Call Me MiSTER

Called into his counselor’s office his senior year of high school, Justyn “Jax” Johnson listened as two men told him about the Call Me MiSTER program at UT Martin and how they were looking for male minority educators who could be effective role models.

“Are you sure you have the right person?” Johnson asked them.

They had the right man.

“I will forever remember that conversation,” Johnson says. “Them offering me the Call Me MiSTER scholarship and telling me about it.”

He didn’t sign up then. But when they came a second time, it convinced him.

“That was the first time someone had shown an interest in me academically,” he says. “I was a pretty decent athlete in high school, and I got some recognition for track and field, but for someone to say, ‘No, we care about who you are and your intelligence,’ was new to me,” he says. “In that moment, there were people there who were willing to take time and energy to mold me into what I could be as a person. I think anyone who has seen me during my prime at UTM knows that is what happened to me. It gave me an opportunity to not only go to college but to grow as a young man throughout my time at UTM.”

UT Martin is the state’s only university to have the Call Me MiSTER (Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) program, a teacher leadership program that can be found in 13 states and provides participants with mentoring support and networking opportunities that benefit them during and after earning college degrees.

Call Me MiSTER began at Clemson University in 2000 and strives to increase the pool of available teachers from a more diverse background. It’s a criterion by which UT Martin is evaluated. The Tennessee State Board of Education measures state’s colleges and universities cohort members by race to track the diversity of would-be teachers. UT Martin’s 2022 report card found that, in the three-year cohort (2019-21), 11 percent of the cohort members were Black.

Logan Davis said, when he first heard about the Call Me MiSTER program, he was undecided about where he wanted to go to college. UTM Director of Multicultural Affairs Kameron Echols called Davis that summer and talked with him about the program.

“I was still hesitant, but we took a trip to Clemson, South Carolina, for the Call Me MiSTER retreat,” he says. “Once I was there, I made my decision to get into the program.” Davis said the camaraderie and sense of belonging of the Call Me MiSTER program attracted him. “The biggest thing for me was just the brotherhood of it and the close relations and being involved with it,” he says. “The community service that we did and just being able to be involved with youth and giving back and speaking to kids—even going to high schools and speaking to prospective students—were really great.”

Davis says it’s a calling.

“I’m a firm believer that, ‘For whom much is given, much is required.’ I feel like God has put me in the amazing position at this point in my life to be able to elevate, and I feel it’s just right that I help bring people along with me, whether it’s kids, adults, whoever it may be. I feel that’s a responsibility that’s been put on my life.”

Johnson says part of the training included taking part in an educational studies class.

“One of the things we did in that class was talk about what it truly meant to be a male minority leader,” he says. “We also went to other educational studies classes to learn what it meant to be a teacher, but when we went to the other class, it really was a realization of how much of an impact that me and my demographic could have on people.”

In a paper Davis wrote for class, he reflected on the few male minority role models he had in his life.

“We almost have to make a constant position that, ‘I will be here, and I will represent those who look like me so they know that there can be more for them,’” he says. “That was one of the more powerful things that they taught me.”

Johnson said he was impressed with the things that Austin Ferrell, a lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies, taught him.

“He taught me that African American men can not only go to college and finish college, but they can be successful, can be productive, can be respectful and presentable,” he says. “Those weren’t things where he said, ‘Pull out a textbook and turn to Page 27.’ He lived those things in how he acted and reacted to things going on in our lives. He is someone who I would say is just a shining example of what it is to be a mentor, and for him to be a male minority was just the icing on the cake.”

Johnson says he uses what he learned from the Call Me MiSTER program every day.

“It is so engrained in us of our importance through the program as MiSTERs about being representative of the connections I create with my students,” he says. “I feel like I am so much more purposeful as to, ‘Why do I connect with this student? Why do I do these things for them?’

“You might think, ‘It is because I am a teacher that I have to care,’ but, no, I have to care because I know there is a great power in me showing this care to these students.”