by Margaret Reist Lincoln Journal Star | May 25, 2013

Four years ago, a group of eighth-grade boys at Park Middle School looked toward the future and made a pact.

They promised to support each other, to graduate from high school and then college, to beat the statistics that show African-American students graduate at significantly lower rates than their white counterparts -- and African-American males fare even worse.

Joe Griffin -- one of 15 Park students brought together as Lincoln Public Schools' first group mentoring program -- remembers hearing those statistics. And he decided then he wouldn't be one of them.

“I said, ‘I'm going to be one of the percentage that graduates.'”

One of five members of that group who agreed to let the Journal Star follow them through their first year of high school, Griffin will cross the stage this weekend to get his diploma.

Three of the other students -- Agya Adabie, Travis Turner and Tae Johnson -- will join him. Charlie Bush, who was arrested on a felony charge and spent time at the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Kearney, will not. But he says he learned from his mistakes, plans to go to summer school and still wants to get a degree.

The five were part of a pilot program led by Pete Ferguson, newly hired as the district's mentoring coordinator. The group -- along with a second group of Latino students at Park facilitated by Oscar Rios Pohireith -- met regularly at the end of their eighth-grade year.

They focused on cultural identity and building strengths and setting goals, finding people who would advocate for them and learning to advocate for themselves. They set their sights not just on high school graduation, but college.

Since then, the district's group empowerment and mentoring program has grown and served 177 elementary and middle school students in several schools the past four years.

It is part of the work of a Youth Development Team that includes advocates who work with African-American and Native students, homeless students and those who are transitioning back to school after being incarcerated or in treatment.

The team is part of the district's efforts to increase its graduation rate, which administrators say will continue to rise only by one-on-one work to help students. The mentoring and empowerment groups for elementary and middle school students are a jumping-off point, to help the students develop relationships and start thinking of their futures.

The advocates take over in high school, meeting with students regularly, making sure they stay on track, reminding them that there are people who care about them and believe in them.

They are there to connect, to advocate, to push but also to affirm.

“That's what this job is really about. It's relationships. Until you develop some kind of relationship with students, they really don't want to hear what you have to say,” said Bill Bryant, one of two African-American advocates who met with all five of the young men followed by the Journal Star. “A lot of what I'm dispensing is hope.”

Four years ago at Park, the students named their group Stocks Up because they planned to invest in their education, and by investing in themselves, they would expect others to invest in them. And their stock would rise.

When school ended, they didn't -- because they told Ferguson they wanted to keep meeting. So they did, visiting Nebraska Wesleyan University, writing their own personal blueprints for their future -- and making their pact.

Ferguson was impressed by their enthusiasm and perseverance, epitomized by Bush and Griffin, who didn't have a ride for a Wesleyan field trip that summer but walked across town -- despite getting lost -- to get there.

“If you have individuals who will do this, you can't tell me they won't fight through any adversity to graduate,” he said.

They did face adversity, but also success.

* * *

Johnson -- whose passion is basketball -- came back from an ankle injury that sidelined him his freshman year. He switched schools, and after his grandma died decided to move back to Mississippi, where much of his family still lives. He felt closer to her there, but he eventually decided that's not where he needed to be.

“The satisfaction I thought I was going to get never came,” he said. “I told myself it was time to come home.”

He returned to Lincoln High his senior year, played basketball and signed to play at Doane College next season. His freshman dream to be a biochemist has been replaced with plans to major in communications.

Adabie, whose family moved to Lincoln from Ghana when he was 11, played what he loved in high school: soccer. He sometimes struggled to balance the sport and classes, but he got decent grades.

A hip fracture cut his senior soccer season short, but a highlight of high school still was Lincoln High's victory over traditional power East High -- even though he was on crutches.

As a freshman, he wanted to be a doctor -- this fall, he'll start at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with the same goal.

Griffin -- whose family comes from Chicago and whose dad was shot there when Griffin was 2 -- admits his focus wasn't on school at first, but he buckled down his sophomore and junior years.

“I used to skip,” he said. “I had to get my head twisted all the way on to focus,” he said. “I still don't have the best grades, but in my mind, I feel like I accomplished something by getting through it.”

Some of his best friends won't graduate, he said, but part of his determination comes from his mom, who has had a hard life but keeps trying. Now he has set his sights on the Navy and will use a Learn to Dream scholarship to take classes at Southeast Community College before he enlists.

Turner said his family -- transplanted to Lincoln from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- made it clear graduating from high school was a priority. What he had to decide was what kind of mark he would make there. Seeing some of his friends make choices that took them down a bad path helped him realize he wanted to take a different one. In the end, he said, it was a good ride.

“It's been a roller-coaster,” Turner said. “A fun one, though, not one that just throws you around in loops and stops.”

Bush, who wanted to join the Marines as a freshman, faced the biggest setbacks of the five.

He was expelled the second half of his freshman year, then transferred to Parkview Christian. He did well there, academically and in sports, playing football, basketball and track. The summer after his sophomore year, the trouble got serious. The felony case was transferred to juvenile court, and he served time in Kearney.

He takes responsibility for what happened, he said, and the staff at the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center helped him realize that he can't make excuses for his actions, or minimize them. His experiences, he said, taught him he needs to focus on his responsibilities, not hanging out, leaving himself open for trouble.

He spent his senior year at Lincoln Southwest and now wants to go to summer school, take some classes next year -- then graduate so he can show others a high school diploma is possible, even if it takes more than four years.

One of the messages he took away from the Stocks Up group: “Never give up, basically.”

* * *

Of the entire 15 members of the Stocks Up group, 10 will graduate. Two are planning to attend summer school and graduate. One dropped out. One left the district. One is incarcerated.

Of the 10 graduating, at least seven plan to go on to college.

Districtwide, 76 percent of African-American students graduated last year -- about the same percentage as the Stocks Up group.

The work of the youth development team -- and the youth mentoring groups -- isn't the only reason students succeed, Ferguson said, and it's not solely responsible when they don't.

And the work they do often is hard to quantify but important: helping students realize they are assets to the school, that they should keep trying, be resilient.

That doesn't mean excusing mistakes, he said, but recognizing accomplishments -- even when they're not straight As.

“You can't correct if you never affirm,” he said. “They'll never hear the correction if they've never been affirmed.”

When the Park eighth-graders got called to the counselors' office because they had been chosen to be in the Stocks Up group, they initially thought they were in trouble. Four years later, Ferguson said, students ask to be nominated to the groups. And that's important, he said.

When the Stocks Up group started, students wrote “blueprints for their future” -- an idea that came from the speech by Martin Luther King to a group of junior high school students six months before he was assassinated.

When they walk across the stage this weekend in their caps and gowns, Ferguson will give them a copy of that speech.

“I really want them to hold onto that,” he said. “Be the best at whatever you're going to be.”