Former NFL great urges educators to make positive impact

FLORENCE - Keith Jackson is as much at home with an auditorium full of teachers as he is talking football with his NFL buddies.

The former NFL great, by all appearances, has everything a man could want: a great family, good friends, a college national championship with the Oklahoma Sooners and a Super Bowl XXXI ring with the Green Bay Packers. His nine-season NFL career also included playing with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Miami Dolphins. He won the NFC Rookie of the Year award in 1988 and made the Pro Bowl six times.

But the victory the 42-year-old Jackson celebrates most these days is when he gets word that students he has mentored through his program in Little Rock, Ark., are about to graduate from college or are embarking on a career. Jackson's motto, which is reinforced in his program, is that "all students are at risk of negative outcomes in their lives, but the students we deal with are high risk and there's a difference."

During a professional development seminar with Florence teachers and administrators Tuesday, Jackson told stories of how students in dire circumstances had achieved success in high school and beyond through his PARK (Positive Atmosphere Reaches Kids) program in inner-city Little Rock. The program serves middle and senior high school students who are at high risk of dropping out of school or succumbing to the pressures of drugs, alcohol, sex and gangs. Students enter the program in the eighth grade through counselor/teacher recommendations. The average grade point average of a student entering the intensive academic/life skills program is 2.0.

Jackson said academic expectations are set high in the PARK program and are usually met.

The program is year-round and is a five-year commitment. There is a community service component as well as recreational facilities housed in a 65,000 square foot building.

Jackson was one of three children raised by a single mother in the inner city and was surrounded by poverty.

"We were poor, but we didn't have a spirit of poverty," he said. "Those who have a spirit of poverty say this is all right to be right here where I am, doing nothing more than I'm doing. My mother worked two jobs to feed us while she went to nursing school. She held education as the highest priority for us, even when it was our own highest priority."

He encouraged teachers in the audience to "be very much aware that positive conversation with your students, that positive reinforcement, is crucial to their success."

He spoke of his third-grade teacher who encouraged his mother to have him repeat third grade because of his sub-par reading level.

"My friends teased me about repeating third grade and I said, 'no, I just red-shirted third grade.' "

Now, he said, he appreciates the difference that year made in how he viewed his education.

His spoke of a high school English teacher who "made me love things I thought I'd never love, like Shakespeare and poetry."

He had coaches who impacted him positively, too, beginning in little league. He told of "Coach Ed" whose team never lost a game in three years.

"That man made me feel like I belonged right there on that team and that my contribution was vastly important," he said. "He talked to us about 20 minutes about life stuff before every single practice, and I value that now."

In college at the University of Oklahoma, he developed a strong bond with head coach Barry Switzer, "a true player's coach."

"He was the first man in my life who ever told me he loved me and, gosh, that was so important to me," Jackson said. "I took all these examples of the love and compassion I'd been shown and it helped me determine exactly what kind of administrators I wanted at PARK."

Florence Middle School reading teacher Judy Giddy listened intently to Jackson and his challenge to the teachers to reach out to the seemingly lost causes "who come packaged as your students."

"I firmly believe it starts with the teacher and his/her attitude," she said. "We have to help these kids see that they're good, worthwhile people and are capable of good things."

Jackson encouraged the teachers to not be frustrated by their students.

"They're 16 years old, of course they're going to say and do some crazy stuff," Jackson said. "But the fact is, they have only 16 years of knowledge from which to draw. I'd like to know who the psychological idiot was who said 'let kids figure out their own way.' You have to set the expectations for them because if it's left up to the kids, the (expectations) will never be high enough for them to reach success."

Lisa Singleton-Rickman can be reached at 740-5735 or lisa.singleton-rickman@timesdaily.com