Helping to Reach New Heights

Maxwell Ayiko Edmonds Drati, a rising senior majoring in Politics and minoring in African American Studies is spending his summer working at USF’s McCarthy Center as an Equity Intern. With a mission to diminish the education gap in San Francisco, Maxwell is dedicated to supporting marginalized communities in the Bay Area. His work at Rosa Parks Elementary School has reinforced the importance of patience, mentorship, and providing socio-emotional support to students, ensuring they have the stability and skills needed to succeed.

Hi, my name is Maxwell Ayiko Edmonds Drati and I’m a rising senior at the University of San Francisco. I’m from Richmond, California and this summer I’m working in the McCarthy Center’s Equity Intern program.

My job is simple, to help diminish the education gap in San Francisco in marginalized communities in the Bay Area. But the road is hard. It requires patience — a commodity human beings often lack. For the American community worker, patience is a skill found in abundance and furthermore is a skill I’ve had to add to my tool box along with many others if I had ever hoped to accomplish what I set out to do. Working at in the Power Scholars Academy site at Rosa Parks Elementary School was like looking in a mirror of what was. Talking with kids that each have their own unique personality and view on the world was refreshing. As a matter fact it was more than refreshing, it was nostalgic. It made me think of all the goofy things my friends and I used to do, and was a reminder of all the goofy drama and fun games we used to play. 

Working here has continued to inspire me to always center the students in everything we do. This isn’t about a statistic. This is about human beings and their lives. Working here is a reminder that the role we as educators play in children’s lives, go beyond teaching them long division and multiplication. It’s being mentors and providing these kids with stability, order, skills and wisdom that they may not get at home and that may not be present in their environment. That’s what support needs to look like when working in under-resourced environments. There are numerous studies that link these realities to negative performance within schools. For example, the Education Resources Information Center notes that, “Schools function best when all students arrive ready to learn and are able to concentrate on instruction (Sørenson and Hallinan 1977). However, many students especially in urban areas, are exposed to environments outside of schools that make it difficult to be fully engaged. Exposure to local neighborhood violence is associated with reductions in test scores and increases in stress, depression, and aggression—all of which can lead to disruptive and distracting behavior in the classroom.” Even if statistics were our only goal, which it’s not, it’s a fact that the skills students need to succeed are socio-emotional ones in addition to academic ones.

In order to solve the education gap we need to do more than fix resource inequity. We need to solve the issue of support inequity (support inequity is when institutions of governance try to solve systemic or interpersonal problems with a band aid solution that often poorly covers all problems effectively) and that’s exactly what we are helping to do as equity interns.

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to work in a program that allows me to give back to communities that often don’t receive the support they deserve. Communities similar in many ways to the one I grew up in for the early part of my life. Watching these kids who were initially hesitant to learn or be engaged, get so excited to show me when they answer a question correctly is heart warming and affirms something for me I always knew. People like us are excited and able to learn, and we can do it extremely effectively when given the necessary support. As I work here for the rest of the summer, I will continue to center the students in everything I do. I will continue to show up at 100% and I will continue to try and come up with innovative solutions to get our students to the heights I know they can achieve.

Learn more about the Equity Interns program here