Tim King had an audacious goal – to take 150 odd boys from the worst, most gang ravaged neighborhoods in Chicago and, in four years, put them firmly on the path to college.
“I wanted to create a school that was going to put black boys in a different place,” the founder of Urban Prep told the AP, “and in my mind, that different place needed to be college.”
It wouldn’t be easy – just getting permission, and funding, to get started took King four years. But, after a long upward climb, he managed to open the Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men.
King’s goal was to take students out of hopeless situations and try to point them in a new direction. To do that he relied on strict rules and intensely devoted teachers, more than half of whom are black men, who could offer his students the supportive father figures and community structure that almost all of them were lacking in their lives. Each student has at least one mentor with in the staff and each teacher has a school assigned cell phone that parents and students are free to call at any hour of the day. They don’t just call about homework assignments either. As Corey Stewart, a 24-year-old history teacher told the AP:
Students will call and say, “‘I’m stranded and I don’t have a way from downtown to get home,’” Stewart says. “‘Can you come pick me up?’ Absolutely, I’m on my way. Or ‘Mr. Stewart, I’m afraid that I might get jumped on after school today. Is it possible you can take me home?’ Of course.”
Stewart isn’t the only teacher at Urban Prep that goes above and beyond to give his “Pride” (the Urban Prep name for the homeroom class groups that meet three times a day) all the support they need. Assistant Principle Richard Glass took Marlon Marshall, a student whose mother had decided to move to Michigan seeking a safer life, into his home so the young man could complete 12th grade at Urban Prep.
The chance to finish school, and to live in a safe, structured environment, was almost overwhelmingly liberating for Marshall:
“Living here has given me so much freedom just to be a kid,” he says, sitting in Glass’ spotless kitchen. “I really haven’t had a childhood. I couldn’t go outside. I can’t even the explain the feeling I had when we were going over the rules,” Marlon says. “I need structure. I sometimes get sidetracked or a little bit lazy.”
Now Marshall, and every single one of his graduating classmates, is going to college.
