Sarah Harris has yet to set foot in the classroom that will become hers at Crouse Community Learning Center in Akron this fall, but she’s already mapping out how she will decorate it.
A “cozy corner,” the future second grade teacher said, is essential. It will have a bean bag chair, some stuffies, fidget spinners, books and anything else she can find that might help give her students some peace or a way to calm down in the middle of their day.
“I think that a calming corner is very important for a classroom, just to help with the kids’ emotions, or maybe their sensory needs,” Harris said.
She has been dreaming about her first classroom as an APS teacher since she was an APS student herself.
Harris said she always knew she wanted to be a teacher, and to come back to Akron after college and teach students just like herself.
A full-ride scholarship at the University of Akron helped make that dream come true.
Harris is the first recipient of the university’s Harrington Scholarship, part of the M. W. Harrington Education Professorship Fund in Education, to fulfill the scholarship’s lofty goal: take a former APS student, give them a full scholarship to earn a teaching degree, and then put them back in an Akron classroom. The 2021 Firestone CLC graduate is now a 2025 University of Akron graduate, and she will begin teaching at Crouse this fall.
Students who receive the scholarship have to commit to teaching four years in an APS classroom. Harris said for her, that was never a limitation. It was what she wanted to do.
“I knew that I was ready to give my all back into the district,” she said.
The Harrington Scholarship is a partnership between Akron’s two biggest educational institutions. Larry Johnson, the executive director of middle schools in APS who helped create the scholarship in his former role as head of recruitment, said it represents a larger effort to increase the pipeline of Akron students back into Akron classrooms as teachers.
“You understand what it means to be an Akron Public Schools student,” Johnson said. “And it’s less of a job and more of a calling. I think being a teacher is a little bit of that. But when you are a former Akron Public Schools student, you are now turning back to give to the community that made you.”
Karen Plaster, professor of practice in the university’s LeBron James Family Foundation School of Education, said the panel that chooses students for the scholarship looks for someone “really engaged in education, who wants to be a teacher, someone who wants to give back to their community.”
“But we also wanted to see that kind of spark, that someone who’s excited about education and excited about becoming a teacher and working with students,” she said. “And I think Sarah really exemplifies that.”
Plaster said Harris has also mentored other students in the school of education while she has been at the university, in a way paying her scholarship forward.
“They’re not just taking advantage of the scholarship, but they’re also helping other people become successful through their education,” she said.
The scholarship is open to any APS student who wants to become a teacher. One to two students have been chosen each year.
Johnson said the panel looks for students who are not just good students but good learners who can work through problems. For students who receive the full scholarship, he said, the change could be “generational.”
“Every time a student from Akron graduates on a full-ride scholarship and can graduate and work debt free, that could be even more generationally freeing,” he said.
While the scholarship is not limited to minority students, Johnson said the district does see recruiting APS students to come back and teach as a way to increase the numbers of minority teachers in Akron classrooms.
Harris, who is Black, said she hadn’t thought about it much, but when she looks back, she only had one Black classroom teacher her entire time in Akron schools. She attended the Miller-South School for the Visual and Performing Arts and Firestone CLC. She did, however, have two Black principals — Johnson, who was then Firestone’s principal, and Dawn Wilson at Miller South.
That meant something to her, she said, especially to see a Black woman in a position of leadership at her school.
“I just always remember how she took her job very seriously,” Harris said. “So, I want to do the same as well.”
Harris said she hopes to connect with all of her students, but knows for Black students, they might relate better to her. She knows maybe that will inspire one of her students to go on to become an Akron teacher.
For any current APS student thinking about becoming a teacher, Harris said she would push them to apply for the Harrington Scholarship and to commit working back in the district. She remembers the impact her own teachers had, and how they made her feel “safe.”
“I just remember how amazing the APS teachers were when I was younger,” she said. “And I just remember that I always wanted to be like them.”
Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.
