Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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ERIC HANSBERRY Park Hill and Russell. One of my friends, who grew up in the East End and still lives there, had heard of Portland and Shawnee but not the other seven.) Look lives in Old Louisville. Teach for America led him to schools in Baltimore and Philadelphia before returning to his hometown, frst at Meyzeek Middle School and then Shawnee, where he���s in his ffth year. In a windowed room in the library, he and a dozen colleagues are discussing what happens to Shawnee students after graduation. During a break, he lets me ask a few questions. Te school���s athletic director, Dwight Bransford, tells a story about how the football team fnished the season with only 26 players because kids are embarrassed about losing. Pam Dixon, who focuses on standardized testing here, says, ���When I told people I was coming to Shawnee, other teachers said, ���Why would you want to go down there? Aren���t you afraid of getting shot?��� What they didn���t know is I live 90 seconds from the school. Tey were talking about my neighborhood.��� Two workers from a nonproft called the Network Center for Community Change, or NC3, make sure the agenda stays on track. Jennie Jean Davidson, NC3���s deputy director, says, ���My issue is with the hundreds of thousands of people who live on the other side of Ninth Street, form their opinion, and never come to see what���s going on.��� As folks grab sandwiches from a spread on a long rectangular table, I talk to a man named D���Artagnan Ramsey, a Jeferson County Public Schools resource teacher who is starting a nonproft to further educate kids in elementary school, to get them considering college. ���If we lose them when they���re young,��� he says, ���it���s too late.��� Ramsey says he spent part of his childhood not far from Shawnee. ���You don���t know you���re poor until somebody tells you you���re poor.��� In a conference room attached to Look���s ofce, I interview three seniors and a junior. Elijah Hunt says his mother, a nurse, had him when she was 16. He does not know his father. Tierra Grifn���s mother is unemployed, her father a mechanic in Texas. Laya White���s dad died in a car accident, and she lives with her mom and two older sisters, ���who have a lot of kids.��� Callie Comer, the junior, says, ���My mother is deceased and my father is in prison somewhere.��� ���Some students feel like they can���t do nothing because they don���t have any support,��� Laya says. ���Or that can be motivation,��� Tierra says. 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3 9

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