It’s Thursday afternoon and the classroom in the old, historic Dunbar School is crowded. Booming voices and laughter bounce off the walls. Rap music adds to the sonic mix.
But Joseph Martinez, with barber clippers in one hand and a fine, black comb in his other hand, is focused. He’s cutting hair. Neatly. Precisely. Seated in the barber chair is his older brother, James Martinez.
“He’s come a long ways,” said James, 32, about 19-year-old Joseph.
He could say the same about the other young students who are learning a new skill at the Dunbar Barber Academy, 325 W. Second St. The 8-year-old school, which is open to public Mondays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and offers $5 haircuts, is a 10-month vocational training program run by Martio Harris, a longtime barber and the varsity boys’ basketball coach at Flowing Wells High School.
However, more than learning how to give fades and tapers, the students are learning about meeting responsibilities, setting and reaching goals, and attending to their customers.
Lessons in life are given in equal amounts with barbering classes.
“I’ve learned a lot of discipline,” said Joseph Martinez, a 2015 graduate from Tucson Magnet High School, who just graduated from the academy.
Harris, who is known as Tio, is not surprised. When he closed Tio’s Mastercutz, his shop on North Stone Avenue near East Fort Lowell Road, he decided to open a barber school that would do more than instruct people on how to use clippers and scissors.
“I wanted to train them to put them in the workforce and change the perception about barbering,” Harris said. He wants to empower his students and instill confidence in them.
And not all of the students are male.
Kim Fout, 20, said she tried cosmetology school but it wasn’t for her. “I like cutting guys’ hair,” she said while on a break.
While there is a lot of male bantering, Fout said it doesn’t bother her. She said her male classmates are respectful. Any disrespectful language or acts wouldn’t be tolerated, she added.
Listening to Harris talk about his academy, his philosophy and his goals, you get the feeling that you’re in church. The passion and cadence in his voice is clear like a Sunday preacher.
In fact, Harris did serve as an associate pastor before he decided to open his school.
“I was either going to pastor a church or pastor an academy,” he said.
His road to Dunbar was paved by the late Cressworth Lander, who was president of the Dunbar Coalition, the nonprofit organization that has overseen efforts to maintain Dunbar as a community center.
Dunbar, located north of downtown, was once a segregated school for Tucson’s black students. After desegregation in 1951, Dunbar became John Spring Junior High School but was eventually shuttered in 1978.
But the Dunbar Coalition, which owns the two-story building, has kept it open. In addition to the barber school, there is the Barbea Williams Dance Studio, a commercial kitchen, an auditorium that is rented out, and soon a cosmetology school will open in the first-floor space where the barber school is located.
The success of the barber academy pushed Harris to move upstairs and double the space. The soon-to-be-completed 3,500-square-foot classroom will have 40 barber chairs, a classroom and an office. Harris has a waiting list of students.
The growth of the barber academy, the opening of the cosmetology school and the other uses are signs of Dunbar’s viability and relevance, said Bill Ponder, president of the Dunbar Coalition’s board of directors.
“They continue to give visibility to the school, continue to be a voice of the community and keeping the history alive,” said Ponder, the former chief administrative officer for the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson.
Harris welcomes the challenge of growing the school and its students. But to make the students better, both as professional barbers and responsible young people, Harris focuses on himself.
“I challenge myself every day so I can challenge them,” he said. “I want to help them make their dreams come true.”
