Salute to Excellence speaker educates attendees
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
“The school has to become a community where children feel like they belong,” said Dr. James P. Comer, professor of child psychiatry at Yale University and founder and chairman of the School Development Program at Yale, when giving his keynote speech at the 2005 Salute to Excellence in Education Scholarship and Awards banquet held Friday at America’s Center.
“Many children are labeled as bad,” Comer continued, “but many are simply underdeveloped, and if their development is supported then they can learn and achieve on a high level.”
Comer is a staunch advocate for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. While others may dismiss those children as failures, Comer attests that these children can learn just as well as others if given the necessary tools.
“These kids can learn. And if we have a commitment to excellence, these kids will learn,” Comer said.
“We can’t blame it on poverty or say teachers don’t care. We have to find a way to create the conditions that will make it possible for our children to achieve on a high level.”
Comer knows that of which he speaks. He grew up in an economically disadvantaged background in East Chicago, Indiana. His father only completed a sixth-grade education. His mother worked as a domestic and couldn’t read or write, but always said the way to a better life was through education. She ran away from home at the age of 16 in a desperate effort to pursue an education, as Comer writes in his 1989 book Maggie’s American Dream.
Although Comer’s mother was not successful in achieving her own educational goals, she worked hard to ensure that her own children had the opportunity she found so elusive. Eventually she and her husband sent all five of their children to a college for a total of 13 degrees.
Comer earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and completed an M.D. in 1960 at Howard University College of Medicine. He earned a master’s in public health degree in 1964 from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
In 1968, Comer developed an educational framework for inner-city schools known as the Comer Process. To date, it has been implemented in more than 600 schools in 82 school districts across 26 states. The School Development Program at the Yale Child Study Center is tasked with implementing the process in schools.
Comer also received training at the Yale School of Medicine, the Yale Child Study Center and the Hillcrest Children’s Center in Washington, D.C. He
has been a professor of child psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine since 1976.
In addition to his teaching duties, Comer has written 10 books on education and child psychiatry, including his most recent project, released in 2004, Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad, while working to ensure that the nation’s most underprivileged students are given the tools they need to succeed.
At Friday’s banquet, Comer congratulated the 2005 Salute to Excellence in Education honorees on their own success in the classroom and the community.
“What the honorees have done should be going on all across America. We need to change how we prepare teachers so that they all understand the development of children,” Comer said.
“It’s more than academic learning; it’s life development. All children can learn. The community must come together to support school systems, or they will fail. If you can make things happen here, you can motivate people all over the country.”
For more information on the Comer Process, visit info.med.yale.edu/comer or call (203)-737.1020.
