PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Many students in Hampton Roads are heading back into the classrooms later this month and the first week of September.
The new teacher orientation is underway this week in Portsmouth Public Schools, ahead of the first day of school on Aug. 26.
Nikita Allmond, the longtime parent liaison at I.C. Norcom High School, is looking forward to helping students succeed this school year.
“All of them are my kids. I love each and every one of them,” Allmond said. “I just want the kids to be attentive and do what they are supposed to do in class.”
Allmond is among the 176 PPS teachers and staff signed up for a special gesture of appreciation with free tickets to attend the Cousinz Festival.
“It shows they really appreciate us coming back and are giving back to the community,” Allmond said. “I think it was a good gesture, especially with Erykah Badu coming. I sing ‘Tyrone’ for karaoke all the time. It’s my favorite.”
The free tickets for PPS teachers and staff were made possible through a partnership between the Cousinz Festival and RNB Block Party co-organizer Antonio Dowe and School Board member Lakeesha ‘Klu’ Atkinson.
“They do so much for everybody else,” Dowe said. “They have our kids six, eight hours a day. … Sometimes during the school year, the teachers spend more time with our children than we do. I do think they deserve more breaks. I am the bad guy who thinks they should be paid more. It’s always important to think about the people that support you the most, and schoolteachers are a big part of our ecosystem. It was a no-brainer for us.”
Atkinson said this partnership is a sign of ongoing support for teachers throughout the school year, especially for returning and new teachers.r
“We’re still impacted by COVID,” Atkinson said. “We’re still trying to recover in a classroom. We’re still trying to recover via our mental health. It’s still a lot of stress. I’m always pro-public schools, I’m always going to figure out a way to say, ‘Hey, how can we support the teachers?
“Coming in as a new teacher, we want to provide resources outside of the division. When you get out of your classroom, what can you do? What is there to do instead of taking your work home? We want to provide outside activities for you to be able to do as well. This will be the first thing that we can do for them.”
The hope is to expand to other school divisions in the area.
“Portsmouth teachers were the first ones that opted in,” Dowe said. “We are reaching out to the other school systems and the school boards. So, it is not just for Portsmouth. We are trying to take care of as many teachers as possible.”
The Cousinz festival is a day-long music event on the Scope grounds on Aug. 31. The festival is powered by the RNB Block Party, which will set up outside, while headliners such as Larry June, Jermaine Dupri and Erykah Badu will take over the stage inside of the arena.
“The whole Cousinz moniker was just about family and about community,” Dowe said. “Everything that we’ve been building around it, from the talent that we chose to how we’re kind of structuring it, pricewise, we wanted to make sure that it was accessible.”
“It’s not just an event, it’s something that we decided was a need for our community. We put a lot into making sure that it fit everyone. That was the hardest thing. I hope we nailed it. I know it’s going to be a huge success. We hear the excitement about it and we just want to get to festival day.”
Dowe hopes people will rally behind the event.
“I just hope everybody sees that it actually is for everybody,” Dowe said. “Sometimes that can come across cliché, but it’s not. It’s really built to be for everybody. This is a 757 homebred [event], from the production teams that are involved with it, to the talent organizers, and the volunteers we’re getting from Dominion Power — everything is local 757.”
Learn more, or purchase tickets to the Cousinz Festival.