WWW.SHAKER.LIFE | FALL 2019 37
MAC
Scholars Today
When McGovern retired last year,
Nathaniel Reese, a long-time Woodbury
teacher and Woodbury MAC Scholars
advisor, was chosen to continue the
program alongside McIntyre. In his
first year, the program was expanded
to all Shaker Heights Schools buildings.
While MAC Scholars was already
available for students in Grades 5-12,
it had only been offered to elementary
students at Lomond.
“The idea of being a good student,
a good citizen, and to understand what
it means to have ambition and goals
needs to start early,” Reese says. “And
what we found was that at the lower
levels, participation is driven by positive
peer pressure. The kids see their peers
becoming part of a special group and
then they start asking the teachers how
they can become involved.”
At the elementary schools, teachers
recommend students whom they believe
would benefit from participation,
both socially and academically. Mercer
second grade teacher Derek White (who
is a 1989 graduate of Shaker Heights
High School) advises the Mercer MAC
Scholars and says the progress he saw in
his students during the program’s first
year there was remarkable.
“At this age, being a part of a group
and knowing that you’re with other
kids your age and that it doesn’t have
to do with a sport or being on a team, is
something that’s different and exciting
for most of the boys,” White says. “By the
end of the year, these kids were leaders
and they were consistently making good
choices in the classroom.”
MAC Scholars meetings are studentdriven
at the elementary schools, just
as they are at the upper levels. “At the
beginning of the year, we outline what
we’re going to talk about,” says Ray
Ratcliffe, a Lomond paraprofessional
and Class of 2002 alum who advises the
Lomond MAC Scholars. “We give the
young men the opportunity to tell us
what they want to talk about because we
want them to take ownership.”
MAC
Moving Forward
This school year, MAC Scholars
welcomed nearly 30 students into the
High School with a B average or higher,
its largest-ever incoming group and
evidence that the program is making a
difference at an earlier age. In addition,
the number of Scholar leaders (the
senior group) grew from 12 last year
to 24 this year. Last year District-wide,
MAC Scholar participation from grades
3-12 included nearly 200 students.
McIntyre, who currently advises
students at the High School and at the
Middle School, is optimistic about the
program’s growth and impact it has on
students. “It amazes me how these young
men are able to continue doing what
they’re doing, given what they face as
African American males in our country
every day,” he says. “But at its heart, MAC
Scholars has always been about giving
back while moving forward. The content
is always secondary and the relationships
are primary. After all, if we don’t build
relationships, then we’ll never know how
smart these young men really are.”
Thanks to a successful reunion this
year, McGovern, through the Shaker
Schools Foundation McGovern Family
Fund, will continue hosting MAC Scholar
reunions annually (next year’s reunion
is scheduled for June 13, 2020).
“We want to help build a network of
Scholars because they’re in key leadership
positions all over the country,” she says.
“And we want to continue to share our
story so that students will know where
the MAC Scholars Program came from
and where we are today.” SL
Ratcliffe’s son Michael, who attended
Fernway, spent years at Lomond
watching his dad lead the Scholars there.
He couldn’t wait to join when he entered
Woodbury last year. “It was so interesting
to watch the kids at Lomond who were
about my age talking together and doing
cool projects,” Michael remembers. “MAC
Scholars has taught me how to be a
gentleman and how to be a young adult.
And I know that I have to keep my grades
up because if I don’t, that could affect
whether I get to go on a field trip now, or
play sports in high school, or whether I
can get into a good college.”
Khalil Abdullah, a Class of
2019 MAC Scholar who received an
International Baccalaureate Diploma,
is currently a freshman at Vanderbilt
University and plans to study civil
engineering. Like Michael, he was
invited to join MAC Scholars as a fifth
grade student at Woodbury.
“It was advertised as a group
for high-achieving African American
students and I wanted to be a part of
that. It made me feel that what I’d done
so far in academics was validated,” he
says. “MAC Scholars was so valuable to
me because you have upper-classmen
talking to the under-classmen, not just
about school, but about black history,
going on job interviews and other issues
that are relevant to us. It’s more of a big
brother relationship where, as Scholars,
we could understand what it was like
to be in Potential Scholars’ shoes while
showing them what they needed to do to
be in ours.”
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