Gemar Mills’ (pictured) resume reads like someone who is much older. At 22 years old, he was already a high school math teacher at Newark’s Malcolm X Shabazz High School, eventually creating a 70 percent standardized test pass rate; by 25, he was the school’s department chair of Mathematics. Within a year of acquiring the position, Mills improved the math department’s functioning from 17 percent to 26 percent.
With his rapid progression, Mills was able to become the school’s principal at 29, in the 2011-12 school year.
But he had his work cut out for him. During the 2010-11 school year, students pulled the fire alarm 119 times, many academic rankings placed the school near the bottom, and only 19 percent of students were proficient in math, according to High School Proficiency Assessment testing.
Even the teachers had, had enough: only 75 percent of educators showed up to class on a daily basis. By school year’s end, only 20 students made honor roll; enrollment fell to 810 students, down from 1,200 two years prior.
Mills began turning things around by implementing a no-nonsense disciplinary plan. A dress code went in to effect, banning items such as leggings and cargo shorts; students were greeted by a metal detector; and a 20-minute convocation welcomed students back for the new year, addressing issues such as poor test scores and shootings.
And the results have been immediate: By the 2011-12 year, Shabazz’s overall language arts proficiency rose from 48 percent to 61 percent and math proficiency rose from 19 percent to 27 percent.
Posts published in “Community”
ATLANTA — This weekend will be a busy one for Dorian Joyner, Sr. Sunday morning, he will watch his oldest son graduate from Morehouse College. Joyner will have a front row seat for commencement. After all, he will be a fellow graduate himself.
Joyner started his Morehouse journey back in 1984, but never finished. Three years ago, he decided it was time to come back. By then his son, Dorian Joyner, Jr. was already a freshman. When the younger Joyner heard his father was coming back to Morehouse, he admits, it was a shock at first.
“I said, ‘oh, you’re coming back to visit some of your friends?’” he remembered. “And [Dorian Senior] said ‘no, I’m coming back to be a student.’ I said – can you repeat that?” While most kids come to college to get away from their parents, Dorian Junior says he never felt like he was under his father’s thumb.
“We used to have a support system. Sometimes he would come to my room to ask about a problem or a class or a professor to take,” he said. Daddy Dorian, who allows his son to call him by his first name on campus, said the two have their own friends and schedules, so their paths rarely intersect. But after three years of learning from and pushing each other, the two have a bond that goes deeper that father and son.
article by Blayne Alexander via thegrio.com
This is a story about a boy, a bear and bathroom tissue. When a giant corporation took time out to send a token of affection to a small admirer, it made a family’s day. First, meet 9-year-old Cash’an Clark, a happy, easygoing kid who also faces some big challenges, his mom Grace Clark said.Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was 2, Cash’an has problems communicating and socializing. He talks very little, he doesn’t play with other kids and he fixates on certain things, Clark said.
Enter the Charmin bear – the cuddly cartoon logo featured prominently on packages of Charmin toilet paper and in the company’s commercials. While so many aspects of life make Cash’an withdraw into his own world, something about that bear speaks to the little boy. Even his family has a hard time explaining it.
Grace Clark says she saw her son’s fascination for the Charmin bear start when he was 4.
“Autistic children are very particular, very precise in the details that they take in,” Clark, who lives in Manchester, Conn., told TODAY Moms.
“It’s got to be something about that bear that is just staying with him and I honestly don’t know what that precise detail is. I can’t ask him because he can’t verbalize it for me.”
She still remembers the moment when she realized Cash’an was fascinated by the logo. They were at Target one day when he was 4 and he suddenly bolted away from her and ran to the bathroom tissue section. “This little kid is looking at this big aisle full of toilet paper rolls with a bear, and he started putting all these packages in my cart that I did not want. And then he climbed in the cart and he looked at them,” Clark said.
A 5-year-old Newark, NJ boy became a hero after he used quick thinking and A-B-C skills to save his father’s life last week.
The two were driving home from buying Nathaniel Dancy Jr. school shoes when Nathaniel Sr. suffered an aneurysm and stroke, making him violently ill, according to a report by New York’s NBC Channel 4 News. He was able to pull the car over, but then got out of the car, vomited, and became paralyzed by a seizure. That’s when Nathaniel Jr., who is in kindergarten, sprang into action, grabbing his dad’s phone and calling his grandmother.
“He said, ‘Come and help me and my daddy. We’re in trouble,’” Susan Hardy-Blackman told NBC New York. She asked him where they were, and, though her grandson was unable to read the sign on the store they were in front of, he spelled it for her: F-U-R-N-I-T-U-R-E. But she was still confused. And that prompted the young boy to be persistent well beyond his years.
“He said, ‘Grandma, use your active listening skills,’” she said. “‘Listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth.’” He gave her another clue, that they’d just gone through a tunnel, and Hardy-Blackman was able to go to them, where they were parked in front of a furniture store, and send an ambulance there, too.
Brett Baker, director of operations at Nathaniel’s North Star Academy, told Yahoo! Shine that young Nathaniel is “a very caring individual,” and that he was proud to know the school’s emphasis of core values “really helped him seize the moment, as it were.” Doctors say that Nathaniel Sr., who remains hospitalized, is lucky to be alive.
article by Beth Greenfield via shine.yahoo.com
An Atlanta mother got a late Mother’s Day gift that was surely worth the wait.
Former Atlanta Falcons running back Warrick Dunn gave Kimberly Kindel (pictured) and her three children their first home as part of his charity’s “Home for the Holidays” program on Tuesday, Fox 5 News Atlanta via All News 106.7 reports. In addition to the home being fully furnished, Dunn gave Kindel $5,000 to help with the down payment.
The ex-NFL player gave Kindel the home through his charity, Warrick Dunn Charities. He has been helping single parents get into their first home since 1997. Atlanta Habitat for Humanity and Aaron’s, Inc. partnered with Dunn to get Kindel and her children into the house. While it brings Dunn joy to give Kindel this wonderful Mother’s Day, the holiday evokes bad memories for the former NFL star. His mother, Betty Smothers, was a Baton Rouge, La., police officer when she was killed in the line of duty. Dunn was just 18-years-old at the time.
Giving mothers a new home is therapy for him, he says. “Losing my mom at that early age, I knew what her dream was, and to be able to share this moment with another single parent who’s providing, and putting her family in a position to be successful long-term for me is — I can’t truly describe the emotions,” Dunn said.
To see video on this story, click here.
article via newsone.com
Jordan Dickerson and Robin Jeter were separated when they were infants, but reunited by chance at a high school track meet earlier this year. Dickerson, a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School, and Jeter, a senior at Friendship Collegiate Academy public charter school, attend school about 10 miles apart in Washington D.C. and play the same sports, but had never crossed paths.
On January 9, both sisters attended the same track meet. Dickerson told WUSA 9 that her teammates told her there was another girl who looked just like her. “I had already known about my adoption, and I knew my last name was Jeter,” Dickerson said. When she learned Robin’s last name, she said she started crying.
They talked on the phone the night they met, discovering that they were born just nine months apart. Jeter first lived with her biological mother, then moved to foster care, and then to a legal guardian. The sisters decided to look for more siblings, finding four so far, according to WUSA 9. Dickerson and Jeter have become close, spending weekends together and frequently talking on the phone.
Click here to watch the full WUSA 9 report.
article by Carrie Healey via thegrio.com
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ4Rnba85o8&w=560&h=315]
Kid President, the cute 10-year-old boy who inspires us to “make the world awesome,” has released a new video tribute for all moms this Mother’s Day. Kid President, whose real name is Robby Novak, said his message was “on behalf of all the kids on the world.” Enjoy!
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
DAYTONA BEACH — As the lights went out and his fellow students settled into their dorms, Joshua Williams would store two duffel bags of belongings in a friend’s room and disappear into the darkness.
He would leave the secure surroundings of the Bethune-Cookman University campus and head across the International Speedway Boulevard bridge and walk, sometimes all night. In the early morning hours, he would sneak into the lobby at the Bronson Hall dorm and sleep a few hours on a couch as if he lived there.
“I would go down to the beach sometimes,” he recalled. “Sometimes I would just take any direction and get lost and try to find my way back — I would just walk.”
Williams, 23, who is graduated last Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, was homeless for most of his first three years at the school but too proud to tell anyone.
But just like on his nightly walks, he always found his way. He survived on handouts, slept in empty trucks or on a couch at the apartments of classmates who thought he just didn’t want to go home after a late-night study session.
Remembering the poverty, drug dealers and random shootings he’d seen growing up near Miami, he knew he was on the right path. At school, he would find family, a sense of purpose and even win the title of Mr. Bethune-Cookman University and become the first student to organize a scholarship — but first he had to find a place to sleep.
“Before the sun comes up, I would make sure I was somewhere to lay down,” Williams remembered. “I knew I was homeless, but I said to myself I’d rather be in Daytona homeless trying to go to school than ever go back to Miami.”
NO PLACE TO LIVE
Williams arrived at B-CU in the fall of 2008 with $3,000 he saved from working at a gas station in Miami. He knew it wasn’t enough but felt confident. Then he found out tuition, room and board ran about $10,000 a semester. Williams wasn’t about to let that stop him.
“I would go down to the beach sometimes,” he recalled. “Sometimes I would just take any direction and get lost and try to find my way back — I would just walk.”
Williams, 23, who is graduated last Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, was homeless for most of his first three years at the school but too proud to tell anyone.
But just like on his nightly walks, he always found his way. He survived on handouts, slept in empty trucks or on a couch at the apartments of classmates who thought he just didn’t want to go home after a late-night study session.
Remembering the poverty, drug dealers and random shootings he’d seen growing up near Miami, he knew he was on the right path. At school, he would find family, a sense of purpose and even win the title of Mr. Bethune-Cookman University and become the first student to organize a scholarship — but first he had to find a place to sleep.
“Before the sun comes up, I would make sure I was somewhere to lay down,” Williams remembered. “I knew I was homeless, but I said to myself I’d rather be in Daytona homeless trying to go to school than ever go back to Miami.”
NO PLACE TO LIVE
Williams arrived at B-CU in the fall of 2008 with $3,000 he saved from working at a gas station in Miami. He knew it wasn’t enough but felt confident. Then he found out tuition, room and board ran about $10,000 a semester. Williams wasn’t about to let that stop him.
WWE and Sean “Diddy” Combs today unveiled a new global anti-bullying public service announcement encouraging kids to stand up to bullying. It will begin airing tonight during Monday Night Raw.
“Bullying is a very serious issue and needs to stop now,” says Diddy in the release. In the video, he says, “In this digital age sometimes it just doesn’t stop when the days end. … If it’s not you being bullied, help someone who is. … Stand up to bullying.”
The music mogul will serve as an ambassador for Be a Star, the anti-bullying initiative co-founded by WWE and The Creative Coalition to encourage young people to treat each other with tolerance and respect.
Combs is also trying to encourage an end to bullying with his Invisible Bully clothing line. The motto there: “The mind is the most powerful tool you possess. Thoughts are invisible and only those that believe in the invisible can achieve the impossible. The dream is real if you believe.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Pr1XMJUDw&w=560&h=315]
article by Ann Oldenburg via usatoday.com
The road to one of this country’s leading historically Black colleges was not a walk in the park for the girls; they worked hard to maintain their high grade point averages in high school. According to Kirstie Bonner, who spoke with WSB-TV, “Before we came to college, we prayed that we would keep 4.0′s all the way through, but I don’t think we ever really expected it.”
But apparently there is strength in numbers, and as sisters who have traveled along the same path, sharing the same educational goals for success, the young women seemed to fuel each other, as evidenced by their noteworthy standing at Spelman, “You can have strength together,” Kristie points out.
When the young women arrived at the Atlanta college, they said they really pushed themselves to the limit to maintain excellent grades, even making themselves physically ill. Eventually, both Kirstie and Kristie learned from their mistakes, self-corrected, and managed their college workload in a way that would not negatively affect their health.
But apparently there is strength in numbers, and as sisters who have traveled along the same path, sharing the same educational goals for success, the young women seemed to fuel each other, as evidenced by their noteworthy standing at Spelman, “You can have strength together,” Kristie points out.
When the young women arrived at the Atlanta college, they said they really pushed themselves to the limit to maintain excellent grades, even making themselves physically ill. Eventually, both Kirstie and Kristie learned from their mistakes, self-corrected, and managed their college workload in a way that would not negatively affect their health.