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Return to top"My primary area of interest and concern has always been teaching and educating in the Black community - the teaching of Black children," says Barbara Ford, associate professor of elementary education. That focus continues to be a driving force in her career, as she draws her early experiences working with African-American children to shape a new program to help aspiring teachers do the same.
Ford's interest in working with Black children was forged while she pursued a bachelor's degree in psychology at UCLA. At the time, she was on a path to graduate school in psychology, but an assignment for an anthropology course changed her career track. As part of her course work, Ford tutored children in an elementary school located in South Central Los Angeles. "The experience," she says, "was a good introduction to what's going on in schools- especially those in Black communities."
For the next 14 years, Ford taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District, working mainly in KŠ6 classrooms. Along the way she developed the desire to help teachers become more successful. "I am really interested in how we develop better teachers, and I know that the best way to do that is to develop them from the beginning," she says.
When CSU Fresno offered her a chance to teach in its elementary education credential program, she leapt at the opportunity. She completed a doctorate of education from USC while teaching there.
In 1995, Ford left CSU Fresno for San Francisco State, drawn by the opportunity to work with people and programs whose interests coincided with her own. "I had known of Dr. Wade Nobles' work since I was an undergraduate," she says. "It was a big plus to be able to come and work with him."
Nobles, a professor of Black Studies, is director of the Center for Applied Cultural Studies and Educational Achievement (CACSEA). Under the auspices of the Center, he directs a summer professional development institute for in-service teachers who work with African-American students. The institute focuses on incorporating African and African-American history, language and culture into KŠ12 curriculum. Since coming to SFSU, Ford has worked with Nobles in the summer institute, sharing her knowledge of cur riculum and teaching methods with the participants.
"Barbara Ford is a critical partner in the CACSEA movement," said Wade Nobles. "She brings a wealth of insight and perspective on the merits of Black Studies in elementary education curriculum."
Ford's main project grew out of her interaction with institute participants from George Washington Carver Elementary School, a school in the Bayview-Hunters Point area of San Francisco. "Carver has a long history of achieving with Black children," says Ford. "We're trying to develop a program where a cohort of students who want to focus on teaching African-American children get a chance to work with the children and teachers there."
The program, in its planning stages, will be similar to the College of Education's Muir Alternative Teacher Education Project, in which credential candidates work in John Muir Elementary School's K-5 classrooms in the morning and attend university classes in the afternoon. The George Washington Carver program will follow the same pattern while adding an additional emphasis on serving teachers already working at the school.
"Carver has experienced a lot of transition lately and has a high proportion of new teachers," explains Ford. "In some ways, the credential students and new teachers need a lot of the same things, so we're trying to accommodate both." The new teachers will earn professional development credit by joining the credential students in some of their classes.
Ford says that she hopes to have everything in place to start the program next fall. "We want teacher candidates to not only have real experiences in the classroom, but also be able to develop the theoretical and conceptual knowledge that will help them be successful teachers of African-American children."
-William Morris
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