His Story
Francis Kemba Mustapha was born in Medina, a small village in Sierra Leone, West Africa, that had no school at all — a village his own father had founded. His mother bore nine children, only two of whom survived past childhood, and she sacrificed everything she had to pay his school fees. He attended a Moslem school and then a Christian mission school, and though he graduated first in his class, he was denied the scholarship he had earned because of political favoritism. Instead he was assigned to teach mathematics with no training whatsoever, simply because a teacher was needed.
An American biology teacher at that school saw something in him, bought him a plane ticket to Indiana, and arranged his admission to Marion College. He arrived with almost nothing, and college brought new struggles — racism, culture shock, isolation, and financial hardship. A biology professor, Margaret Hodson, became his mentor and, in his words, his “American mother,” especially after his own mother died in 1983. It was Professor Hodson who encouraged him to add teaching credentials to his science degrees, a decision that would shape the rest of his life. He went on to earn a B.A. in Biology from Marion College and both an M.A. in Botany and an Ed.S. in Secondary Education from Indiana University Bloomington.
After graduate school he taught two years in Indiana junior high schools before moving with his American wife to Liberia, where he taught at Cuttington University College’s Rural Development Institute and moonlighted teaching a biology class of 65 students so crowded that students stood outside the windows to listen. From there he returned to his home country of Sierra Leone to teach at a rural teacher training college, Bunumbu Teachers College, for three years. As political, economic, and medical conditions in West Africa deteriorated, he brought his family back to Indiana in 1983 and has taught biology at South Side High School in Fort Wayne ever since. Both African colleges where he once taught have since been destroyed by war. His home village now has an elementary school, and he has helped relatives attend his old boarding school and established a scholarship fund there.
His career culminated in a remarkable run of honors in 1994: Fort Wayne Community Schools Teacher of the Year, Indiana Teacher of the Year, a Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award, and a place among the contenders for National Teacher of the Year. He was also named an American Society for Cell Biology Fellow in 1991 and a National Institute of Health Fellow in 1992.
Beyond the Classroom
For three years Mustapha organized and supervised a youth soccer club in his school’s community, and for three years he assisted in coaching Little League baseball. He served as a parent representative on his children’s school system’s textbook adoption committee and supervised student judges for a large elementary science fair. For three years running he was involved in Indiana University’s Science Enrichment Program for minority students from across the state, and served as a Master Teacher in an eight-week summer institute funded by the National Science Foundation for Indiana’s top 50 science students — monitoring research projects, leading discussion sessions, and helping students prepare journal-style papers.
He worked with his church, Lincolnshire Church of the Brethren, on planning committees for forums bringing together diverse groups of people for dialogue. Through the United Brethren in Christ Mission, he collected and shipped more than 2,000 math and science books from local Fort Wayne high schools to high schools in Sierra Leone, and through his efforts a scholarship fund was established at his former high school there to help secondary students who otherwise would have no opportunity for an education. Both overseas projects were ongoing at the time of his nomination.
He also spent two summers doing biology research on the Indiana University campus, motivated by wanting to learn the latest developments in the field so he could better prepare his students for college — work that led to his collaborators publishing results in a prestigious journal.
Philosophy Into Action
Mustapha traced his love of teaching to his own childhood, when teachers were “windows to a whole wide world,” and to the demanding — not simply fun — teachers who first opened biology to him. He carried that same rigor and high expectation into his own classroom, known for sayings like “The harder you study, the luckier you get” and “I am not concerned with you liking me now; I’m concerned with what you’ll say about me in five years.” He believed firmly that by holding minority students to the same standard as everyone else, he saw remarkable progress and achievement — and he refused, on principle, to inflate a grade for an athlete’s sake even when pressured by coaches to do so, a stand that led one struggling student to improve dramatically once she was held to real standards.
He drew a striking contrast between the “authority of the gun” he had witnessed in West African military coups and the very different kind of power he held as a teacher — “power that brings life rather than death.” He described feeling that power in a struggling student who became a “thinking scholar,” in a girl who once didn’t believe science was for girls and went on to plan a career as a genetic engineer, and in former students who returned to share their college experiences with him.
“Perhaps I have helped create a prize-winning scientist. Maybe a neurosurgeon. Maybe a president… Maybe someone will follow in my footsteps as a teacher! What power!”— from his essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
He was also outspoken about gaps he saw in American education — the traditionally wrong assumption that girls should be steered toward teaching and boys toward research, the lack of minority teachers (especially men) leaving some students without a minority adult as either a role model or an authority figure, and the need to hold every student, minority or not, to genuinely high standards rather than passing them along unchallenged.
In His Own Words
“I want to create opportunities for others to succeed, as my village and my teachers did for me. Helping someone succeed is worth the effort. I will always be a teacher.”— from his Professional Biography
“One of my most upsetting teaching experiences in Indiana was being approached by school coaches and asked to change a failing grade to a meaningless credit to allow an athletically gifted student to continue participating in sports. When I refused and the student was disqualified, her academic performance in the following grading period improved remarkably. She was perfectly capable of above average achievement, but was being exploited rather than educated.”— from his essay, “Educational Issues”
“In modern times, the populations of the world have become so interdependent that our concept of community must go beyond our immediate surroundings to include the human community at large.”— from his essay, “Outside the Classroom”
What Others Said
“Quite frankly, Mr. Mustapha is one of the most dedicated, enthusiastic, and gifted science teachers I have ever had the privilege of knowing… In closing, let me emphasize that in my estimation as a professional science educator, Mr. Mustapha is, without doubt, a truly superlative teacher.”— Lisa Townsend, High School Science Liaison, Indiana University
“Mr. Mustapha is a father figure to me in more ways than one… He also was the man who introduced me to the world of genetics, which is now my intended major… Mr. Mustapha embodies all that I feel a teacher should be: he is able to touch lives, broaden horizons, induce responsibility, and help students to grow mentally.”— Kenyatta D. Norman, Former Student
“Mr. Mustapha is a master teacher in the truest sense of the word. He believes that his subject matter is of utmost importance and instills this idea in the minds of his students… He personifies what an excellent teacher should be. He is caring, dedicated, professional, intelligent, and sensitive. He carries the well-being and education of his students in his heart.”— Jennifer A. Manth, Principal, South Side High School
“He told me his story, of how he grew up in a small African village and how his pursuit of knowledge was the way to get to the city… Mr. Mustapha is a pillar of the Fort Wayne Community Schools. He is a beacon in the night, the candle in the window, especially for the inner-city students who attend South Side High School.”— Justin A. Lebamoff, Former Student
“Mr. Mustapha seems to be one of the last of a dying breed — a breed of teacher who truly and genuinely cares about his students… He has helped to restore some of my faith in the belief that there are still teachers out there who care about our children as human beings.”— Jack Howell, Parent