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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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CPS Parent Wants Son to Get Second Chance
Produced by Julia McEvoy on Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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Mary Davis (Photo by Carlos Javier Ortiz) |
In the middle of this school year, Chicago’s Robeson High school kicked student Demetrius Davis out, saying he wasn’t cutting it. The school says Demetrius and his mom both need to take some responsibility for what happened and Mrs Davis agrees. She’s committed to getting her son educated, but she’s had some severe set backs herself. Mrs. Davis now worries that her efforts to help him may be too late.
Series: 50/50: The Odds of Graduating
Mary Davis went to jail for three months back in 2004 for stealing from a store. She was a heroine and cocaine user at the time. And she admits she had pretty much failed her children.
DAVIS: I started hanging with the wrong crowd and I stopped volunteering at the school. My oldest son got out and he started selling drugs and I started using. My habit got so bad that I stopped taking care of my other responsibilities.
The good thing about that jail experience says Davis, is that she went through drug treatment programs, and parenting programs.
When she got out she was drug free and eager to make amends.
She especially wanted to bring 16-year-old Demetrius back off the streets, before it was too late.
DAVIS: I started off spending a lot of time with him. I spent a lot of time going and getting him off the block. He was hanging out with my 20-year-old they were like best of friends. So I used to go get them and ride with them and get him something to eat. You know things that we haven’t did. We just talked and Demetrius told me how good it feels to have me back.
Davis sits on the couch of her two bedroom apartment holding her month old baby, Jesse. Her 4-year-old, Sterling, is across the street at preschool. Her daughter Mercedes is playing cards with Demetrius. Her brother Jack is over. Mrs. Davis is from a large family herself—10 kids.
DAVIS: 7 boys and 3 girls. I’m the baby girl.
Davis’ family is from Cahoma, Mississippi. They moved to Chicago when Davis was 3, moved into the Robert Taylor public housing project.
DAVIS: I can’t really remember too much about my childhood but I went to DuSable High. I dropped out in my sophomore year, got pregnant with my first child at age 16.
Demetrius is also a parent at age 16. Mrs. Davis had him move in with her last year, and enroll at nearby Robeson High. She says school gave him something to focus on. It’s true he was on probation and going to school because the courts said he had to, but she didn’t care what the reason was: she began to see him changing.
DAVIS: Since he been back with me this last past year he been doing great, he haven’t been in any trouble. He was smoking marijuana, he stopped smoking marijuana and he stopped selling it, he stopped hanging out on the blocks he was hanging out on. He just been doing the right thing now. Because he know momma ain’t going to go for it.
Mrs. Davis connected with Demetrius’ mentor at Robeson High, Rodney Thomas. Thomas could see the mother and son trying to sort out their new relationship. He watched Davis try to wean her son from the streets.
THOMAS: He was conditioned to fight, he was conditioned to survive. By all these key people taking him out of this environment and telling him he’s loved, that there are people who love him. I think he has attached himself to that and I think a big part of that change too, is his mom.
Thomas encouraged Davis to step in at Robeson when she had to. They both new Demetrius’ girlfriends were causing him, and the school, problems.
On this afternoon, a teacher had put Demetrius in a head lock because he thought Demetrius was hurting a girl in the hallway. It turned out Demetrius was helping pull one girl away from fighting another. In the office, the school’s Mr. Brashears meets with Mrs. Davis.
DAVIS: How can he learn every time he gets kicked out of school? I’m so tired of this.
Several other mothers waiting in the school office nod their heads in agreement.
DAVIS: So can you all please talk to him?
BRASHEARS: Oh yeah! We would do that but—
DAVIS: Thank you.
BRASHEARS: But every time she sees him talking to another girl she’s going to jump up on him.
DAVIS: Then you all need to talk to her about that. She need to know she can’t do that. There’s going to be consequences against her. Womens can get the message too. She need to know that.
SCHOOL: What’s your name?
DAVIS: Mary Davis.
Like the other moms in the waiting room, Mrs. Davis is struggling to control her teenage son. She’s trying to teach him the lesson she learned when she dropped out of school.
DAVIS: I can get a job but it’s not the kind of job where I can depend on to take care of my babies and myself and be able to live the way I want to live. So, I’ve been trying to tell him it’s real hard out here without a high school diploma or a GED.
But by January, Demetrius had missed 27 days of school. Mrs. Davis knew he wasn’t going. She says she got tired of trying to get him there.
DAVIS: I’m his mom and I know for a fact that he really wasn’t taking school serious because I never seen any paper or pencil or books going to and from school with him. I’m really saying that Meechie really didn’t take it serious. I wish he’d gotten more help than he did but he really wouldn’t listen to me so I knew he wouldn’t listen to someone else.
At the end of the month Mr Brashears called Mrs Davis and Demetrius in and told them it would be better for him to start looking for an alternative school. They didn’t want him there any more. This is a blow. But it’s not the end of the story, as far as Mrs. Davis is concerned.
Ambi: church baptism
After he got dropped, Demetrius told Mr. Thomas, his mentor at the school that he wanted to get baptized at Thomas’ church.
Ambi: "In the name of the son…Yes yes yes!"
DAVIS: It’s just too hard to believe, my son getting baptized. It’s just too hard to believe.
Ambi: "Thank you lord, thank you thank you thank you.
Even though Demetrius has now moved out and is living with his girlfriend. Even though he’s not in school anymore. Mrs. Davis still sees him as a world away from where he was a year ago.
He’s not in jail, he’s not selling drugs, he’s spending time with his son. She wants him back in school, but she knows he’s got to want it too.
Mrs. Davis says she is convinced of one thing. She says if she can turn her life around, so can her son.
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Gretta, Beverly // Wednesday, June 10, 2009 @ 9:31 AM
From the last piece: MRS.DAVIS: I am like, it’s not like they kicked you out, you brought this upon yourself. They was giving you chances after chances after chances and telling you to come to school and be on time, and you know you just choose to do your own thing. I said I just hope that when you go to another school you just take school more serious.
Isn't it slanting the story to say she wants a "second" chance for her son? Even she knows that he had chance after chance. I think what needs to be considered is the lack of social supports and stop blaming this on the schools. I feel for the mother but she wants the school to talk to him? What power does the school have over him? Schools can't fix the world without outside support!
How many students were being disrupted by this student in their classroom? It is the responsibility of the school to educate as many as possible? The mother said she got tired of trying to make her son go to school. Can you imagine trying to learn in a school with hundreds of kids whose parents are tired of making them go to school?
Maybe the city needs to focus on alternative education environments for all the problems they didn't bother taking care of years ago. Another bandage solution.
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Frank, Chicago // Wednesday, June 10, 2009 @ 12:14 PM
As an educator, I totally disagree with Julia McEvoy. Going to school and complete high school education is NOT the responsibility of a school, or teachers, or city mayor, or a social worker. It is the parent(s), the student (who is 17, not 7).
Do not, please, do not put the failure of this student, his mom on a school. This just sends wrong message to students.
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Jen Johnson, Edgewater // Wednesday, June 10, 2009 @ 5:37 PM
As a CPS teacher I'm always listening to the NPR education stories and cringing. They do such a poor job getting at the problems that teachers in public education face. They really should just openly start backing corporate/charter/Teach for America people rather than pretending that they care about the views of those of us in public education that don't think the "reformers" like Arne Duncan know what they are talking about. This entire story blames the mentor for this young man's failure and that is not fair. As educators, we work overtime already for no pay, because we love our kids, our jobs and the communities. NPR would make it seem though that we, the educators, are doing a disservice to our students and that is the reason that CPS students aren't all graduating. NPR did not report on the ways in which society had failed Demtrius' mother, her community and how CPS schools are underfunded and how teachers are expected to work miracles with just love and time. NPR would wish us all to believe that the way to fix education is to turn it over to people with ties to corporate America with degrees from fancy schools, but who have no real education experience. The realities on the ground are not easily understood by people outside of the classroom. I challenge the reporters at NPR to follow a dozen CPS teachers each at different schools and I know you will easily find a dozen dedicated professionals doing a great deal with very little. Go to the North and Northwest suburbs and see what they are doing for kids with sooo much. I would argue that what we do on a daily basis is much more impressive since we receive so little support. NPR ought to be better than supporting the Daley-regime's handover of education to corporate privatizers and blaming hard-working educators for the systemic problems that plague our urban societies. I hope that Demetrius can get an alternative education so that he can improve his reading level, but he does have to invest in education himself. Teachers cannot force students to learn. Believe me! We try to! We as a society have a responsibility to dig deeper at why children are not succeeding. It is not all the teacher or the school's fault. What we can do is invest in public neighborhood schools, fund the resources, technology, small class sizes, counselors, social workers, after school programs that can help students succeed. We can fight racism, improve health care, housing, job resources and try to decrease poverty and then maybe students like Demetrius will always succeed. Until that point, NPR try to support public education and educators, instead of blaming them for what is beyond our control. I have stopped being a member of NPR because they have so whole-heartedly bought into the test score-driven corporate mentality and their reporting on education is so superficial. And that's really too bad. Because NPR listeners have the power to influence people and all NPR is doing is giving fodder to those who wish to sell public education to private companies and allow non-urban dwellers to reinforce their stereotypes about CPS. Shame on you, NPR. I wish I could have written earlier, but I was at my school (It's the last day with students) from 7:15am until 5pm (Remember, I'm only paid for 6 hours a day and keep in mind, today was the last day with students and I still was working that long). It was not a nice way to start my day to hear NPR deriding educators and doing such a poor reporting job.
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Jen Johnson, Edgewater // Wednesday, June 10, 2009 @ 5:46 PM
Just one more thing, if the city really wanted to service all students, it would not keep cutting vocational programs! We need to train kids for all possible choices they can make! College and immediate job placement! What this test score mentality has done is given the illusion that all children can go to college. I wish that were true, but have you heard what tuition costs are? Have you heard of how little money there is to help kids go to college? Have you heard how many applicants there are each year? All kids are not going to college immediately. We should be giving them all possible options, including real job training.
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