Let me tell you a story about my second day as a teacher. As first period began most of my students were slowly getting settled and I was about to convene the class.  Wiry and dark-skinned, Cory hadn’t said a word the previous day, and now he walked in late.  Suddenly, after one abusive word from another student, Cory threw off his shirt, pushed past me, and decided to show everyone why he was not to be messed with.
The students yelled ‘Fight!’ and two neighboring classes emptied into the hallway, rushing to my door as Cory beat the other boy.  I screamed at them to stop, finally hauling Cory out of the room.  He struggled in my arms, his sweat staining my second day shirt.
The dean of students shrugged at my disciplinary write-up and said the school wasn’t suspending students until the second week. But that didn’t matter because Cory wouldn’t return to class until later in the month.
After graduating from Pitt in the spring of 2006 I joined Teach For America and moved to Baton Rouge to teach middle school special education students math. When Cory walked into my first hour class two years ago he was 14 and had already failed 7th grade once. Like many of his 9th Ward neighbors, he fled to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina and then to Baton Rouge. But Katrina was just one of many brutal experiences in his life.
America has been a hard place for Cory and when he arrived at Glen Oaks Middle School he was full of anger. However, I grew to truly love Cory for his intellect, humor, and fierce loyalty. We became close in the two years that he was my student. On the last day of school, with both our faces stained with tears, I realized that he was unrecognizable from the ball of fury that raged in my classroom the second day of that first year.
Cory has made incredible psychological and academic gains that he would not have made without me. But even after the success of the last two years I fear for him because, in this nation, Cory’s story does not typically end well.
As a teacher I can provide an incredible gift to my students in the form of a safe, edifying space that might change their minds about the value of education and even the value of themselves. But like many educators, I am left wondering if my work is making a difference.
Over the last two years, my students, including Cory, have enjoyed many successes.  However, I cannot help but concede an abiding truth: I have not given them the tools to overcome their brutal environment.
Cory is still stuck.  I have not touched his home, economic condition or his future educational experiences- he simply may not have a real math teacher next year. I hope that, armed with my love, he can overcome everything he faces.  But I fear that my actions ultimately tip the scale only slightly in favor of his success, while larger factors work to push the balance against him. Every day as a teacher, I see students who desperately strive to realize their dreams and aspirations.  These students get good grades, work hard at part-time jobs, and are honest, wonderful people.  Even this, as many of my students have realized, is not enough. Most do not have the systems of support that would allow them to reach their goals, and hardly any of them are ever taught the basic financial knowledge that is necessary to lead stable lives.
Now done with my two-year Teach For America commitment I will continue teaching in Louisiana with the goal of mobilizing the financial, social, and educational resources necessary to give the youth of Baton Rouge an authentic chance to pursue their dreams. Last autumn, in order to reach this goal, two other Teach For America Corps members and I founded a non-profit organization, the Baton Rouge Youth Coalition (BRYC).

Through a three-pronged program of financial literacy, youth business incubation, and civic engagement, BRYC mobilizes local teens to take ownership of their lives and communities, while creating citywide partnerships to build institutions that meet the intellectual, economic, and social needs of youth. We want students to plan and work for their futures, while we make Baton Rouge more responsive and adaptive to the challenges our youth face.

Over the summer, with the help of friends, we led our pioneering group of 16 and 17-year-old students on a week-long trek through the deserts and mountains of Big Bend National Park in Texas. Some of our students had never traveled more than two hours from their homes, or above an elevation of 200 ft.  Yet we hiked up to eight-ten miles a day, carrying 50-pound packs, in temperatures that reached 115 degrees. The goal was to create the framework for students to take risks, push themselves, and grow as both individuals and members of a team.

It was the first big step in our efforts to build and sustain a small group of outstanding students who could be the basis for a larger Baton Rouge youth community engaged in financial literacy, youth business development, and community-building enterprises. Since then things have been moving extremely quickly. At the start of September we entered into partnerships with Boys and Girls Club and the Recreation and Parks Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge. This was a huge step forward.  Boys and Girls Club will work as our fiscal and programming partner, while the Parks Commission is collaborating with BRYC to develop several youth forum programs that would operate in their facilities.

Meanwhile, supported and organized by BRYC, our student leaders are doing incredible things in the larger community. After years of success, Word Play, a local non-profit that runs writing workshops and slam poetry competitions, lost the grant that provided transportation for hundreds of youth to monthly slam poetry events. As their first philanthropic effort, our BRYC student leaders are raising the funds to replace the lost grant and save this popular program.

In addition, our student-leaders have become youth representatives to the larger adult community in Baton Rouge. Last month, our student-leaders and other youth activists performed a dramatic reading, recited original poetry, and provided historical analysis of Ernest Gaines’ short story ‘The Sky Is Grey’. The venerable Louisiana author was in attendance and over 120 people stuffed into the Louisiana State University Gallery at the Shaw Center in downtown Baton Rouge. Our students wowed the audience, pushing the assembled mostly white adults to see the pertinence of the story’s themes of race, prejudice, and progress in 1950s America to the lives of young black students in Louisiana. We are slated to perform the story again at the Baton Rouge public library and on a college campus in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Finally, throughout the year our student leaders have been taking our course in financial literacy, while participating in a leadership class that combines a study of community organizing with a history of people, power, and change. Through our curriculum the students will become activists and entrepreneurial thinkers, critically considering their community and themselves. From there, we will take this raw talent and facilitate the creation of youth businesses, supported by micro-loans and run by high school students.

With partners like the Parks Commission and Boys and Girls Club, BRYC is creating the economic, intellectual, and social capacities to help youth gain more control over their own lives and to ensure that their diligent efforts lead to powerful results.  Our students are ready. Ready for change and ready for a challenge.  In short, they are what we would want our own children to be.

Sam Joel is a 2006 Pitt Graduate. He was an editor of PPR. Find Out More about the BYRC at www.wix.com/WMinton/BRYC