Pep talks and haircuts: How one school official in Lexington is connecting with teens

There’s a melody coming from a small office in the middle of the maze of hallways at Airport High School in West Columbia.

There’s the occasional squeak of sneakers running down the hall, streaking the vinyl flooring as they go to band practice or the cafeteria or a crush’s locker. There’s the chatter among multiple teenage boys, with their varying levels of dropped and/or cracking voices. And today there is the whizzing, purring and humming of hair clippers coming from this room 20 minutes after dismissal.

Inside the office is a large, black barber’s chair, a mirror and 11th-grader Rolando “RJ” Howell getting a haircut. His barber, who’s meticulous with the tape and sideburn shaping, is assistant principal Le’Shaun Mathis.

Next up in the chair is Nanders Lawrence, 17, who has a basketball game tonight against River Bluff High School. He asks Mathis for a “light fade,” as usual.

“He always had a cool, calm spirit,” Mathis says of Lawrence, as he gets started.

None of this is new to the boys. Mathis knew many of them since they were pre-teens at Pine Ridge Middle School, when Mathis was a science teacher and worked part-time at Ivy League barber shop in Lexington. He was the one to cut their hair before eighth grade prom.

This year, Mathis became assistant principal of Airport High School and installed a barber’s chair in his office, the first thing you see when you walk in. The haircuts started back up again, before and after school.

But it’s not just a complimentary, conveniently located trim these boys come for. Yeah, Mathis’ cuts are “crisp,” Howell says, but Mathis is also a “motivational speaker” in his small office, half of which is taken up by the mini-shop.

He uses the time students sit in his chair to talk to them about life, about their goals and their responsibilities.

It’s known among students, Orr said, that if you go to Mathis, you’ll get a good, free haircut, but Mathis will ask you questions. And you might have to work for your haircut.

Mathis gives his clients, nearly all of them young black men, tasks — get an A in geometry, don’t get in any trouble, put money into your savings each month — in exchange for free haircuts.

Jakobe Orr, an 11th-grader, doesn’t like reading. At his last appointment, Mathis made him read a chapter of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” out loud before he got his haircut.

The office is decorated with motivational artwork. One frame says, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” Another says, “We are family.”

Mathis, even in his role as a new assistant principal, said it’s important for him to show students that you can contain multitudes: You can be a professional, a friend, a human being, a work in progress.

Three years ago, Mathis was talking to some of the boys at Pine Ridge. He promised them he would go back to school to earn a higher degree and become an assistant principal. And he did it.

“It made it more real for me when I told them,” he said.

There’s trust there.

Airport principal David Damm hired Mathis and is serving his first year at the school, too. He said when Mathis showed him the chair, Damm thought it was a great idea.

The small office becomes almost a sacred space thanks to Mathis, his chair, a captive audience and the comfortable environment of a barbershop.

“A lot of them don’t have adults in their lives that they really respect,” Damm said of many students he has met through the years. “They’ve got to connect somewhere else sometimes.”

Damm said one of his aims as principal was hiring “strong minority leadership” at Airport, where the student population is about 35 percent black and 15 percent Hispanic or Latino.

“It’s important that you demonstrate success across all ranges,” Damm said.

Something as simple as a fresh haircut and a pep talk can set a student on a more positive path, Mathis said.

“When you look the part, sometimes you act the part and the rest will come,” he said.