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"Our job as parents is to teach you to fear God, allow you to get a great education and self-respect," she says one evening while sitting in the spacious Crestwood home where she and her husband now live. "If you respect yourself, you're going to respect those around you." She meant business. A legendary family story starts with Sharonda in middle school. She came home with a "D" in language arts. Her mom told her no basketball until that grade improved. Sharonda didn't listen. When her mom found out her daughter was playing after school, she walked onto the court mid-game and yanked her of. "I waved, and the coach was telling me, 'Move back! Move back!'" she recalls. "I said, 'No. She's coming with me.' If she was sitting on the bench it would've been fne, but Sharonda was dressed and I meant business." remembers holding an NYB meeting at the Presbyterian Community Center when gunshots pierced the afternoon just on the other side of the walls in an alley. She knew the boys who were shot. And the gunmen. It's in this work she witnessed poverty's complex scars. On the frst day of school, O'Bannon-Morton told one of her classes about her NYB days, about the troubled juveniles whose bad decisions spiraled into prison sentences. Tey listened, eyes following her march between desks. "When you're a young person from a housing project, people have certain expectations of you. And it's not to be successful," she said. "I'm telling you now my expectations here. No holds barred . . . because bottom line is, if you get a great education you can do what you want to in life." "When you're a young person from a housing project, people have certain expectations of you. And it's not to be successful," O'Bannon-Morton told her class. "I'm telling you now my expectations here. No holds barred . . . because botom line is, if you get a great education you can do what you want to in life." Knock on a door in Smoketown and chances are that person will know an O'Bannon. O'Bannon-Morton's brother, Larry O'Bannon Jr., a basketball star at the University of Louisville who plays professionally in Europe, is a source of neighborhood pride. Extended family dots Shelby, Caldwell and Jackson Streets. While O'BannonMorton currently lives near the Outer Loop, home will always be this dense, urban pocket just south of Broadway. With nearly every neighborhood student who walks into Meyzeek, the teacher connects the degrees that separate them: She grew up with their mother. She taught their cousin. O'Bannon-Morton's babysitter when she was a child in Sheppard Square? She taught the woman's great-grandkids. Tat lifelong community presence brings credibility. Debbie Baker, a former Meyzeek principal in the '90s and early 2000s, tells the story of how one afternoon a mother came to Meyzeek ready to tear into administrators. She was unhappy about an incident between her child and a teacher. "Te mom was very upset and she was ready to take us on," Baker says, "and she walked into the ofce and she looked at Sharonda and she looked at the child and she said, 'Did this happen in Ms. Sharonda's class?' And the child said, 'Yes.' And she said (to the child), 'Oh, that's all I need to know. You're in trouble.'" Many of Meyzeek's principals, teachers and counselors have put great efort into reaching out to neighborhood families, sitting on their porches, talking about their kids, often calling home. But O'Bannon-Morton gets invited to dinner. She's trusted to stand in as a parent if a child needs glasses or to shop for school clothes. Stephon Gilkey, who worked in Meyzeek's Youth Service Center for 15 years up until 2009, also played that role. "It's not that that parent was being neglectful," says Gilkey. "It's that she understood that taking of of work could cost a whole day's pay." O'Bannon-Morton's father worked as a city maintenance worker, her mother as a radiology technician. Much of her deep understanding of this community came through her frst job. For nine years she led the Neighborhood Youth Board (NYB) for Smoketown. Te now-defunct city program recruited teens and young adults in 17 neighborhoods to organize (for pay) positive community events like youth dances or dinners for seniors. Tis was in the early '90s. Crack had hit Smoketown. Gang violence simmered. O'Bannon-Morton 62 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13 At this age — not quite teenagers — O'Bannon-Morton feels there's time to shape struggling kids. Any older and it's often too late. "Tat's why I decided to teach middle school," she says. "Maybe I can catch them in middle school. Give them an opportunity." Te buds of her teaching career opened with cinematic fare in 1996. At least that's as best as those involved can remember. Debbie Baker, then the principal of Meyzeek, was walking back from visiting a student's family at home. Ann Ames, who worked as Meyzeek's neighborhood liaison, walked alongside her. Across the street in a playing feld, they spotted a young woman, all powerful legs and determination, chasing one of their more troublemaking students. With a broom. Tis kid doesn't run from anyone, Baker thought. Who is she? Can we get her to teach? Disclaimer: Neither Baker nor Meyzeek endorses or ever endorsed beating children with brooms. Tis was diferent. Ames had to chuckle. She knew exactly who that woman was — Sharonda O'Bannon. Several years earlier, Ames had worked at Engelhard Elementary, where O'Bannon — a gangly, vivacious spirit with glasses — was a student on the safety patrol. One day Ames told little Sharonda not to let students go up a staircase. "I come up and she's dangling a kid over the banister," Ames says with a laugh, remembering Sharonda's logic. "'Well, you told me you didn't want anyone going up the steps!' Well, I didn't want anyone to fall on their head either." Now here she was, a young woman with impressive foot speed, unafraid to confront a Neighborhood Youth Board kid who'd just stolen some games from the Presbyterian Community Center. Baker and Ames approached O'Bannon about teaching. She wasn't so sure. She'd thought about going to law school. But the direct, daily contact with kids lured her. She earned her Master of Arts in teaching at the University of Louisville and started at Meyzeek in 1999. Baker's gut instinct that O'Bannon would ft Meyzeek proved correct. She quickly became a leader, the staf member others leaned on to help deal with unruly behavior. Still do. Alex Bertrand taught next door to O'Bannon-Morton for several years. Te 35-year-old now works as an academic dean of math at a charter school in Brooklyn. Te best math teaching advice he ever received came from O'Bannon-Morton: "You care. You care and then