Quashon Mayes knows, better than most people, that finding your ideal profession isn’t necessarily a straight line. As an aspiring professional football player, becoming a classroom teacher in Camden wasn’t on his short list of career highlights. Yet now, especially after returning from a “Convening” hosted by the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED), a non-profit dedicated to rebuilding the Black teacher pipeline, he is more certain than ever that the classroom is where he belongs.

Mayes, 31, is an education paraprofessional at Hope Community Charter School and will soon earn his teaching degree.. He is also one of the few Black educators in the state: According to a new report from the National Council of Teacher Quality, only 6.5% of New Jersey’s educators are Black, down from 8.6% ten years ago despite mountains of research that show “teachers of color produce additional positive academic, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes for all students, regardless of race” and Black boys who have at least one Black teacher are up to 39% less likely to drop out of school and 18% less likely to be identified as special education students. 

How did Mayes, a former football star, find himself at a Camden public charter school? What motivates him? What was so important about his attendance (facilitated by the Camden Education Fund) at last November’s CBED conference in Philadelphia?

Let’s start with Mayes’s mom.

When Mayes, a Camden native, was in fourth-grade at a local Camden district school, he joined the middle school football team. (He was big for his age.) After the first practice he wanted to quit but his mother said, “you made a commitment— you have to play through the first season.” By the end of the season  he knew he loved the game and, importantly, he loved to learn. “Once I learned what I was doing,” he explained in an interview with NJ Education Report, “I loved it even more.” He was so successful that, while he was a high school student at Brimm Medical Arts High School, a small district school,  he played on the Camden High School football team, was named captain, and was recruited to attend Albright College in Pennsylvania and play for the Albright Lions.  “I was three-time all-conference, I had a high GPA, and I kept on climbing the ropes. Then in my senior year [at Albright] I made the Buffalo Bills football team!” Mayes was headed for the big leagues.

But in 2015, his senior year of college, he was in a serious car accident. He broke his neck, hip, and nose and started having seizures. There was a long stint in rehab. Mayes’s football career was over. “I was always an athlete,” he explained. “Now I was back in the city in a bad place.”

As Mayes recovered, he started coaching football for Camden high school students and realized he “liked being around young people sharing skills and knowledge, inspiring them.” This was his entry into teaching. “When I was in high school, no one ever led me to the right places,” he recalled thinking. “I can do that for these kids.”

Mayes had never gotten his college diploma because Albright, he said, wouldn’t release his transcript until he paid outstanding fees. He applied to Hope Community Charter School to be a janitor but an administrator there, Tracy Foedisch, told him, “I think you are suitable for a classroom.” He had never thought of himself as an educator: “I didn’t realize I was fit for this position. Someone else recognized this in me. That is so important!” In 2017 he started work as a paraprofessional and will soon graduate from Gateway U, a non-profit partially funded by Camden Education Fund that offers adult students accessible alternative pathways to teaching and other careers, the same route taken by Travis Elliott, recently profiled here. Next year, after Mayes earns his teacher certification, he will be an eighth-grade teacher at Hope, as well as the school’s football coach.

While he was a defensive tackle on a college team with a ticket to the big leagues, Mayes’s game plan didn’t include a career as an educator. Now he is intent on “leading students to the right places” and helping them recognize their talents, just like Foedisch did for him, intending to “help them bridge that mental aspect so they’re successful not just in athletics but in academics” and build up their “mental strength.” At the Center for Black Educator Development Convening, he discovered kindred partners. “I’m in the room with people regardless of race,” he says, “and we’re trying to solve a problem, retaining Black male educators. None of us were strangers, we know each other, we’re all trying to create a safe, nurturing space so our students can learn about the world and be successful.” Mayes believes that at Hope Community Charter School he and his colleagues will realize that goal.