Three strikes: Crime, poverty and racism. These are some of the biggest barriers that our Ambassadors face on any given day in their lives. Our job is to not only give them the tools to face these obstacles, but the guidance to lead them through the obstacles. Youth today need to be taught about the social and emotional learning (SEL) capacities needed to survive life’s ups and downs and then they need programs to help them develop these capacities.

At L.E.A.D., our mission has been to emphasize the importance of SEL. I like to compare SELs to apps on a smartphone. A smartphone without apps is not very useful. It is the same for us—a leadership program without the proper components is not helpful. That is why we design our programming to help our Ambassadors train their decision making muscles – so they have the capacity to make the right decisions at the right time. Most of our Ambassadors live at or below the poverty level, so poor decision making in even the most minor decision in life could mean a major setback.

For the Ambassadors we serve who aren’t living at the financial poverty line, they still are struggling with being a teenager and the negative peer pressure that comes along with the territory—things like doing drugs, consuming alcohol and having sex.

One of the most valuable SEL capacities that our boys need the most is social connection. The Atlanta Public Schools’ (APS) mission is that every student will graduate ready for college, career and life through a caring culture of equity, trust and collaboration. It is designed to be a high-performing school district where students love to learn, educators love to inspire, families love to engage and the community trusts that the system works.

This sounds excellent, but without strong and reliable social connections, it can be nearly impossible for Black boys who live in poverty to get an education from failing schools to achieve their dreams. And to be clear, I’m not using failing schools as a total indictment on teachers. There are bad actors in every industry. There are far too many policies that set the stage for failing schools that need to be addressed firstly and immediately.

The importance of SEL is not exclusive to youth. As the chief visionary officer (CVO) of L.E.A.D., I am still working on SEL development.. The SEL capacity that I’m currently working on is social skills. Specifically, I am working at having and maintaining a sense of patience with others.

Both of my parents were young when I was born. They were hardworking and loving; however, we were financially poor and lived in a community with people struggling with the same fate. Eventually, we made it out of poverty and progressed to a working-class lifestyle before I graduated from high school.

Today, I enjoy a middle-class lifestyle and spend most of my days serving Black boys, who like me as a youth, are living at or below the poverty line.

I struggle with patience for our Ambassadors, because I see their potential and want to see their full development right now, which is unfair. I did not get to a place of maturation just because of hope and prayer. It took hard work and people being empathetic and patient with me. I know the bad decisions I’ve made in life and I want them to learn the bad lessons from me instead of having to experience the negative consequences themselves.

Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone. Empathy is suffering with someone because of a shared experience, so I have to remind myself that I am still becoming, and God allows me to coach others to become.

So as I work hard to change and grow, I challenge other youth development nonprofit leaders, to do the same. If an organization is not solving problems, it should join forces with an organization that is.

I am looking forward to the day that L.E.A.D. no longer needs to exist because sports are being used intentionally by APS – as co-curricular and not extracurricular – to develop educators, coaches, city council members, politicians, business owners, executives, pastors, etc. If that were happening, we would not exist. When it happens, we will stop existing.

Photo credit: Brad Jubin

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on the importance of giving today’s inner city youth the tools they need to be ready for college, career and life. Link for part 1

How L.E.A.D. is getting Black boys ready for life’s challenges

To help get youth ready for the road ahead, L.E.A.D. (Launch, Expose, Advise, Direct) partners with Atlanta Public Schools (APS) to recruit Ambassadors for our programs. With an army of great educators, facilities and state of the art technology, students in the inner-city communities of Atlanta have an awesome opportunity to enhance their educational experience.

At L.E.A.D., we have made it our mission to bolster the social and emotional learning (SEL) capacities that our youth inherently have at varying levels. To help do that, we teach SEL development by first speaking this language to our Ambassadors and Junior Ambassadors. This helps them understand what SEL is and why it is important.

To succeed, students must develop an awareness of SEL capacities before they can understand and develop them. When they understand it, they win.

That is why sports, and specifically baseball, is such a powerful vehicle for youth development. By way of preparation and competition, sports offer many opportunities to practice something and test it out through healthy stress and pressure.

When our metrics show that SEL development is low or not on track, we not only use the data to evaluate our youth, but also to evaluate our programming. The key is to assess whether we are the problem, and if we are, we must make the proper adjustments in our programming—just like in sports.

Likewise, if our assessment shows our Ambassadors are the issue, we continue to train and practice through leadership development. They must continue to get opportunities to fail because overcoming failures while under stress is how you develop skills.

We liken L.E.A.D to the Navy SEALs. Just like the highly trained and efficient SEALs, we have high standards, clear expectations and swift accountability. These are the standards we use when teaching SEL capacities. We remain intentional about our Ambassadors getting quality, frequent, consistent opportunities to develop SEL capacities.

Developing SEL capacities ensures our Ambassadors can win at the game of life. L.E.A.D. has defined three curveballs that threaten the success of our Ambassadors: crime, poverty and racism. Possessing a high potency of SEL capacities means they have what they need to make better decisions and to position themselves to have viable options for employment/career opportunities.

SEL capacities give our Ambassadors a level of positive consciousness that can hopefully help them defeat the negative threats and impulses that arise daily. The winner between positive consciousness, and negative threats and impulses depends upon which they feed the most. That is why we provide them with high doses of SEL building programming all year long, which has the potential to change them, their families, their communities, their city, our country and our world.

Photo credit: Chase Reichenbach

I was born and raised in Atlanta, and I remember watching the Hawks back in the day on TBS when Dominique Wilkins was our star player and, for a moment, I believed that I could play in the NBA.

I would hang his posters on my wall and close a wire hanger at the top of my bedroom door and work on dunks all night using a sock as a basketball.

He earned the nickname “The Human Highlight Reel” because of his powerful dunks. Make no mistake about it, he was a legit scorer, but he never had enough skilled players around him to get us to the Conference Finals. He did, however, lead us to the Conference Semi-Finals four times.

If the Hawks win tonight against the 76ers, we will advance to the 2021 NBA Conference Finals. I watched the Hawks’ first four games this season and swore on my life that we would go deep in the playoffs. Then they lost game five, and like a fair-weather fan, I bailed on them.

Once they got on a roll mid-March, I was wearing my Hawks gear again, along with my brand new Trae Young x Top Ten High ‘Ice Trae’s.’

Since then, they finished 5th in the Eastern Conference, and they have taught me how to F.I.G.H.T.

Focus

Coaches ask their players to focus all the time, but it’s not something that you can just do. You have to be trained to focus. Focus is a skill, and a skill is something that you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.

Inspire

Motivation is internal, and inspiration is external. The Hawks inspire each other to believe in their own personal skills and trust each other to perform as a team.

Grind

The Urban Dictionary has a great definition of grind. For me, only convicted people can grind. Being convicted moves you to act in a spiritual/soulful way. It’s beyond “putting your mind to it” and “blood, sweat, and tears.”

Hustle

Hustle is the fuel for the grind. To hustle is the ability to make things happen when things are not going your way. It cannot be taught, but it can be caught.

Talk less. Fight more.

Talk is cheap, and everybody can afford it.

My wife, Kelli, and I are the co-founders of L.E.A.D., Inc. (Launch, Expose, Advise, Direct). L.E.A.D. is a 501 (c)3 nonprofit organization operating in Atlanta, Georgia. Through our year-round Pathway2Empowerment, sport-based youth development (SBYD) programming, we inspire and equip Black males with the empowerment they need to live sustainable lives of significance.

Our mission is to empower an at-risk generation to lead and transform their city of Atlanta by using the sport of baseball to teach Black boys how to overcome three curveballs that threaten their success: crime, poverty, and racism.

Our vision is to develop Black boys into Ambassadors who will lead their City of Atlanta to lead the world.

As the Chief Visionary Officer, my job is to be the face of the organization. I cast a vision for us that is so crazy and possibly improbable that people want to join us to help make it become a reality for the betterment of Atlanta, our state, our country, and the world.

Whether the Hawks make it to the Eastern Finals or beyond this year, they have modeled for me the right way to F.I.G.H.T.

Now, if they win it all, I’m going to be decked out in Hawks gear and say that at the beginning of the season, I said a resounding “This Is Our Year!” in my house. 😀

Go Hawks, F.I.G.H.T.✊🏿

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series on the importance of giving today’s inner city kids the tools they need to be ready for college, career and life.

To teach is to provide someone information. To preach is to challenge someone to do something with what they’ve learned, so that the information becomes knowledge-based on experience. To empower is to give someone responsibility and authority.

Our competitive advantage at L.E.A.D. is our ability to empower the Black boys we serve. While there is value in tutoring students in afterschool programs, there is also value in teaching students what’s not being taught in school and providing a safe space to talk about shared issues such as truancy and behavior. L.E.A.D. partners with tAtlanta Public Schools (APS) to recruit our Ambassadors APS has educators, nice buildings and state of the art technology to enhance the educational experience of its students. APS educators are also under tremendous pressure to teach based on what student need to know for standardized tests instead of what students need to know for life. Students need programming that will increase their proficiency in social emotional learning (SEL) skils. As a partner, we feel it’s our responsibility to fill this gap. As leaders who have shared experiences with our Ambassadors, we understand the many personal, social, familial and academic challenges they face every day. Academic rigor is not the answer; fortifying their SEL capacities is.

SEL capacities operate like the engine of a vehicle. They determine how we act. Years ago, SEL was known as “soft skills,” but the capacities that makeup SEL are far from soft. Possessing SEL capacities is not like breathing air. You can live without having many—or even any of them, I suppose. What I know is that it will be hard to live a productive life without a suitable dosage of all of them. After all, being alive and living are two different things.

At L.E.A.D., we recognized the need for SEL development in the Atlanta Public Schools system, and we believe that to partner is to provide what someone needs but does not have. Through our funding partner, Laureus USA, we were able to access a research based SEL tool that helps us develop and measure SEL in the students-athletes we serve..

As I stated earlier, APS has a lot of great educational resources. What it does not have is the time to teach SEL capacities to its students at the level they need it. APS serves approximately 51,000 students, and 80% of them live at or below the poverty level. According to the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, if you’re born in the city of Atlanta, you have about a 4% chance of making it out of poverty in your lifetime. Atlanta is also the No. 1 city in America for racial income inequality.

Understanding these issues and needs, L.E.A.D. spends a lot of time teaching and preaching SEL development to our Ambassadors and empowering them to live out what they are learning. We do this so they can graduate from high school ready for college, career and life.

In my next blog, I will examine some of the innovative ways we develop SEL in our sports-based youth development (SBYD) programming.

Photo credit: Steve West