Patrick Meade: A Voice For The Voiceless

BY MAGGIE CALLAGHAN
Miami University journalism student

It’s 8:30 a.m. on a sunny and mild Tuesday the week after Thanksgiving. In Boyd Hall, on the western edge of Miami University’s campus, some students doze off in class as if they are still recovering from Thanksgiving dinners.

But that’s not the case in the basement of Boyd.

First, you won’t find Miami students. This is a class of Talawanda High School students. And you won’t catch them sleeping. Instead, they are actively working on assignments and preparing for tests.

At the the front of the class sits Patrick Meade, their teacher.

A student approaches Meade.

“I’m tired,” the student says.

Meade, with a large grin on his face responds quickly. “You can take a nap after your test.”

Another student approaches and reports that he's completed his geometry homework.

“You’re a good man,” Meade tells him.

The student walks away with a grin on his face.

Miami connections

These students and Meade are a part of the Miami Connections Program. In a partnership between Miami, Talawanda High School and Butler Technology and Career Development Schools, at-risk students spend half their day on Miami’s campus and the other half at the high school right down the street.

“I like that we can be in our space and go on our own pace,” said a sophomore in Meade’s morning section.

Meade helps 16 students -- freshmen to juniors -- in the morning. In the afternoon, he has a class of 15, mostly freshmen. The program came into existence seven years ago.

According to Leah Wasburn-Moses, a Miami professor of special education, the idea came about as Talawanda High School was looking for a way to better support at-risk students and Miami wanted a way to expose future teachers to that population.

“Talawanda didn’t know how successful it would be,” said Wasburn-Moses. “They went into this with blind faith. But they said that if they were going to do this that they needed their strongest teacher.”

That teacher was Patrick Meade. Now 63, Meade is in his 39th year of teaching. He spent 22 years teaching middle school, then taught at a Catholic school for 10 years.

“We can’t go anywhere without students coming up to him and giving him hugs,” said Lois Meade, his wife of 40 years. “They still call him on the phone and text him.”

Lois Meade, a teacher for speech and hearing at Oxford's Kramer Elementary School and Talawanda Middle School, believes her husband's ability to make connections with students is what makes him a great educator.

“Are you going to start on Friday?” Meade asks one of his students at Boyd.

The student responds: “I think so!”

“Well, keep working hard...I don’t want to come watch you sit on the bench,” says Meade.

Family man

Lois and Patrick met when she was a freshman at Miami and he was a junior. But they don’t consider themselves a Miami Merger.

“We are really a St. Mary’s Merger,” Patrick Meade said.

St. Mary’s is a Catholic parish in uptown Oxford. Both Cincinnati natives come from large, devout Catholic families. They are also both the fourth child in their families.

“I think that is what made us so compatible,” said Lois. “We don’t need a lot.”

They got married at the end of her sophomore year and welcomed their first son by the end of Lois’s junior year.

“When I first met him, we didn’t immediately start dating,” said Lois. “We started bonding after we both met a grad student (at Miami) and we both wanted to help her and her three children. He is always helping those who don’t get attention.”

Shaped by faith

That has long been Meade's habit. He worked on a crisis hotline in college and later with students with autism. Lois credits her husband's involvement to his father, who now lives with them at their home in Oxford. Patrick’s father was very involved in Catholic charities in Cincinnati and Patrick’s older sister got involved as well.

“He always looked up to them,” said Lois.

And it is something that Patrick Meade instilled in his six children, two of whom are adopted.

“I worked as a Youth Leader in the Butler County Juvenile Detention Center,” said Marie Meade, the couple's third oldest child. “It was a career inspired by my dad’s endless devotion to kids who need extra help, encouragement and patience.”

Marie Meade quit her job in 2014 to help her aging grandfather who was moving in with her parents. As a child, Marie remember how much her siblings and friends loved her dad.

My dad, my hero

“Growing up my dad was my hero,” Marie Meade said. “I considered myself the luckiest."

Marie Meade said she continues to learn from her father. "Even now as an adult I am still learning from him. Growing up, conversations with him were like lessons and now many feel like class discussions. I am forever grateful for the love of learning he fostered in me.”

But the Meade family has not always been picture perfect. On April 22, 1995, Marie lost her older brother, Stephen, in a car accident. The three men in the back seat all died while the two in the front seats survived. The accident tore their family apart, Marie Meade said. But her father was quick to forgive the boys who survived.

“He drove to the hospital, asked for the rooms of his dead son's friends, and told them he didn't blame them, that he forgave them,” she recalled.

Patrick’s family members, always his biggest supporters, were on board when he decided to run for an open seat on the Talawanda Board of Education. The night he secured the seat, family and friends were surrounding him.

“I was so happy and excited for him when he decided to run for school board,” his daughter said. “I think we all had confidence but couldn't help but be nervous on election night. While he was at work I decorated the house with balloons and streamers, and signs my kids made. We watched the polls come in with family, friends, and so much joy.”

Miami Connections in limbo

Meade said he decided to run because he believes that the Board of Education has focused too long on saving money and not enough on kids, especially the ones he works with.

“If you have a need, you spend [money] on it,” he said. “All of the elementary school classrooms go right up to the limit but they say that they can’t afford to pay another teacher. Come on…”

When asked what else he wants to focus on when he officially takes his seat Jan. 8, he mentioned outsourcing of janitors, changing start times as well as continuing the program in Boyd Hall. Three days after the election, he learned his program is slated to be cut. Wasburn-Moses said the decision came from Butler Tech, not Talawanda or Miami.

“Butler Tech responds to the needs of the business community,” she said. “They are supposed to be preparing students for college and careers and they don’t think this program does that. If a young person is going to get to the point where they are ready for a career or college, they need to be successful in high school in the first place.”

According to Holli Morrish, director of communications for the Talawanda School District, the partners are meeting about the next steps for the program. But nothing has been decided.

Back in Boyd, meanwhile, Patrick Meade's Miami Connections students are uneasy. During the middle of one assignment, a student asked Meade: “Do you know what Talawanda is going to do with us?”

He couldn't provide much clarity.

But he did offer some hope.

“Well now you have someone on the [Board of Education] who will make sure to help you guys.”

Photo: Patrick Meade works through an algebra problem with a student. His smart board connects to students' computers so he can help them and check what they are doing on their laptops. To limit distractions, he takes students' cell phones at the start of class. -- Photo by Maggie Callaghan