Second chance school

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a school for second chances.

In 2006 a Dallas couple saw a real education problem: high-school students were falling through the cracks after serving time in juvenile detention. So they decided to do something about it—and started their own school.

REICHARD: Now sixteen years later, a handful of teachers and staff are carrying on that vision. WORLD’s Whitney Williams paid a visit to the school.

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, CORRESPONDENT: Directions to Cornerstone Crossroads Academy in Dallas often go something like this: When you turn off of MLK Blvd onto Ervay St., look for the small red brick church with the white steeple. See it? OK. You’re close, but that’s not it. The school’s in the back…in a large metal shed.

AUDIO: [SCHOOL ROOM]

Inside the shed today, nearly 20 students—ages 16-25—mingle in between testing. On the walls hang posters showing the school’s 146 graduates.

Jamal Robeson is one of those. He’s 30 now—a husband, father, and Christ follower. No white picket fence, but he owns his own home and a business. He has stability. A decade ago though, things looked much different. Drugs and violence marked his teen years. When he went to jail on a drug charge at 19, he decided he was done playing games.

ROBESON: I just thought about all the stuff that I was doing and calling my buddies and telling them, Hey, I'm gonna give my life to God, you know, and it was like, oh, man, what you on? Did you smoke something or whatever? And I was like, No, when I went to jail, I told God I was going to give him my life.

Cornerstone helped him learn what that meant.

ROBESON: So coming here really kind of helped mature me, and show me the different character traits of who the Lord is, you know, through his people. And I actually got my first job at Weirs furniture, just from sharing my testimony here.

That job was about 30 minutes from Robeson’s house and he didn’t have a car. Cornerstone staffers saw the need and stepped in …

ROBESON: They ended up surprising me with a brand new car, you know, it wasn't brand new, it's brand new to me, though, you know. So it was a blessing.

It’s a vivid example of how the school offers struggling students so much more than a second chance at a high school diploma.

Principal Wayne Sims compares the school to an intensive care unit for the educational system:

SIMS: When you have individuals who are who are sick, or who have more needs, they need a space where they can get more intensive care, they can get wraparound services, they can get hope that they may not be able to get when you're just a number in such a big machine. We get to show through the love of Christ, through hard work, you can overcome these things and there is hope on the other side of it for you.

Hope on the other side. But that doesn’t mean things will be easy. Robeson’s been learning that since graduation.

ROBESON: It's not all fun and happy, but the Lord is calling us to be strong and acknowledge it's not about us. And that's when we will truly prosper not in a material or worldly aspect. But as true followers of Christ, you know...

Executive Director Kristi Lichtenberg learned that lesson through Cornerstone, as well.

LICHTENBERG: I think when I first got here, I probably fell into some of the thinking about, you know, things you see in the movies, where some white female school teacher comes to the hood and saves the kids. And just that whole narrative is just a wrong story that we tell ourselves…

When Lichtenberg was school principal, she received permission from probation officers and judges to take her students across state lines to a Christian camp in Missouri. She prayed for salvations, changed hearts. But it felt like a longshot. Maybe even a mistake. These students were non-compliant, disrespectful of authority …

LICHTENBERG: I just thought, oh, man, they're not going to make it, this camp is so strict. But when I saw how they responded to male leadership, that our male students responded to males, and especially African American males …

Lichtenberg had an epiphany. She realized that what the school needed was strong male leadership at the top. The male students, especially, needed a principal they could look up to and identify with. For eight years she prayed for God to provide her replacement. In the waiting, she often felt inadequate for the work at hand. But God used that time to show her that in her weakness, he was mighty. When God finally provided Wayne Sims, Lichtenberg was ready to open her hands and submit to his leadership. She now takes joy in helping him succeed.

She explains more on the way to grab lunch:

LICHTENBERG: A lot of times our best work is from the sidelines, not from the stage.

Back in Lichtenberg’s office, Principal Sims welcomes current student Nate Geary with a proud-dad smile and a fist-bump. Geary’s smiling as well.

Prior to Cornerstone, his future looked grim. He hung out with the wrong crowd. Never passed a test. Thought he was too cool for school. But then he realized he wasn’t doing anything with his life. He saw his brothers locked up and knew if he didn’t make a change, he’d find himself behind bars, as well.

GEARY: I told Mr. Simms I'm coming from all the way from the bottom. I don’t know if y’all can help me. And he said, No problem. We'll get you in everything. And God gave me a path to go right back up. And I took that path and look where I'm at right now. I made it through school and I’m finally getting out of school. And I'm really happy. I feel like I'm the smartest kid in the nation right now.

Geary beams as he shares his story. Sims beams right back.

GEARY: I'm not proud of myself. I’m proud of everybody, because I couldn’t do this without Mr. Sims, without my teachers. Without them, I wouldn’t be in this chair right now.

Geary dreams of working on airplanes or computers as an engineer. He knows the path won’t always be easy, but still, he’s grateful for a God and a school of second chances …

GEARY: I will walk up with my head up and I'll walk down with my head up still, I will see tears and they’ll be joyful tears because I did it.

These days, Cornerstone isn't just rehabilitating students. It’s also working to renovate a hundred year old school building that Dallas ISD shuttered in 2012. In the next few years, Kristi Lichtenberg says Cornerstone will be able to reach out to even more students who need a second chance.

LICHTENBERG: We're just excited about watching the physical transformation and permanently having this as a reminder of how God can restore our lives as well when they feel just as abandoned and torn up and hopeless.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Whitney Williams in Dallas, Texas.

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