As he stepped into a small office at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Anacostia for an interview, Ramon Griffin reminded one student to get off their phone and convinced another to hand over a rice crispy snack.
It had been a long but exciting Monday for Griffin. That morning, Mayor Muriel Bowser and State Superintendent Dr. Antoinette S. Mitchell had named him D.C.’s Teacher of the Year.
He was recognized for his students’ “accelerated” academic growth and his unique teaching style. More than 87% of his students at Thurgood Marshall, a law-themed public charter school in Southeast Washington, passed the AP African American Studies exam during his first year teaching the course. Students in his math class surpassed their Measures of Academic Progress Growth expectations by up to 200%.
Griffin will represent the District in a national teacher competition and receive a $7,500 professional growth award.
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“Mr. Griffin is the kind of educator every school hopes to have and every student deserves,” Elena Roberts, Thurgood Marshall’s head of school, said in a statement.
Griffin, who’s been teaching for 13 years, has spent the last seven at Thurgood Marshall. He likes to refer to himself as a “griot,” a West African term for a storyteller.
“I relate stories to the curriculum, which allows students to retain it,” he told The Sun.
“Being in class — especially 11th and 12th grade — you’ve been in school for so many years. You’re just tired,” said senior Ny’Zon O’Benson. “One thing about Griff’s class, I can go in there and just listen, and be like, OK, I mess with it.”
Griffin calls his journey to become an educator “layered and very deep.” He was born and raised in Detroit, after his grandparents moved to the Midwest during the Great Migration. He attributes his love of teaching and learning to his grandmother, who believed strongly in these virtues despite never graduating high school.
“I think about what our ancestors did not have, what our ancestors had to go through to sacrifice their lives and their bodies in order for us to be educated when at one time they were not,” said Griffin.
At Morehouse College, he considered child psychology and accounting, but the idea of teaching always stuck with him.
“It was my calling,” he said. “You have to believe in the universe. The universe will show you what your calling is.
Griffin often has his students arrange their desks in a circle.
“We’re tribal,” he said. “We learn in a circular motion. We see face-to-face.”
Senior Armani Lindsey, a former math student of Griffin’s, considers him a mentor.
“That was the only class during that time where I felt like, all right, this cool,” Lindsey said. I got a great teacher, so I’m gonna be able to pass this. And I did pass.”
O’Benson attributes Griffin’s teaching success to his heart.
“He really wants to see the kids do better, because I drove him crazy,” he said, laughing.
He said Griffin stood beside him through a rough patch in his life, later helping him pass his AP exam.
Both Lindsey and O’Benson said they plan to apply to Morehouse College because of Griffin. Lindsey said he credits the teacher with expanding his worldview.
“I think Ward 8 is a very misrepresented world across the city,” Lindsey said. “It’s a lot of educators [here], but I think it’s not a lot of educators that really truly care for the students and want to see the students move out of this area and do better for themselves. … That’s one thing I will say: Mr. Griffin, he does.”
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