COBRA Helps Students Focus on Long-Term Success

Dr. Kevin Foster

Patrick Patterson, Principal LBJ High School

When Dr. Kevin Foster and LBJ High School principal Patrick Patterson started their student mentoring project in the fall of 2006, they didn’t anticipate the program would become an integral part of the Austin Independent School District (AISD).

A mere two years later, the Community of Brothers in Revolutionary Alliance (COBRA) is thriving and now has an expanded and formalized partnership between the Institute for Community, University and School Partnerships (ICUSP), of which Foster is director, and AISD.

“Patterson and I started what we thought was going to be a book club at LBJ High School,” says Foster, assistant professor in the College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction. “We started with 12 randomly chosen African American boys and began reading ‘The Spook Who Sat By The Door’ by Sam Greenlee. After a couple of weeks, the number of students who were showing up started to fall.”

Facing this setback, Foster didn’t quit and believes that this actually was a turning point for COBRA. Patterson was able to use Foster's commitment to the program to explain the importance of commitment to the boys in the program.

“I earned some credibility with the principal by sticking it out and that brought us all closer,” says Foster.

In COBRA’s first year, all of its members passed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test except for one, according to Foster. As Foster points out, in terms of demographics, African American boys traditionally have not done well on high-stakes standardized tests.

Objective evidence of COBRA’s success led AISD to invite the program to start chapters in additional high schools, and it now has two chapters at LBJ High School, McCallum High School and Regan High School. Each chapter meets weekly under the guidance of trained facilitators. At gatherings, COBRA members participate in field trips to The University of Texas at Austin, local businesses and leadership events in the community.

“On our field trip to The University of Texas at Austin, we were able to have lunch at the Campus Club,” says Foster. “The boys also were able to visit one of Dr. Jemima Pierre’s African American Studies classes. The thing that influenced them the most and really changed their perspective, though, was attending a Student African American Brotherhood (SAAB) meeting. When they met the men of SAAB, they met these African American males who were making it in life and had a black racial consciousness about them.”

Thereafter, the students insisted on running their meetings like SAAB.

“For them,” says Foster, “these men represent what they strive to be. COBRA has become a part of their lives because someone is committed to helping them and the boys have helped shape what the program looks like today.”

The growth of COBRA eventually led to the birth of Verbally Outspoken Individuals Creating Empowered Sistas (VOICES), an academic leadership program for girls that started at McCallum High School in 2008. The program has over 50 girls.

The ICUSP has also created Young Knights, a mentoring program for middle school boys that is designed to promote achievement, academic engagement, individual and collective responsibility, intercultural communication, maturity in conflict resolution and control in building self-identity.

“We’ve assigned facilitators who are current University of Texas at Austin undergraduate or graduate students, or community members, to get to know these middle school kids,” says Foster. “We are trying to transform what’s happening in the schools in terms of how kids and adults relate to one another.”

COBRA tenets that encourage personal growth in the students are academic engagement, peers supporting peers, inter-group solidarity, conflict resolution, critical consciousness and self-definition.

In COBRA meetings, Foster shows his students the range of career possibilities, and through a wide range of age-relevant activities, the students are able to reflect on their personal growth goals and work toward getting a higher education.

COBRA has recruited over 20 community members and University of Texas at Austin faculty and students. It also has teamed up with university student organizations like SAAB and Omega Delta Phi, a prominent Latino fraternity, to facilitate mentoring programs at the middle school and high school levels. Additionally, COBRA members serve as peer mentors to younger students and engage in community service projects.

“When it comes to a future for African American youth, the media portrays the unholy trinity,” says Foster, “which is to become an athlete, entertainer or criminal. COBRA strives to break down that notion. We want to show these boys that there is an alternative and to stress the importance of higher education.

“We see a lot of Latino boys dropping out early to get jobs and make money. They don’t see the long term consequences - instead they see an immediate need because of their life circumstances. We want to change that.”

For more information on Dr. Kevin Foster and COBRA, please visit www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/icusp/cobra.php.

—Wunmi Bakare, Intern – Office of the Vice President for Public Affairs, 512-232-3910