Zachary Jackson thinks a lot about what his students may be learning from him in class. For some of his first graders in Atlanta, that goes beyond the actual academic lessons. They are also practicing how to be a man.
For Jackson, the question of how to model manhood is an obsession, something he thinks about all the time.
He’s worked with kids since 2018 through Wings for Kids, a nonprofit that operates after-school programs in Georgia and South Carolina. He’s taught music, drawing on his experiences in music production. And since the beginning of this school year, he’s taught first grade in Fulton County Schools, in northern Georgia.