In the United States, approximately 1 in 4 children live in homes without a biological, step, or adoptive father, with nearly 18.5 million children experiencing fatherlessness. This statistic is associated with various adverse outcomes, including higher rates of poverty, behavioral problems, and involvement in the juvenile justice system, especially for young men. However, one administrator at Brandon Middle School provides a helping hand with the assistance of community volunteers to young men as they enter adolescence.
Jacob Veenstra, assistant principal at Brandon Middle School, brought REAL Man Mentoring to campus, which he first organized while working with Clinton Public School District.
REAL Man is an acronym that stands for Respect everyone, Especially women, Always do the right thing, and Live a life that matters.
While Veenstra brought this program to two different public schools in Mississippi, he didn’t create it. Coach Frank DiCocco created the REAL Man Program for Division One athletes. Coach DiCocco recognized that he had an opportunity to impart valuable life lessons to the young men he coached and believed that you could help raise the quality of this world when you help raise the quality of the individuals in it.
“An administrator and I started talking about the needs we saw in our school. We started looking at behavior logs and academic records and noticed a trend,” shared Veenstra. “We noticed that some of our young men struggling in different areas came from fatherless homes or homes where the parents needed extra support with the student.”
Veenstra drafted a letter and sent it home to the boys identified, offering them the opportunity to join a weekly group called REAL Man. Parents or caregivers decide if it is a good fit for their students. However, once the students started coming to the weekly meetings and returning to their classrooms to share the information, other students’ parents reached out to Veenstra, requesting their sons have the same opportunity to have men talking to their students about real life. The group has grown.
Each week, seventy-two 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade boys at Brandon Middle School get invited to the library to learn about one of the aspects of REAL and hear it broken down and how it can apply to their daily lives.
“Sometimes we break away from the library and have fun learning things like how to change a tire,” shared Veenstra. “But the door is always open for those opportunities for our volunteer men to spark real-life conversations with the young men.”
Veenstra relies on the help of the greater community to make this program a success.
“We couldn’t achieve this without the help of local churches and businesses donating breakfast,” explained Veenstra. “And retired professionals, youth pastors, and other community men willing to donate their time just to sit, get to know, and mentor these young men.”
The success of the REAL Man program is subtle but significant.
“We hear from teachers and parents all the time about the smallest improvements,” shared Veenstra. “Grades improve, behavior in and out of the classroom improves, their relationships with their peers improve. So we keep meeting.”
Coach DiCocco designed the character-education curriculum for students of all ages. It was developed for and implemented by the National Football League’s Youth Impact Program with the intent of helping to shape middle school, high school, and college-aged students by promoting respect, integrity, courage, and honor. The REAL Man Program has 20 lesson plans designed to help today’s youth reach their full potential and give them a stronger foundation in dealing with right and wrong. Athletic programs, schools, and youth development organizations nationwide have used this program. You can learn more about the REAL Man Program at the hopefoundation.us/the-real-man-program/
*Photos are courtesy of Brandon Middle School
