Philadelphia is putting the name of one of its most influential educators on a street sign. The city will unveil Sharif El-Mekki Way on Thursday afternoon with a ceremony at 52nd Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia, near the neighborhood where he spent years turning around struggling schools.

City Council approved the honor in September to recognize more than two decades of work for the city's students, teachers and families. If it rains, the celebration moves to Bible Way Baptist Church nearby.

From a gunshot to the classroom

El-Mekki did not set out to be a teacher. After finishing Overbrook High School he studied criminal justice in college with plans to become a lawyer. That plan changed after he was shot while playing football with friends in the city. He began working with young people like the one who shot him, kids with few chances and a lot of anger. That is where he found his calling.

He became a counselor, then a teacher, then a principal. At Shaw Middle School student proficiency jumped from under 5% to about 50% while he led it. He then spent 11 years as principal of Mastery Charter School Shoemaker in West Philadelphia. All four of his final graduating classes were accepted to college and students earned close to $15 million in scholarships.

Building the next generation

In 2014 he started a group to recruit and keep Black male teachers. Five years later he founded the Center for Black Educator Development, which he still leads. It offers fellowships of as much as $40,000 to students who enter teaching and stay at least five years, summer training programs and a yearly gathering of Black men in education that draws more than 1,500 people to Philadelphia each November.

The work matters because representation in the classroom changes lives. Studies find that Black children who have even one Black teacher early on are more likely to graduate and go to college. Still, roughly two in five American schools do not employ a single Black teacher.

El-Mekki says what makes him proudest is not the street sign. It is the students he coached who now run classrooms of their own. First-grade teacher Makiah Burroughs remembers that he was the first person who seemed thrilled when she said she wanted to teach. Shadae Hamilton went back to Shoemaker to teach algebra so she could give her students what her teachers gave her.

He has told his former students that teaching is the way a community builds itself, generation after generation. On Thursday the city he served is saying thank you in a way that will last.