Inspire, Summer 2009

It sounds like a movie plot: A young, white, middle-class teacher stumbles into the heart of Harlem thinking he’s going to bring knowledge and enlightenment to poor, inner-city children — only to discover he’s the one who learns something. But that’s exactly what happened to Ryan Sparzak ’00. In 2005, he was living in Boston, having just finished his master’s degree in urban education at Wheelock University, when he and his wife, Jessica (Lutz) ’00, first heard of the Promise Academy in Harlem, New York — and immediately felt God calling them there. “Various people in our lives were telling us to check out the school,” Ryan said. “So in July I took a Greyhound bus to New York City to interview for a teaching position.” With resumé in hand, he met with the school’s principal, Dennis McKesey. The two immediately hit it off, and Ryan was hired on the spot. At first, he was hesitant to bring up his faith, but Dennis — who is also a believer — saw something different in the young applicant and asked him about it. Ryan then shared his belief that God wanted him at Promise Academy. Finding Focus Although Ryan was confident in his Harlem calling, it had only been a year since teaching had even been on his radar. Upon graduating from Cedarville as a preseminary Bible major, his focus was on missions. He married Jessica a year out of college and then spent a year in Grand Rapids taking missions courses at Cornerstone University. As Ryan continued to seek God’s will for his life, a desire to work with kids started to grow. With encouragement from friends to pursue teaching, he signed up for the year-long program at Wheelock toward his master’s degree — a step that would eventually lead to the inner-city Promise Academy. While attending Wheelock’s graduation ceremony in May 2005, Ryan listened as Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Academy, gave the commencement address and shared his vision for the school. The book Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough tells about Canada’s dream for the Academy — a group of charter schools created in partnership with Harlem Children’s Zone in an effort to “directly impact the centerpiece of a child’s educational life.” The first Academy opened in 2004, with two more added since, and already they’ve seen improvement in grades and test scores. Canada’s vision and the Academy’s success were what first drew Ryan’s interest — and he was excited to come on board. Learning the Ropes When school started that August, Ryan discovered pretty quickly that he had a lot to learn. He laughingly says he realized he wasn’t too white, but too green. As Whatever It Takes explains, Ryan recognized he had to be “disabused of a lot of things, including any confidence that he knew what he was doing” as a white teacher in a predominantly black school. To help with the transition, the Sparzaks decided to move into a local neighborhood only a few blocks from the school. “We can see that we are making a difference. Our kids are outperforming schools not only in our district but also at the state level.” 12 SUMMER 2009