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With Less and Less, Some at Eastern High Just Try Harder and Harder

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Two of the five team members are boys, something that would pass without notice at most schools but stands out at Eastern, where many boys who enter in ninth or 10th grade are gone well before graduation.

"That situation makes me try harder," says Calvin Young, a junior on the team. "I don't want to be one of those boys who drops off the map. My father makes me stay in school and keep up the grades."

The D.C. school system doesn't give Smith's Model UN program a penny, but the teacher has managed to keep it going with grants from the United Nations Foundation.

The kids returned from the Caribbean with new perspectives. "Even though our school is rotting away, we could see there how we are blessed," Young says.

"It's kind of humbling," senior Michael Watson says. "I'm so critical of the [Bush] administration here, doing protests and all that. But then I saw how the people down there are so desperate to come here, and I saw how they live. I learned a lot. I learned that being here is 30 times better than being in another country, even if we have our own problems to fix."

Even when the system treats kids like dirt, one teacher who cares can still insist that his kids get a chance. Reynauld Smith gets his kids thinking, and before you know it, they're flying high.

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com

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