Leadership Instructor, Akilah Institute

In my first year of teaching, I had a very quiet student named Solange in my Internship Preparation course. She wouldn’t speak in class, but when I received her exams or assignments, I saw that she understood the concepts. So I asked her, “Why are you not raising your hand and offering insights?” I talk very freely and couldn’t understand how someone could know something and not express it. Solange asked me to be her mentor. She was my first mentee. This was big for me personally — the fact that a student would see you as someone they would want to learn from. We spent about three months together. As we were coming up with her action plan for personal development, she said she would meet me every week to discuss a book she was reading and ways she could put concepts she learned from the reading into action. I said “fine,” but I thought, “Let’s see what you do.”

I went with her to pick a book, but the library was closed. Other people would have left it at that, but she took the initiative to find the librarian, open the library, and get the book she needed. By the time we met the next week, she’d read three chapters. She came into my office with her notes, and she went through every single thing she’d learned and how she was going to apply it. The next week she came back; she’d read three more chapters and went on to tell me how she applied the first three chapters. Month after month, she refined her action plan. She even picked one person in the faculty and one person from the student body each week to give her feedback. This is a girl who didn’t used to speak up in class and now she was introducing herself to strangers and asking for their advice. To me, that is the most amazing thing.

She surprised me. She surprised other faculty members. The Solange I met when I came to Akilah and the Solange I know now are not the same person. That is what Akilah does best — it takes people who risk being brushed aside in another environment and nurtures and empowers them so that they just take up the reins and run with them.