Photo by Sarah Pastrana
Technically, the 26 students in the fourth grade at Woodholme Elementary School are reviewing for a math quiz.
But the problems are presented on the board like a game of “Jeopardy!”
“Mixed numbers for 200,” one student chooses.
McKinley Broome flashes the problem on the screen. A minute later, he asks a student to explain how she came up with the solution.
“That’s crazy talk,” Broome says, making her laugh.
The girl continues to puzzle out the answer. Yes, he says, as he leans in and waves encouragement. “Greatest common factor,” another student guesses.
“Is that what you were thinking?” Broome asks the girl.
“Yes,” she says. He smiles approval.
The next question is easier. “3, 2, 1,” he booms. “Show me!”
The students hold up their dry-erase boards. “Looking good everybody,” says Broome. “That’s what I like to see.”
Broome is a unique blend of coach and comic, mentor and salesman, educator and entertainer. He eats lunch with his students every day and plays with them during recess. He composes rap songs for school assemblies. And he frequently turns lessons into games.
“It’s called the Mr. Broome show,” the Baltimore County teacher says. “I tell them their parents pay taxes so that they can see it every day.”
Broome’s performance is earning him high marks both inside and outside his Pikesville classroom. This year, Broome won a Milken Award — a prestigious honor for young teachers with a $25,000 prize.
He also wins high praise from students who clamor to get into his class.
“Mr. Broome lets you learn in fun ways,” says Jada Harris, 9. “Another thing about him — we don’t know what will happen next.”
Broome, 29, just looks like he has a sense of humor. He wears a tie illustrated with books and children. He has a goatee and eyes that seem to smile with him.
Students in his class are automatically part of the “2-1-2 Crew.” (He teaches in Room 212.) He holds “tail-gate parties” for students who have earned an A during the quarter. (He’s never had a student who didn’t earn at least one A in a year.) During their last tail-gate party, the students created homemade bouncy balls.
Broome is big on rewards. He keeps his khaki pants’ pockets full of classroom cash, that students accumulate to earn prizes from the “classroom mall.”
“I tell them at the beginning of the year that our goal is make fourth grade the best possible grade,” Broome says. “I sold them from the beginning.”
Broome also leads the school’s Black Saga team, which focuses on African-American history, and serves as site coordinator, intake counselor and math teacher for a high school GED program.
“I love my job,” he says. “I like eating lunch with the kids and playing with them at recess. We play football. We play cards… You get an idea of what they’ll respond to.”
A Calvert County native, Broome began to think about teaching while he was in high school. A guidance counselor helped find him a scholarship from Salisbury University for teaching.
He also tried substitute teaching — something Broome recommends for aspiring teachers. His first day as substitute, in a kindergarten classroom, was also his worst experience teaching.
“One little girl literally cried the entire day. Until I tied her shoes, just before she got on the bus,” says Broome. “Then, she stopped.”
“I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t for me,’ ” Broome recalls.
Fortunately, his next day was better.
Broome began teaching full time in the winter of 2005 as part of the “Great Beginnings” program, which allows first-time teachers to begin mid-year and work with another teacher. He got his own class in the fall of 2005 when Woodholme Elementary School opened.
“He’s honed his craft here,” says principal Maralee Clark, who hired Broome on the spot after she saw him teach.
“You can tell he has rapport with the kids. You can see it. You can feel it,” Clark says. “They’re hanging on his every word. He’s a kid magnet.”
The awards came right away. He was chosen as Baltimore County’s Rookie of the Year. And he’s been a finalist for Teacher of the Year.
But the Milken Award, which Teacher Magazine once called “The Oscars of Teaching,” was a surprise to Broome. He knew that the county and state superintendents were coming to the school one day last January and that his students would be performing. When they announced that they were there to honor a teacher, Broome says he was mentally trying to figure out what to say to his kids if he wasn’t chosen.
“I just knew they’d be disappointed,” he says. “They were already chanting my name.”
Broome has not decided how to spend his prize money, though he plans to splurge from time to time with the interest that accumulates.
In the fall, he’ll go back to working on his masters in school administration. (He’s currently taking a year off from studies at Goucher University.)
One day, he’d like to work in administration and thinks he might like to try working in a charter school where there’s less emphasis on standardized testing.
But, Broome says, because of his school’s flexible administration, he already enjoys freedoms that many teachers do not have. For example, he has a student-led classroom, which works a bit like a democracy with elected student leaders. The format also involves the students in discipline and administrative issues.
Even lessons frequently evolve as a conversation, says Broome.
When he can, Broome sits next to students at their desks, giving one-on-one instruction while the rest of the class works in groups — well, until inevitably the conversations get too loud.
“Strike 1,” Broome announces. “Strike 2.”
“I think we’re forgetting where we are,” he admonishes.
With that, order is restored.
Outside school, Broome, who is single and has no children of his own, enjoys sports and all kinds of music. (Broome even admits to being a closet country music fan.)
But other than the Ravens and Orioles, Broome won’t admit to having any favorites. “The kids are always trying to get me to tell them my favorite color or food,” he says. “What they really are getting at is: ‘Who’s your favorite student?’ …That’s why I don’t have a favorite anything.”
His students don’t have any such inhibitions.
“He’s my favorite teacher,” says Camron Franklin, 9. “We like to joke around in the middle of work. … Mr. Broome is really fun and creative.”
“Woodholme is Ready!”
© by McKinley Broome
Background Music Produced by www.MyBeatShop.Com/Joshua Diederich
(hook)
When preparing for a test, we’re going to study every night,
The night before, you know we’re going to sleep tight
And in the morning you know we’re going to eat right
Because we’re ready. Woodholme is ready!
Preparing for a test, we’re going to study every night,
The night before, you know we’re going to sleep tight
And in the morning you know we’re going to eat right
Because we’re ready. Woodholme is ready!
(Verse 1)
I’m a smart guy, with some big dreams
See the textbooks, knowledge is the key
Now its test time and it’s all good.
I’ve been preparing for it since the first day of school
My pencil sharpened, nice #2 lead
Moving on now, it’s time to get busy
I know the first thing to do, directions must be read
If not there’s no way I’ll ever get ahead
Now look at all these questions there’s a lot to complete
Just do the easy ones first, I can do those quickly
So I have more time to think about all of the
challenging ones, higher thinking ones
When in this situation, this is what I’ve done,
I would think about it. Take a second
Monitor and clarify if I need. And reevaluate, this is so easy.
(hook)
When preparing for a test, we’re going to study every night,
The night before, you know we’re going to sleep tight
And in the morning you know we’re going to eat right
Because we’re ready. Woodholme is ready!
Preparing for a test, we’re going to study every night,
The night before, you know we’re going to sleep tight
And in the morning you know we’re going to eat right
Because we’re ready. Woodholme is ready!
(Verse 2)
Yeah this is easy, but y’all know that
Because we studied, yeah we had to do that
And there are strategies that we can use to help us
like crossing off choices in multiple choice questions
And it’s the best way to rid of us confusion,
I cross them off, but always with precaution, A nope B nope C
Leaving me with one choice left, it must be D
Now the next one is hard, oh it’s a thinker
I’ll just move on now and come back later
Now it’s time for the BCRs,
first underline the verbs you know what they are
Like compare and contrast, summarize, and describe
Those are the keys to helping you score high
Now putting all those things together and writing neatly
will make my teacher proud and the grading will be easy.
(hook)
When preparing for a test, we’re going to study every night,
The night before, you know we’re going to sleep tight
And in the morning you know we’re going to eat right
Because we’re ready. Woodholme is ready!
Preparing for a test, we’re going to study every night,
The night before, you know we’re going to sleep tight
And in the morning you know we’re going to eat right
Because we’re ready. Woodholme is ready!