Felix J. Yerace, a high school teacher at the South Fayette Township School District, is this year's recipient of the 2023 National Earl Reum Award, for his work in promoting student leadership development at the local, state and national level.
He spoke with WESA's Priyanka Tewari on Morning Edition.
Priyanka Tewari: You partnered with the University of Pittsburgh to establish a class at South Fayette as the first 'college-in-high-school' leadership course in Pennsylvania. It's now offered in 12 high schools across the state. What do kids learn in that class?
Felix Yerace: So in my class specifically, we cover the introduction of leadership, what leadership is. We look at their strengths; we look at their personality; we look at different elements of how they lead and why they lead, as well as creativity and risk, and power and influence. And the students, if they take both semesters of my class, then they're eligible to earn three credits from the University of Pittsburgh for that experience.
Tewari: What are some of the obstacles that kids have when it comes to developing leadership skills?
Yerace: Oftentimes, students equate leaders — the position or the title of the role — with leadership. They view leadership is something that's not for them. It's for somebody that has a title or a position, somebody like a superintendent of a school. And one of the biggest barriers that I immediately try to break down as soon as possible is helping students to understand that not only can everybody be a leader, but everybody, in fact, is a leader. For instance, being an older brother or sister to a younger sibling, that's leadership in and of itself.
One thing that I've often said is, I oftentimes view leadership like compound interest. The more you do it and the earlier you do it, the better you're going to get with it. And so my goal is to really help students to lay that foundation.
For me, being able to know that what I'm teaching these students is probably going to be skills that they're going to be able to use no matter what field they pursue; to be able to impact not only themselves, but also their communities and their organizations.
It just makes me feel really good to know that what they're learning with us is something they're going be able to carry on, and they're going to be able to use no matter what they do for the rest of their lives.
Tewari: The state is revamping its current model of funding K-12 education after a court ruled the system is unconstitutional because it puts students in less-wealthy districts at a disadvantage. Do you see that disparity in the 12 districts where your course is taught?
Yerace: I see that disparity more in my role as the assistant executive director for the Pennsylvania Association of Student Councils. And what I would tell you is, with the schools that we work with across the Commonwealth, it's very easy to see the opportunities that some students are given and the opportunities that other students are not given. And I know that for some of my colleagues at other schools, they maybe don't have the same capacity to be able to open those doors. Some of those barriers are structural and they're more challenging to overcome than others.
So I do see that, and I truly hope that maybe something will be able to be done. The students that I feel the worst for, what makes me the saddest is, the students that don't even know that opportunity existed in the first place or even given the chance to have that opportunity. I always feel bad about that, so I hope that that's something that can be addressed.
Earl Reum was a magician and educator, who taught speech and inspired generations of students. He died in 2010.
Audio was edited and produced by 90.5 WESA's Doug Shugarts.
