“If you had told me 9 years ago that Guttman invited me to this Zoom call, I would have never believed it,” grinned Angel Diaz, shaking his head and leaning away from the screen. Assistant Site Director for New York Junior Tennis and Learning program at Bronx Eagle Academy for Young Men, Angel swiveled left to hand a wad of keys on a lanyard to a fellow youth worker colleague. “These guys have it covered while I’m talking to you,” he assured me.
Only thirty minutes earlier, Angel walked up the street from where he went to school, The Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science (AMS) in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, and is now employed as a paraprofessional. “I got pulled to chaperone last-minute for a field trip to Medieval Times,” he explained. “They needed somebody, and I could do it,” he shrugged.
One look at his LinkedIn profile, and you wouldn’t doubt that. This 26 year-old’s Work Experience section takes up two full pages: Paraprofessional, Acting Afterschool Site Director, Activity Specialist for Sports, Group Leader for Afterschool and Summer Camps, Youth Worker, Guttman Black Male Initiative Program Coordinator, DOE Expanded Success Initiative Program Coordinator… “Look,“ he said, “If it’s in line with my mission, I’m down for it.”
Angel’s mission, as he sees it, is to be there for kids. “I was so lost for so long. I couldn’t connect with anybody. I didn’t see what I was doing at school really meaning anything. But then I had some incredible people reach out to me. It’s because of them, like we say, ‘I made it out the mud.’” When Angel talks about his mission, he loves to talk about his mentors.
“The first was [high school teacher] Ms. Chung. She tricked me into realizing I was smart.” Having figured the minimum grade he needed, Angel barely attended class the first two grading periods and in the third, exerted just enough effort to pass to the next year of high school. Understanding that the annual mid-year reading assessment didn’t “count,” 10th grade Angel figured he’d do what he always did: fail the test on purpose. But his teacher, Ingrid Chung, was on to him. “She called me out on it and dared me to just take the test for real.” Angel did, and he scored in the top 5%.
She then picked a book she thought he would like and assigned it to the whole class. Angel devoured it. She gave him a copy, signed by its author. Next, Ms. Chung had Angel choose another book for the class to read. “I fell in love with books. It was powerful. She got me into debates about what we were reading, and she’d say, ‘Angel, you be the shark in the fishbowl. I want you to play the devil’s advocate, but you have to know what you’re talking about.’”
At the start of his senior year, Angel’s enterprising English teacher scheduled him to check in every Friday under the guise of “talking academics.” Meanwhile, he also began meeting with Ms. Terri Russiello — whom he affectionately calls “Ma” — to discuss his emotional well-being and life outside of school. It took two years to convince him, but the two women badgered Angel into joining a group of 20 AMS students participating in Umoja, a young men’s community-building program they were building. “Ma joked that she’d show up at my house and drag me by my boxers if that’s what it took for me to join,” he recalls. Umoja, Swahili for “unity,” proved to be a major turning point for Angel as well as a lasting commitment to the brotherhood bonds he forged.
It was through Umoja that Angel met Paul Forbes. At that time, Mr. Forbes directed a program with NYC Public High Schools to increase the number of Black and Latino young men graduating career and college ready. “He taught me that being a man is being true to your word. He bought me my first suit, for a conference I attended in Kentucky,” Angel recalled.
In 2016, with surer footing, a team of supporters, including 20 Umoja “brothers for life” and an Advanced Regents diploma under his belt, Angel enrolled at Guttman. But just weeks before his first semester began, Angel lost someone very dear to him. His world shattered.
“It was a dark time,” he said. He struggled to attend Guttman classes off and on; he could barely keep his focus. The one thing he could show up for consistently was the college’s United Men of College (UMOC), part of CUNY’s Black Male Initiative. It reminded him of the strong connections he felt with his high school Umoja experience, so he helped Student Life Director Drew Bennet and Dr. Marcus Allen, UMOC advisors, to coordinate events and secure speakers. Angel credits that extracurricular leadership opportunity with keeping him going.
Angel put his energy into UMOC, but the burden of the loss he carried derailed him from studying. He decided to withdraw from classes. Leaving Guttman, Angel gravitated toward jobs working afterschool and summer camps. Whenever opportunities for greater responsibility in youth development programs came up, somehow Angel was always the one who got the call. He knew he could do his best work with kids, and slowly, the grief that trailed him started to heal. With a clear purpose, he was ready to finish his degree this time, as a transfer student at Bronx Community College, graduating with a liberal arts A.A. in Secondary Education and Teaching.
This month, nine years after starting Guttman, he circled back to Guttman, reaching out to his former UMOC advisor, Drew Bennet, to let him know that he completed his coursework for a B.A. in History, Middle and High School Education from Lehman College in last month. He’s an Accelerate, Complete, Engage student there, and active in student organizations such as New York City Men Teach and Urban Male Leadership Program. He said, “I still consider Guttman the foundation of my academic journey. Without my experience there, I wouldn’t be the student I am today.”
Angel’s looking to a future he can envision for himself: “Definitely a master’s and possibly in Puerto Rico,” he mused. This February, “Mr. Diaz” will begin his student teaching experience at — you guessed it — AMS, working with young people in his neighborhood alongside the very mentors who saw the lost kid from Highbridge and first introduced him to an ever-expanding brotherhood he didn’t know he needed.
Find out more about Guttman’s United Men of Color (UMOC) program.
Learn about Guttman’s new program in Secondary Education: Social Studies
