His Story
Stephen R. Sroka grew up in poverty on the west side of Cleveland in a public housing project, raised by a single parent. He had more than his share of health problems as a child — his second-grade report card read “Parent notified boy is retarded,” and at 16 he underwent two hip operations after which doctors told him he might never walk again and had better start listening to his teachers. He did, and it became clear to him that education was the only way out of the ghetto. Even so, when he graduated from high school, he turned down a college scholarship to work full-time as a polymer chemist and help get his family off welfare. The money was good, but he was unfulfilled, and he eventually left that career to pursue a lifetime dream: becoming a teacher and helping others help themselves.
Sroka earned his B.A. in Chemistry, English, and Science from Cleveland State University in 1967, his M.Ed. in Educational Administration there in 1972, and his Ph.D. in Health Education from Case Western Reserve University in 1978, later adding graduate hours in health education at Kent State University. He spent all 27 years of his classroom career with Cleveland Public Schools — the same district he had attended as a student — teaching science in grades 7-9 before becoming a K-12 health educator serving all 117 schools throughout the district. Although qualified to become an administrator, he chose to remain a classroom teacher, believing that was where he could do the most good, and turned down district requests to leave the classroom for a central office role.
Sroka became a nationally recognized pioneer in HIV/AIDS education. In 1984, at a time when almost no one wanted to discuss the subject, he wrote the Educator’s Guide to AIDS and Other STD’s, one of the first publications of its kind for teachers; by the time of his nomination it was in its 40th printing, translated into Spanish, used in schools worldwide, and recommended by the U.S. Department of Education. Former Secretary of Education William Bennett recommended the Guide in his own 1987 book on AIDS education, and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop personally wrote to Sroka to “commend you for your pioneering efforts to educate the nation’s school-age population” and to call him “an ally in the fight to contain AIDS.” In 1987, Sroka helped coordinate the country’s first national conference to train teachers on how to teach HIV/AIDS education, drawing over 300 teachers from 30 states to a one-day workshop covered by every major news network. In 1988, he was invited to testify before the Presidential Commission on the HIV Epidemic, where he advised schools not to teach AIDS education in isolation but as part of a comprehensive health curriculum.
Sroka authored twelve books in all, including the K-8 health textbook series Choosing Good Health (1983) for Scott, Foresman and Company, and more than 25 articles in publications including Teacher Magazine and Education Week. He also served as Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Education at Cleveland State University (1976-96) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Center for Adolescent Health (1992-96). His honors included Cleveland Public Schools’ Health Education Teacher of the Year (1975), the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation’s Special Teacher Award (1979), the Phi Delta Kappa Young Education Leader of America award (1981) — one of only 75 people worldwide so recognized, and the only classroom teacher among them — the Ohio Department of Health Director’s AIDS Service Award (1988 and 1991), the Distinguished Educator Award from his local Phi Delta Kappa chapter and the Outstanding School Health Educator Award from the American School Health Association (both 1993), the Walt Disney Outstanding Health Teacher of the Year award (1994), and, in 1995 alone, both the Distinguished Alumni Award from Cleveland State University and the Grazella Shepherd Excellence in Education Award from Case Western Reserve University.
Beyond the Classroom
Sroka’s community service began in the early 1970s and never stopped. For the American Cancer Society he chaired the School Sub-committee on Public Education, organizing community activities with his students to fight cancer; for the March of Dimes he volunteered at Walk-a-thons, Bike-a-thons, and Big Wheel events to fight birth defects. In 1976, he and his students won a Martha Holden Jennings Teacher Leader grant and spent a summer producing the “Health Handbook for the Near West Side Youth,” a user-friendly guide that drew local media coverage and was featured as a national model in the Journal of School Health. In 1984, he helped coordinate a joint venture of the Cancer, Heart, and Lung Associations on adolescent smoking education, and in 1993, as tuberculosis resurged, he worked with the American Lung Association to produce a public brochure, “Tuberculosis — The Good News and the Bad News.” He served as a member of the Mayor’s Youth Violence Council, the Advisory Panel for Curriculum Development for the Gun Safety Institute, and as a volunteer for the community-based Substance Abuse Initiative.
His HIV/AIDS work extended well beyond his own classroom: he served on Cleveland’s Citizens Committee on AIDS/HIV and helped publish “HIV/AIDS: A Call for Leadership,” a set of recommendations for Cuyahoga County, and consulted for departments of health and education across the country and abroad, including Guam, England, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands, as well as for the Centers for Disease Control and the Indian Health Service. He addressed students, parents, and professionals in schools, churches, hospitals, PTAs, community groups, clinics, and Indian reservations across the country, was invited back to speak to the California Association of School Health Educators’ Annual Health Teacher’s Conference nine years running, and traveled to Guam in 1993 to give more than a dozen presentations to youth, teachers, and parents there. His “Just Say Know” message and his television appearances — including The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Donahue Show, and CNN’s Sonia Live in L.A. — brought national attention not just to him but to the Cleveland Public Schools he represented.
Philosophy Into Practice
Sroka’s philosophy of teaching was inseparable from his own biography: having lived through poverty, disability, and low expectations as a child, he believed his difficult childhood made him a better urban teacher, able to identify with at-risk youth, to look past a student’s dirty face or hard front, and to see the possibility underneath. He believed there was no greater contribution to make to society than helping shape the next generation, and that teachers occupied a uniquely privileged position to do exactly that.
In practice, that meant a classroom built on caring above all else — caring enough to do the very best job of teaching, and to share not just information but attitudes and lifelong healthy behaviors. He modeled fairness, honesty about his own weaknesses, and a willingness to be creative and interactive, and he built in decision-making, assertiveness, stress-reduction, conflict-resolution, self-esteem, and resiliency skills alongside the facts, believing that facts alone were never enough to change behavior. Because health education so often dealt with life-and-death stakes, he treated some lessons as ones students would not get a second chance to learn — and insisted that parents, as children’s first teachers, always be brought into the conversation before he addressed sensitive topics like drugs, sex, or violence in his classroom.
“Health education often deals with life and death issues. You can fail a math test and make it up, but once you fail an HIV test, you cannot change its results. In health there are many lessons you don’t get a second chance to learn. If you don’t learn the lesson today, tomorrow may be too late.”— from his essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
“I believe that education is our most important weapon in the fight against many of the problems facing our youth, including sex, drugs, AIDS and violence… Like Don Quixote, I believe the world can be a better place because of the efforts of one person.”— from his essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
In His OwnWords
“My second grade report card reads ‘Parent notified boy is retarded.’ When I was 16, I had two hip operations and was told I might never walk again. The doctors told me I had better start to listen to my teachers. I did, and as I tell my students today, the more I listened, the smarter the teachers became.”— from his essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
“I was once a Cleveland Public School student and I am a living example of the power of education to change one’s life. My philosophy is not about what I think education is or should be. It is about what I do every day in every classroom in every school.”— from his essay, “Philosophy of Teaching”
“The old adage, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink,’ comes to mind when I think of some students I’ve had in class. I always think to myself, ‘Yea, but you can try to make him thirsty.'”— from his essay, “In the Classroom”
“My greatest contributions are not mirrored in the reflections of the awards I have received, but rather in the eyes of my former students who greet me, perhaps years later, with a hug and say, ‘Thanks for caring about me, thanks for being my teacher.'”— from his essay, “In the Classroom”
“The joy of community involvement is that it allows me and my students to put something back into the community in which we live and work and learn. As the African proverb says, ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ and the school is only part of the village.”— from his essay, “Outside the Classroom”
What Others Said
“Dr. Sroka is a pioneer in HIV/AIDS/STD education. He wrote one of the first HIV/AIDS/STD books for teachers (1984) and helped coordinate the country’s first national AIDS conference (1987) for teachers. His Educator’s Guide to AIDS and other STD’s, now in its 41st printing and translated into Spanish, is used in classrooms worldwide.”— Marianne D. Sroka, Nominator
“Perhaps it was his background of growing up poor, on welfare, with a single parent that allows him to identify with inner-city youth and to provide them with a positive role model… For living his dream in the realities of today and inspiring dreams in others, Steve would be in my Teachers Hall of Fame and hopefully yours, too.”— Cynthia E. Triplett, School Board Member, Cleveland Board of Education
“Steve has an unusual ability to communicate with and inspire students and teachers. Teaching health in the best of places is a challenge; teaching it in the inner-city requires a special talent. Dr. Sroka’s gift is that he is able to motivate adolescents to learn in spite of the most difficult obstacles.”— Dr. Richard A. Boyd, Superintendent, Cleveland Public Schools
“When one talks about health teacher Steve Sroka, one is talking about the top health teacher in the nation… I judge the educator on what he or she does FOR his colleagues and what he or she does FOR and WITH the kids.”— Ric Loya, Executive Director, California Association of School Health Educators
“It is because of Dr. Sroka that I am in the profession I am in today, and to this day, I try to emulate his teaching style… In closing, Dr. Sroka is real. He is a man who has and will always be ahead of his time.”— Rocky Melendez, Youth Worker, and former student
“In my 20 years as a volunteer in the Euclid Public Schools I can honestly say that I have never met anyone more deserving of such an honor… The students, the parents, the educators, and the administrators all learned something in those two days that they will never forget thanks to a man affectionately called Dr. Steve.”— Madeline Scarniench, Past President, Euclid PTA Council