MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — School may be out of session, but that isn’t stopping a group of young men from learning what it takes to become a successful educator.

Minority high school students with an interest in becoming teachers are attending the Rising MISTER Academy on the Georgia College campus this week. The immersive experience is administered by the GC Call Me MISTER (Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) program, which is aimed at getting African American and other minority males into the teaching profession. The academy also serves as a recruiting tool for Call Me MISTER and Georgia College.

“I just want them to have an open mind toward education because most black youth don’t really see that this is a career they could do,” said rising GC senior Jerome Brown, camp coordinator and current MISTER. “They see all the other careers that are stereotypically for black men, but this is one you don’t usually see. So I want to expose them to something that they rarely get to see.”

Students learn tools essential to those in teaching careers like ethics and creating lesson plans. Speakers with years of experience in education tell their stories and also answer questions raised by the young men. Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Dr. Noris Price and Early College Director Dr. Runee Sallad were just a couple of guests lined up throughout the week. Before leaving at the week’s conclusion the future educators stand at the front of a classroom full of their peers to see what it’s like firsthand to lead students.

“It’s been a pretty great experience so far,” said Isaac Crabtree on the second full day, a rising sophomore from Bibb County. “It’s nice to see people taking into account the diversity within school systems. Our administrator, Emmanuel Little, puts things into perspective really well and helps us understand more what it’s actually like to run your own classroom as well as what it’s going to take for us to become teachers.”

The Rising MISTER Academy is in its third year at Georgia College, serving rising 10th- through 12th grade students from Baldwin, Bibb, Putnam, Twiggs, Wilkinson, Johnson and Chatham county schools. The entire GC MISTER program is under the direction of Emmanuel Little who spends a significant amount of time on the job recruiting students for both the college and high school programs.

A new and important wrinkle has been added to the summer academy this time around as this is the first time in three years that students have been able to spend the night on campus. In previous years the young men came and left each day, which really decreased the program’s reach. Now they really get to experience what living on a college campus is like for an extended amount of time. After a full day of listening to speakers and asking questions at panels they all head back to Bell Hall to relax and just hang out with one another. There’s nothing like a little friendly competition to break the ice between strangers, and that’s what has been going on in the basement of the GC dormitory each evening, along with some lighthearted trash talk.

“That’s when we really make connections with each other,” said Xzavier Mitchell, a rising sophomore at Georgia College Early College. “We’ve gotten to know one another through playing games together. When we first got here Sunday everybody was quiet. We knew each other, but everybody was just kind of uptight. Then we got down to the basement and started shooting pool, playing ping pong, and watching the NBA Finals and made more connections.”

Brown, the coordinator for the week, said it’s a great experience for the young men.

“It’s really good because it gives them the opportunity to work inside the classroom and outside the classroom,” he said on the program’s new overnight status. “They’re also building that feeling of community that we want in the program.”

Many of the students are still narrowing down their options on what college to attend after high school graduation. Four said earlier this week that Georgia College was on their short list of finalists. Not all of them necessarily want to become teachers either, but said the academy is a great way to broaden their horizons and widen their skill sets for the future.

“I teach Hebrew at my synagogue as a part-time job,” Crabtree said. “That sort of got me invested in how important of a job teaching is. I thought maybe somewhere along the line I would combine the two (political science and teaching) and become a political science professor.”

“Throughout last school year I mentored some of my peers in math and I got a lot of praise from my teachers and my principal,” added Javin Wiggins, an Early College student from Putnam County. “I figured if I’m good at it I might as well make it an option as a career and try to sharpen my skills at it.”

As for what the students take away from the Rising MISTER Academy, rising junior Rubin Pyatt expressed it best saying, “I’ve learned that you don’t have to teach in a classroom. As long as you teach somebody, give somebody some praise, or help somebody become better — that’s really my definition of teaching.”