Ted Ginn sits behind a large desk dressed in a black suit. He's watching students mingle just outside his office. Each teenage boy wears a white shirt, tie and red blazer. Ginn figures looking successful is just one more way to convince students that they have a shot at greatness - in a world where most messages they receive are often quite different.
Ginn:- "I look at like, it's a pinhole in the bottom of a cup that you can't see. Everything that you've convinced that kid during the day, somebody on the outside, whether it's his parents or his home life or some other adult is taking all that away."
The Ginn Academy opened this year in Cleveland along with four single gender elementary schools. But Ginn has been guiding inner city kids to college for much longer, as a football and track coach at Glenville High School. His son,Ted Ginn Jr. was a star receiver at Ohio State and was a first round pick for the Miami Dolphins. More of his success stories smile out from a picture frame on his desk.
Ginn: "This is a famous picture, here. You've got Pierre Woods that plays for the New England Patriots, you've got Troy Smith who played for the Baltimore Ravens."
Ginn has mentored a Heisman Trophy winner, coached the U.S. Army All-America Bowl and heads a group that takes promising inner-city athletes on a yearly bus tour to Midwestern colleges. But when Ginn Academy opened, Ginn stressed it would not be a factory for athletes.
Ginn: "They can be great doctors, great lawyers, great athletes, great music people -- whatever. It don't make a difference what you good at. It's our job to find out what you're good at."
The man who has been a father figure to so many was molded by strong women. His childhood was spent in Louisiana with a grandmother. At 11, he moved to Ohio to be with his mother. It was a different world.
Ginn: "I remember when I came here in 6th grade they were studying fractions, I didn't know what a fraction was man. "
Ginn's mother worked at a chandelier factory for $65 a week: "My mother struggled to give me anything I wanted, but it was enough her just being there."
But there also were the father figures that he now emulates, the math teacher, who gave him extra time, the football coach who kept him busy mentoring other players Ginn calls all those people lifesavers now, and he keeps a jar of the candy around to hand out to his students, a reminder that he's now there for them.
Ginn: "Some kids you need to tell you love them every day. Some kids you need to hit em upside the head every day. But the one thing that don't change is having some love and passion and understanding for them."
The first Ginn Academy students will graduate in 2010. State proficiency tests for that group will be released this August.
Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3
Later this morning our coverage of 21st Century Schools continues with a look at the Entrepreneurship Preparatory School in Cleveland. That's at nine on 90.3