Reflection: Day two in the Nation’s Capital

Educational Excellence for African Americans

This morning we overslept. We forgot to set our alarms, and we were not used to doing all the walking in D.C. We went down to the lobby to eat a healthy breakfast and caught a cab to the Department of Education. We were on our way to meet Khalilah Harris, the Deputy Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

Before seeing her, we all did jumping jacks in the conference room to clear our minds so we weren’t nervous while we were talking. Ms. Harris, is from Brooklyn, NY and has been an educator for fourteen years. She has a B.S. in Political Science from Morgan State University and a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law. In addition, she  is a doctoral candidate in Education Leadership and Organizational Development at the University of Pennsylvania. Knowing her extensive educational background and always striving for social justice made us very happy that she was the Deputy Director. Not only did her background show promise, her motives did as well. She said to us that her passion is social justice and advancing people of color. These goals help ensure that she will do more than the expected because there is so much work to do. One of the things she shared was that her greatest mistake was not cultivating her talents early, she didn’t like asking for help, and didn’t know her strength and weaknesses. She was smart, but she said that being smart was not enough.

Department of Education

She asked us many questions. We were well prepared because we studied My Brother’s Keeper community engagement across the country. We also discussed why we think there are barriers to success for males of color. In addition, we made some suggestions that Ms. Harris seemed to like. Overall, we felt like we left a really good impression about how EOYDC prepares us for success.  We took a picture with Ms. Harris and then left for our campus tour.

Howard University

At Howard University we were toured by Shakir, Jailyn, Marcus and Stephanie. All of our guides except for Marcus was an EOYDC alumni. Shakir is a freshman who is majoring International Business and Jailyn is a senior majoring in Broadcast Journalism. Lastly, Stephanie is a junior majoring in Biology and Chemistry. As we walked around the campus we learned many facts about Howard University such as, the ratio of women to men is 17 to 1. The buildings were made of brick because, brick last longer in D.C. weather.

In addition, we learned that Biology was the most popular major and the Arts and Sciences is the biggest department. This department has a program where you can get your bachelor’s and M.D. in 5 years. Besides fun facts we learned about the different buildings, like the Founders Library which has a museum inside and multiple floors. After all of this we went inside the dorms and saw what the bedrooms and other rooms looked like. Most of the dorms have only two bedrooms but the dorm we went into had three rooms and each had a sink inside, unfortunately not their own bathroom. The overall experience of touring Howard was better than any college tour I have gone on! There were more people guiding us and they all made the tour exciting. The students included things they did around school and activities they did for fun. More importantly, it was the only college tour that encouraged me to attend the school!

Dinner at Nando’s

For dinner, we met in Chinatown at Nando’s and continued our conversations with the EOYDC alumni. We had Portuguese Chicken, corn on the cob, salad, mashed potatoes, and rice. The food was extremely good especially the mashed potatoes and salad. I never tasted something like Nando’s before. Besides the food we talked about how the alumni plan for success in school. We also talked about EOYDC’s reconstruction and how the mission is the same but the look is so much better. After we were all done, we said our goodbyes and called it a night.

-Barry Brand and Davon Carroll