influence. For example, my pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in North Philadelphia, Sean Wise, has had a powerful effect on me. Sometimes he and I talk and that’s helpful. But his influence is even more evident and powerful when he stands at the pulpit. He gives illustrations from his personal life. Because he makes himself vulnerable to us, his illustrations and messages stay with us. We see him as a person who not only speaks to us but who also lives the Christian life, or as we often say, “He not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk.”
No one is perfect, and sometimes I think it’s important that we let others see how imperfect we are. Of course, they’ll see that anyway, but we need to let others know we’re aware of our own imperfections. That helps them to open up to us. When we show our failures and imperfections, we’re influencing people. It is a way to say, “I make mistakes just like you do. We can move beyond mistakes and we can learn from them. Failing at something doesn’t make us failures.”
People are more likely to listen to us when they know they’ve made a human connection with us. That connection comes through stories about our life or personal influences, whether verbal or nonverbal.
Some experts estimate that 85 percent of communication is nonverbal. Nonverbal communication includes body language and facial expressions. If that figure is close to correct, it’s important not only that we speak about our beliefs and principles but also that we live them. If we live authentically, we can communicate with people in such a way that we influence their attitudes and behavior.
In the fall of 1997, I turned down a substantial promotion and raise. I never imagined the tremendous influence my decision would have on the students and community surrounding the school. I had been a teacher at Vaux since 1989 and no one was going to tell me to leave my kids. I walked into the office of Principal Harold Adams. He told me he had received a phone call informing him that I had been transferred to another school and promoted to assistant principal.
“There must be a mistake,” I told him. “I haven’t applied to another school for any position.” I looked right at him and said, “I don’t want to leave Vaux. I want to be here for these young people.”
Mr. Adams knew, perhaps better than I did, that at times he and I were the only positive male role models that those young people encountered. What better place to encounter positive male role models than in school?
“The superintendent’s office called and the decision has been made,” he said. “You are being transferred.”
As I walked out of the office, I said to myself, “Mr. Adams doesn’t understand. I’m not leaving these young people. The superintendent doesn’t understand that I’m not leaving these young people. Maybe later I’ll agree to a transfer, but right now the children need me.”
I was angry enough to take on the school district or the entire city in order to stay at Vaux. Later in the day, I received a call from the superintendent’s office and I repeated, “At this point, I have made a positive impact, and I know I can influence the lives of many of these young people.”
“You have been transferred,” the assistant to the superintendent told me when I phoned.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “I can’t go. I need to be here for these young people.”
“We respect your wishes, but you are being transferred. You’ll receive an official letter of notification.”
That Saturday I received the official letter telling me to which school I had been assigned and was to report on Monday. I wasn’t trying to project myself as some kind of hero and I knew I had faults—many of them—but I had grown up in the inner city. I remembered how tough it had been to grow up without a father. I had a few positive male role models (see Chapter 11), though I wish I had had more of them.
I didn’t report to the new school. Instead, on Monday morning, I walked into Vaux Middle School just as I had done for the past eight years.
The word had gotten around—as it always does in those situations. Some teachers and children assumed I would leave, but I was committed to stay. Before I left school Friday afternoon, I had told everyone I would see them on Monday. Until I walked into the building Monday morning, they hadn’t believed me.
“I’m glad you chose to stay.” I don’t remember how many other teachers and children said that, but it felt so good to know that they were happy I had not gone. I actually thought some had wanted me to leave until I saw their faces.
It didn’t take any serious thinking to make my decision not to leave. I didn’t regret it then or even now, almost ten years later. I made the right choice. Life is always filled with choices, and we can choose to stay in many different situations and exert personal influence, or we can leave. I refused to desert the young people.
I’ve tried to impress on students at my school to make their decisions and to stick with them. “Stay in school. Graduate from high school and go to college.” I want them to make good choices, and I want to be there to encourage them after they make those crucial decisions.
Of course, I have had disappointments. I can name a number of former students who didn’t go on to college and a few who dropped out before finishing high school. Each time I think of what life will be like for them I am saddened. Then I remind myself of people like Otis Bullock, who not only graduated from college, but went on to Temple University Law School. He graduated, passed the bar exam, and has started to practice law in the inner city. Those are the encouraging ones.
I think of Blair Biggs, who graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania as an honor student, and Samirah Lawson, one of my first female chess players, who graduated from Morgan State University in Maryland. I laugh when I think of the many pranks that Quan Carr played on the other students at Vaux and on me, but he stayed the course and graduated from Virginia State University. Both Rodney Veney and Shawn Murphy graduated from Cheyney University in Pennsylvania. Rodney, who has completed his master’s degree, was a young man whom many people thought would never graduate from high school.
Rodney grew up in a tough neighborhood like all of his friends and graduated from Reynolds and Vaux. He constantly seemed to move along with the wrong crowd. But Rodney had something inside him. Even though he didn’t know it, he was waiting for the adults to say, “You can achieve.”
Several teachers at Reynolds and at Vaux saw the potential in him. “You can make it,” they said in many different ways. “Because you’ve grown up in the projects doesn’t mean you can’t make it.”
They let him know that where he came from didn’t have to determine where he was going. The teachers at Ben Franklin High School encouraged Shawn and Rodney to go on to college.
Shawn is now working as a behavioral counselor in an inner-city middle school and planning to attend graduate school.
Rodney and Shawn, along with many of my other students in Philadelphia, hear these words from me quite often: “When other people tell you that you’re going to the state pen, you tell them, ‘No, I’m choosing to go to Penn State.’ That’s what you say to people and you say it to yourself. After a while you’ll see it begin to become a solid principle right in your own life. You begin to influence yourself by saying, ‘I’m going to college, and I’m going to get educated.’”
There are others whose lives have encouraged me and helped me to believe in the profound power of personal influence. One of our top chess players, Demetrius Carroll, chose to attend Kutztown University. He had been offered a scholarship to every state university in Pennsylvania. Some other chess players such as Nathan Durant and Earl Jenkins made the same choice to enter Kutztown. Those young men have been together since sixth grade and were members of the Vaux national champion chess team. Now they’re roommates in college and will soon graduate.
I want to tell you about Demetrius Carroll. His father didn’t live with him, his mother