MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. In West Baltimore, there's a group of dads who didn't have someone to say happy Father's Day to when they were growing up, and they're bonding over it. It's led them to work extra-hard to strengthen relationships with their own children. Part of that work comes with attending a fatherhood class. The students grew up in poverty and have spent time in and out of the criminal justice system. Shereen Marisol Meraji, from NPR's Code Switch team, recently visited the class.
EDWARD PITCHFORD: You done broke them chains...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: ...From my body and my brain.
PITCHFORD: But you was deaf, dumb and blind.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Till I took back my mind.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, BYLINE: About two-dozen dads - all African-American, all from inner-city Baltimore - start this fatherhood class with a bonding exercise - call and response, where they voice their strengths and goals in unison.
PITCHFORD: Alright, you can have a seat.
MERAJI: This isn't a typical classroom setting. The tables are arranged to face one another. The teachers, like Edward Pitchford, are called fatherhood specialists. They don't lecture at the front, but sit with their students and engage them in discussions based on the curriculum -communicating calmly and effectively with the mother of your children - nurturing your kids, not just paying child support - today, it's looking for work.
PITCHFORD: One of the participants who came through the program - he had a opportunity to get a job making, like, $25 an hour.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Oh God, man.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: Oh, man.
PITCHFORD: And they told him...
(LAUGHTER)
PITCHFORD: ...Listen - listen to me. And they told him he had to cut his locks, and if he cut his locks, this job is secured for him.
MERAJI: And Pitchford goes on to say he refused to cut his dreadlocks and didn't get that job. A young man on one side of the room with locks past his shoulders, nods his head in approval. Another shakes his recently shaved dome and says, he cut his off for a job making a lot less at Burger King to provide for his kids, and he'd do it again.
PITCHFORD: Hold up. Let's read this next one. Let's read the next one - living purposely.
MERAJI: Some of the guys have been coming to this group for years. For them, it's a support network - a safe place to share successes and talk through stumbles. Others are fairly new.
KENNETH EDWARDS: Kenneth Edwards. I have three boys and one girl.
MERAJI: Edwards is 30. He's living with his girlfriend and daughter. His three boys are each from different women, and he wants to be more involved in their lives. That's why he says he's here - to figure out how to do that in the right way. Edwards calls his father...
EDWARDS: ...A holiday dad - come around, you know, birthdays, holidays.
MERAJI: And was raised by his mom in the once notorious Lexington Terrace housing projects.
EDWARDS: This crazy environment with all these drug dealers and people that's using drugs - it's just chaos. There was absolutely no role models - I mean, besides the television?
MERAJI: And he says the television is what provided most of his fatherhood guidance.
EDWARDS: You know, TV dads - "Full House" and "Family Matters." So I try to show them, you know, I can get down on my knees and play with them and stuff like that, so that was kind of helpful - having that image.
JOSEPH JONES: How do you develop behavior, you know, when you don't see it?
MERAJI: Joseph Jones created the Responsible Fatherhood program, and is the president for the Center for Urban Families in West Baltimore. Jones grew up in Baltimore without his dad around and fathered his first son young. He was a drug dealer and addict at the time, but says an inpatient rehab program saved his life. He went to college, and after, spent almost a decade working at the Baltimore City Health Department. There, Jones was charged with getting substance-abusing pregnant women to their doctor's appointments and was often confronted by angry boyfriends.
JONES: Who the hell are you, with my girl? And I said, OK, let me stop everything I'm doing. Let me give him some attention - help him understand that I'm not a threat to him or his girl. And once I got their confidence, they said, you know, we need help.
MERAJI: Jones says he developed this fatherhood program years ago to help those men, who he says, social programs have overlooked in favor of assisting mothers and children. He says he knows two meetings a week isn't a panacea to the problems facing black fathers in Baltimore's inner city, but it's a positive starting point.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...
MERAJI: Back at the fatherhood class, the men end by reciting the serenity prayer and by wishing one another a happy Father's Day.
(APPLAUSE)
MERAJI: Shereen Marisol Meraji, NPR News.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.