Hope and Dreams

If staff members focused solely on students' academic skills, other critical needs, such as social skills, would be neglected. For the most part, these children live in economic and social isolation in an area where nearly one-third of the families struggle in poverty, says Johnson. Teen pregnancy, high-school dropouts, unemployment, and single-parent households are more common here than elsewhere. The children have learned one set of social skills, which they use to fit in with other kids in their neighborhood: how to dress in baggy pants, how to act tough, how to swagger.

"We tell them they need to learn another set of skills to survive in mainstream society," says Johnson. "It's as simple as knowing how to present yourself. Taking the toothpick out of your mouth. Giving somebody a firm handshake." It's not about acting white, he says, as some kids protest. It's about developing "cultural elasticity," the ability to adapt to your surroundings and to your audience, sort of like being multilingual, he says.

Durham Scholars imposes more structure than many of the children have experienced before. When they arrive at the business school at around 3:30 PM, they sit down in the cafeteria for fruit juice and granola bars while the social workers check in with them. The kids are reminded (constantly) to tuck in their shirts and to keep the noise down. Then it's off to the classrooms, where they hunker down to complete homework assignments, to study for upcoming tests, or to read (assuming they stay in their seats). Because staff members have regular contact with them, as well as with many of their teachers, the staff knows who's having trouble in math and who hasn't turned in a social-studies paper. Since not every family has a car, Durham Scholars dispatches minibuses to 18 Durham-area schools to bring the students to Chapel Hill. Later, the buses drop them off at home.

Beverly Hester-Stephens, 42, the program director, realizes that this is a big commitment for the kids. Some don't get home until 7:30 PM, twelve hours after they left for school. She offers incentives for those with 90% or better attendance: a monthly pizza party as well as a certificate. She wants the program to be both fun and educational, which explains the summer field trips to both an amusement park and a correctional facility. The program also pays for summer camp. Some kids attend sports camps run at some of the local colleges, while others attend science or entrepreneurial camps run out of state. For many, it's their first camp, their first flight -- maybe their first trip outside North Carolina.

Johnson believes that reaching out to children isn't enough. On any given day, Carolyn Cofrancesco, one of the program's two social workers, drives around Durham doing errands for "my parents" or "my kids," as she refers to them. Some are single parents who hold down two jobs, who do the best they can, and who appreciate a helping hand. Other parents are in a constant state of crisis, much like their kids. Getting those parents to show up for work is as challenging as getting their kids to show up for school or for the after-school program.

If she can stabilize their home life, even a little, Cofrancesco knows that doing so will benefit the children. So she finds out whose gas or whose water has been shut off because of an overdue bill. She might deliver a computer that someone donated. She puts mothers, grandmothers, and legal guardians in touch with local agencies that offer food stamps or free Christmas presents. She gives someone's father a ride to court or someone else's child a ride to the doctor. She reminds one parent to take her daily medications, another to show up for an appointment with a mental-health agency, and another to try to stay off the streets, for the sake of her kids. Some of the parents need hobbies to keep them out of trouble, says Cofrancesco. So she arranges for them to take such workshops as T-shirt design and cake decorating at the monthly parent meetings. After attending a session on home ownership, two mothers eventually purchased their first homes.

Johnson provides parents and children alike with people who look out for them, who have access to resources, who can expand their horizons -- people like the undergraduates in his "Building Bridges for the New Urban Student" class who tutor the Durham Scholars students, or people like the MBA mentors. Along with regular doses of discipline, there's genuine affection between staff members and children. Each afternoon, before boarding the bus home, one of the seventh-graders hugs Hester-Stephens, whom some of the kids call "Mama." "I tell them I'm their mother when their mother's not around," Hester-Stephens says.

It's a community, says Johnson, that is a lot like the one where he grew up.