Damon Johnson is an all-star. A member of BELL’s team in Baltimore since 2007, he has served as an Enrichment Teacher, Program Manager, Regional Program Manager, and, as of this fall, Director of Field Operations. He has been an outstanding mentor, leader, educator, coach, friend, and partner in public schools across the city. He has transformed the lives of thousands of scholars.
This summer, BELL recognized Damon for his exemplary program leadership with the Peterkin Educational Excellence Award. The award, named after long-standing BELL board member Dr. Robert Peterkin, is given annually to the best of BELL’s Program Managers who display a remarkable commitment to program excellence.
Damon shared some thoughts about his work, his scholars, and his future.
What are you most proud of?
The opportunity to plant that positive seed in scholars.
It’s funny, I run into scholars that I was with my first year at BELL, and some of them are in college. When I see them, they say “the BELL program I was in with you sparked something in me. I’m studying music in college, or studying to be teacher because of the impact that you had in my life.”
I’m most proud of the seeds I’ve been able to plant in young people’s lives and to see some of those seeds grow into productive citizens. And I feel like I’m giving back to the community I came from. I’m a product of Baltimore City Public Schools. If I can give back to where I came from, I’m proud of that.
What brought you to BELL?
I was drawn to the mission of BELL and what the organization represented. Previously, I worked with other after school and summer programs, but they were more about babysitting, with little focus on academics, few thoughtful enrichment offerings – most programs were only about “fun time.” I saw that BELL was bringing a structured curriculum and, that it was trying to do more to change the life trajectory of scholars. That BELL called students “scholars” was something I noticed that really attracted to me.
In 2007, I joined BELL’s team. I was serving as a Music Teacher at Arundel Elementary, and I started a job as an enrichment teacher in BELL Summer.
How did you go from being an Enrichment Teacher to a great Program Manager and member of our Program Team?
That fall, I transferred schools to Cherry Hill Elementary and Middle School, and I left the classroom to become a part of the leadership team at the school. By coincidence or luck, BELL was starting a new after school program at Cherry Hill. The principal invited me to apply to be the BELL program manager, to which I eagerly replied: YES! I became a part-time Program Manager, while working full time at the school. For a couple of years, I led a series of successful after school and summer programs at Cherry Hill.
An opportunity later arose to begin overseeing two program sites – Cherry Hill and Arundel, the two schools I was most familiar with. I was also asked if I wanted to contribute to the training team – to travel around to BELL’s sites around the country, share my experience as a Program Manager, and learn about best practices from other cities and bring them back to Baltimore. After running BELL’s largest summer and after school sites in Baltimore for the past couple of years, this past October I was promoted to Director of Field Operations for the Mid-Atlantic region.
What’s one of the greatest challenges you have faced as a Program Manager, and how did you overcome it?
A few years ago, we started a contract with Baltimore City Public Schools specifically for middle school scholars who were being retained. Upon completion of BELL Summer, these scholars could be recommended for promotion. It was a challenging job, taking scholars from all over the city, sometimes from 20-30 schools, and mixing them all up in one building. And we had to run a tight 5-week program. Our team really embraced the challenge. Those summer programs were the first time some of the scholars experienced the type of structure and support we gave them. For some, it was the first time someone really took the time to help them meet their own social and emotional needs. Our staff, and great tools like the Dare to Be King and Dare to Be Queen curricula by the Urban Leadership Institute, really impacted those scholars.
What advice do you have for program staff?
1. Identify strong staff members – those who aren’t there for a paycheck but who are invested in scholar lives.
2. Have a clear vision and a direct plan that staff buy into. I used to have weekly staff meetings just to share that week’s vision and plan, which laid out what we wanted to get done, what scholars were going to do, and so on.
3. Trust and rely on the strength of your team. They bring wealth of knowledge and experience. Put their strengths and experiences to use and the program will run smoothly.
4. In the classroom, if you don’t have a tight culture and climate, you will have chaos. A clear approach to behavior management approach has to be in place for teaching and learning to be great.
What best practices come into play when you are working with school and community partners?
Go in with an open mind, and first learn the needs of the school and community, and the strengths of the partners. Think about how you can meet some needs of that community even when those needs go further than the academic and enrichment that’s part of the program. What connections do you have that can help meet other school and community needs?
For example, at two schools – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary and Booker T. Washington Middle - we are partners with the University of Maryland School of Social Work. UMD provides social and mental health and physical health services – dental, asthmas, and social workers. Focusing on the whole child, we worked with the school community to figure out how BELL and UMD can best partner to support the school community. Now, BELL delivers after school programming, while scholars receive a snack and supper every day, and families access services for mental health, physical health, and enrichment. We’ve created a whole supportive circle around the child.
What do you want to learn next?
Operating as a Director of Field Operations is new to me, so I want to learn all I can learn. I want to learn how to continue to bring together more resources for scholars in and around Baltimore. I want to learn how to maximize our resources and sustain the work that we’re doing. I want to learn how to better serve our scholars.