Power Monday Meeting Case Study

The principal began by establishing Power Mondays. Every Monday, all male students were required to report to school in professional business attire. This meant shirt, tie, slacks, shoes, and a belt. Now that the students looked professional, they wanted them to feel professional as well. Each Monday morning, right after the morning announcements, the principal would take the entire 6-8 grade level of male students to the cafeteria, where they participated in a presentation and discussion led by one or more male staff members, and men from the community whom they had recruited to be a part of the program. Incidentally, school staff participants do not have to be teachers; some of the strongest presenters were custodial and security staff members. At the Power Monday meetings, they discussed a wide range of topics that were vitally important to the black male students’ growth and development; entrepreneurship,
This was vital because so many of the students were unaware that they were the descendants of greatness. Professor Maulana Karenga (1982), the creator of Kwanzaa, wrote “History gives blacks an understanding of themselves by suggesting possibilities of future national and world achievement based on what they have achieved in the past” (p. 49). Power Monday meetings were stimulating, and the students looked forward to them every week. They particularly liked the diversity of speakers that was brought to the meetings. They brought in men from all walks of life—from professional men to those recently released from prison. Each one had a story to tell that could empower the students. The men who were successful shared what they did to get to where they were, including mistakes they had made and overcome; the men coming out of prison shared how their failure to take education seriously put them on a path of poor decision making and