True story...
My daughter taught at inner city schools for fourteen years. If you can get one of those kids through high school, doing high school level work, it's a minor miracle. The teachers remember those kids.
Dontavious (not his real name) was not the smartest kid in the class, but he was a unicorn...He came from a two-parent family. They might have been poor, but they cared. So Dontavious worked hard to overcome his deficiencies. He never made an A, and very few B's ever appeared on his report card. And my daughter tutored him in math for many years in an after school program.
But Dontavious was going to make it. No, he'd never go to college, but he'd get an honest high school diploma. One where he could read and write. Maybe work his way into a decent job.
He was walking home from school in the fall of his senior year, waiting at the curb, waiting for the light to change. A group of young blacks in a car drove by and shot at another group of young blacks on the street corner. All the potential that was Dontavious, died in a bloody pool, killed by a bullet not meant for him.
His teachers cried.
