Men's Stories

Wilburn Campbell's seen it all, the then and the now at Albany State University.

He remembers when Peace Hall was a condemned building ... when a city street ran through the middle of campus ... when "shotgun houses" were located at the southern end of the current campus ... when Caroline Hall was more than a symbolic chimney ... when the campus was inundated with the flood waters of the adjacent Flint River ...

A lot of stuff happens in 40 years.

I am a teacher. In 1972, I began my career teaching 5th- and 6th-grade social studies in the Midwest where, exactly 20 years before, I had started kindergarten. I was part of the Boomer generation that hit the schools in crushing numbers just after the war. From 1941 to 1945, many of our fathers were occupied with fighting the war in Europe and Asia. When they returned, they became occupied with families-making them. Like a junior Invasion of Normandy, wave after wave of 5-year-olds like me descended on the schools armed with crayons, Big Red tablets, and kindergarten nap mats.

Dr. Asa G. Hilliard III is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education. A teacher, psychologist, and historian, he began his career in the Denver Public Schools. He earned a B.A. in Educational Psychology, M.A. in Counseling, and Ed.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver, where he also taught in the College of Education and in the Philosophy colloquium of the Centennial Scholars Honors Program.

[MenTeach: Roger is co-publisher of the magazine Child Care Information Exchange and serves on the World Forum Foundation that is sponsoring the Men in Early Childhood Education Working Forum.]

How did you get started in this profession?

The school that Mike Frastacky built has seven sturdy buildings with galvanized steel roofs and precise orange framing, surrounded by the barren mountains of northern Afghanistan's Baghlan province.

The children laughing in the playground walk here each morning from 10 villages. Enrolment is almost 700, depending on whether the rivers are swollen or the wheat and rice needs harvesting. More than half of the students are girls.