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Hundreds of social workers, parents, teachers and government agency representatives came out for a June 25 conference on reaching out to black boys and youth in Prince George's, and many of them said they were grateful for any ideas on addressing the social and economic problems they see at their jobs.

"I'm looking for ideas to stop the drift," said Jesse Jenkins, an algebra teacher at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, where almost all of the students are black or Hispanic, after the seminar at Newton White Mansion in Mitchellville.

"When they walk in the door at high school at least they haven't fully decided," Jenkins said. "When they walk out of high school, life has decided already."

The meeting was organized by the Prince George's County Disproportionate Minority Contact Advisory Board, part of the county's Department of Family Services, and was led by representatives of the Urban Leadership Institute based in Baltimore and Newark, N.J.

The seminar focused on teaching black youth who struggle with economic or social problems better decision-making skills and on discussions about stereotypes and media portrayals of young black men. The seminar also included a lecture on strategies for black youth who are stopped by the police.

Matt Stevens, a speaker with the Urban Leadership Institute, said many black youth struggle with narrow definitions of manhood and masculinity in the black community that encourage violence and street life.

"It's not rocket science to believe that he will have a skewed definition of masculinity," he said.

Stevens encouraged people who work with disadvantaged black youth to use acrostics, where they spell out their names and come up with words for each letter that they think describe themselves. Stevens said the exercise encourages boys to define themselves.

"Let them find out what they're good at, and let them shine at it," Stevens said. "Number one, you've got to figure out what boys do well so they have something to stand upon. So they can say, ‘I'm a real good artist,' and so on."

Jenkins said he struggles to deal with disciplinary issues, low grades and uninvolved parents at Northwestern High. Ninety-four percent of the school's 2,367 students are black or Hispanic, according to data from the Maryland Department of Education, and nearly 39 percent of its students were suspended over the 2005-2006 school year, according to Prince George's County Public Schools figures.

"We're losing students," he said. "The times I can have a conversation with a parent so the parents hear me are normally at the beginning [of the school year], when it's relatively natural, and when the child messes up… I just want something that I can put into all the parents I touch."

Jenkins said he was not sure whether he found any new ideas at the conference, but he said the event encouraged him to network with other teachers and nonprofits.

Sheila Murdoch, a reading teacher at Cheltenham Youth Facility, a state center for children who have been charged with crimes, said she also struggles to reach her students, many of whom have not received basic educations.

"The crux of our kids' problems is they never learned to read," she said. "How do you get to 13 in America and not be able to read?"

Murdoch said most of what speakers said at the conference reinforced ideas she already had, but she said she is eager to try the acrostic exercises with her students.

"I thought, ‘God, I can't wait, I'm going to use it with my guys,'" she said. "It absolutely energized me to do more networking with people in the community."

E-mail Greg Holzheimer at gholzheimer@gazette.net.