Cornell Jordan is an eighth grade English Teacher at Neal Middle School in Durham, NC. He left his job as a campus minister at the University of North Carolina to enter the teaching profession. (Pictured, Roberto Luna, Cornell Jordan)He says, “I just love kids, especially teenagers. That’s my favorite age group, by far. The authenticity, you never have to guess what they’re thinking. It’s just real, there’s not a lot of façade or faking from the kids. ” (Pictured, Lomarion Moss, Cornell Jordan)He loves watching them mature and grow, not just academically, but socially. He gets to be a part of raising their confidence and their expectations for themselves and their lives. (Pictured, Terence Palmer, Davyon Miranda, Omari Smith)Cornell is an enthusiastic personality, and he brings that to the classroom. Each morning in his first core, the students stand and recite the school motto. (Pictured, Brandon Rivera-Cruz, Alex Phelps)Other classes recite. Cornell’s class belts it out like they’re about to enter the battlefield. He demands 113 percent from his class, and has them go again if he doesn’t get it. (Pictured, Jefferson Oliva Meraz, Aaron Clarke III, Lomarion Moss)He got a card from a student that said, “Mr. Jordan, thank you for your enthusiasm in the morning, because it helps to keep me awake and get me energized.” Sometimes to their chagrin. (Pictured, Moises Guerera)Teaching isn’t without its challenges. Cornell’s fourth core, his last class of the day, is much more of a challenge than his other three combined. Many of these kids don’t ready anywhere close to an eighth grade level, which complicates lesson plans. “I have to check for assessments a lot with this group, because if I don’t, they won’t do anything. So in some ways, the fact that I’ve got one kid writing his name on the board and me with a marker in my hand with a board are both of us trying to figure out them being accountable for their own behavior and me holding them accountable for their studies. That’s probably one of the biggest two things I have to do in that class, it can be challenging.” (Pictured, Devin Smith, Omari Smith, Terence Palmer)“A lot of times, (Roberto Luna) will get down on himself early in an assignment. I can just hear him saying, ‘Mr. Jordan, I don’t know. I’m getting confused.’ Yeah. I want to help him. That’s what I feel like. Man I need to help you.”Neal is a primarily black and Hispanic school in Durham. It’s a Title I school, so most of the students there are on free or reduced lunch. But Cornell doesn’t see any unique challenges in the job as compared to a different teacher because he looks like his kids. He says, “I recognize that me being a black teacher, me being a black male teacher, when I go out there and play basketball with them…I know that’s a paradigm breaker. “This is Mr. Jordan, who teaches me English, who tells me how I need to speak everyday and explains all these crazy concepts and has us writing pages on pages, but at the same time, you get him in a different scenario, he’s funny, he’s joking, he’s running around, he’s destroying us in sports, his enthusiasm is crazy.” (Pictured, Eduardo Zagada, Brandon Rivera-Cruz)“I love Edwin in the background, man. He loves to get so excited, you just have to find his moments. He’ll be quiet in class, but he really comes alive when you get to do activities or any kind of movement.” (Pictured, Pamadu Folana, Edwin Bonilla)“I feel more connected to Durham as a whole. This part of Durham definitely gives me a different perspective of what Durham is; the Durham that I knew existed, but I now have faces to go with the stories that you hear in the headlines and things like that. It normalizes a lot of the statistics and things where it’s not just like, ‘Oh no, East Durham is so bad.’ No, East Durham is great. My kids are awesome. They’re the answer to a lot of problems that we have here in Durham. But do people see them that way? Do they view them as a problem that needs to be fixed, or as a solution that can be harnessed?”
