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By CELESTE E. SMITH PRESS EDUCATION WRITER GIVE TERRY Caliste an excuse to talk about math, and he's off. With a gleam in his eyes, the Tinton Falls Resident speaks rapidly, gestures with his hands, and uses phrases like "analytical repertoire" to describe how students need to know a variety of ways to tackle a problem. Caliste believes that with the right attitude and preparation, no high school student needs to fear the math section of the Scholastic Achievement Test. Since February, Caliste has been broadcasting that message on "Knowledge Base," a weekly half-hour television show that began on Monmouth Cablevision and reaches 42,000 homes. Recently, Caliste's audience expanded considerably when his program was picked up by Cable Television Network of New Jersey and carried to 1.8 million homes statewide. "We had a lot of fun last week working smart, and not hard," Caliste said at the start of one episode. This week, he promised, "we're gonna tickle your analytical tastebuds." Caliste hopes to draw in high school students -- especially young black people who have never had black teachers as role models, particularly in math class. "There's nothing like that on television, where you have a black man teaching math," Caliste said. "It's an uncommon image. It defies the stereotypes of a black male. It catches people by surprise." |
Aiming to reach young black students is part of the reason Caliste, 36, an adjunct math professor at Brookdale
Community College, Middletown Township, and Monmouth College, West Long Branch, left his corporate roots
to become a local television personality. Caliste spent years as a technical statistician for NYNEX, New York, and Bell Labs, Holmdel Township. While he enjoyed the challenges of his job, he found himself looking forward more and more to his tutoring appointments and Saturday morning teaching sessions with high school students. He wanted them to appreciate math in a way he didn't when he was younger. It wasn't until he worked as a manager at a fast-food restaurant in his hometown of New Orleans that he realized he had an interest in math. "I really had no aspirations for college," Caliste said. "After the experience of sitting there late at night, balancing books, I learned I was comfortable with numbers." A scholarship carried him to Southern University, which paved the way for his career as a technical statistician. But he still found himself looking forward to his weekend teaching stints. So he left the corporate world, and with his own money he started the low-budget television program. Caliste said he's encouraged by the feedback he gets in the show, which is presented at 4:30 p.m. each Monday. About 20 calls and five letters are received each week, he said. |
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