For the Love Of Ballou

"Before I got there, my dad said how much of a change I'd be for Ballou. At first, I was like, 'Whatever, blah, blah, blah,' " Wayne said. "But once I got to Ballou, it started making sense to me."

* * *

Leading by Doing

On their first day of high school, Wayne and Jachin met in the cafeteria before classes began and talked about how excited they were by what was ahead. The freedom of high school life. The party atmosphere of Ballou.

Soon, though, they were noticing how many students would show up for school but never go to class. And the closer they paid attention to the classes where students did show up, such as biology, the more they realized how difficult improving Ballou would be.

"People would come to class and didn't do their work. People around us were getting C's and D's -- and they didn't really care," Jachin said. "We realized how much work it would take to get others around us wanting to do good. We realized it was going to be a tough job."

In that first year, they didn't have much effect at all, other than establishing themselves as students with high expectations in a place where low expectations were often viewed as good enough.

In 10th grade, though, when Jachin and Wayne made the football team, things began to change, if ever so slightly. Most of the players were barely making the 2.0 grade-point average necessary to stay on the team, and when the coaches realized they now had two straight-A students in their midst, they used Jachin and Wayne to full advantage.

The coaches established mandatory study sessions at 7:30 in the morning and in the hour between the end of classes and practice, putting Wayne and Jachin in charge. Math, English, social studies -- whatever a player asked about, Wayne or Jachin would help. As the football season continued, they felt they were making progress. Perhaps they couldn't affect a broad spectrum of students, but they could affect their teammates.

But then came a string of setbacks, starting with the mercury spill, which closed Ballou for a month. Students were bused to the Washington Convention Center. Many considered the time away from Ballou a vacation, opting to skip classes altogether.

Shortly after Ballou reopened, a member of the football team, James "J-Rock" Richardson, was shot to death in the hallway near the cafeteria. Not long after that, Sherrod Miller, another football teammate, was found beaten to death in his home.

"Those were some tough days," Jachin said. "People were down." Both young men had left an impression on Jachin and Wayne, particularly Miller, who often would buy the entire basketball team a meal when it won games.

"When he passed," Jachin said, "I thought, 'I got to help people more.' "

In 11th grade, their efforts to help the football team continued full force. Tutoring resumed. Wayne became co-captain of the team. He also became president of the National Honor Society chapter and pushed the players to increase their grade-point averages to 3.0 and to demonstrate leadership qualities so they could be inducted. He and Jachin also encouraged some of the football players to take AP classes, where male students were a rarity.

Could they make a difference? they would ask themselves from time to time. Were they making a difference?

Twelfth grade:

On the football team, Jachin and Wayne were named co-captains by Coach David Venable, who coached them in baseball as well. "Everybody strives to be like them," Venable said of the effect that they had on the other players. When Jachin and Wayne first started at Ballou, he said, "we were losing players on the football team because of grades." Four years later, he said, most players had B and C-plus averages, and some had B-pluses and A's.

In AP literature, teacher Carol Robinson said this year's class of 13 students was the most she'd ever had. Typically, she has eight students, two of them male; this year, six of the 13 were male -- and five were on the football team.

In AP calculus, "I've been teaching this class 10 years, and this is the first time I've had more males [six] than females [three]," Joanne Nelson said. More unusual, she added of the males: "They're basically football players."

In class after class, teacher after teacher agreed that Jachin and Wayne had indeed made a difference. Students did, too, such as Thor Ford-Toomer, a football player who was making C's and D's when Wayne and Jachin befriended him in 10th grade. Over the next two years, he spent so much time at Wayne's house that he began calling Wayne's father "Daddy," and as he finished 12th grade he was an honor roll student who had earned a scholarship to a university in North Carolina.

Others did well, too, proof of which came at a ceremony in May in the Ballou gym. Gold and blue balloons decorated a makeshift stage where Wayne, wearing black dress pants and a striped polo shirt, greeted an audience of more than 200 parents and students. He then introduced the newest inductees into the National Honor Society -- 11 in all, and six of them male.

One was Wayne's brother, Ricardo. Several were football players. And one was Jachin, who will always remember what some of the football players had said in heartbreaking sincerity to the coaches when, three years before, Wayne and Jachin were first introduced as examples:

"They smart. We dumb. We can't get better."

And Jachin's reply: "That's crazy. Anybody can get good grades. Just go to class and do your work."

* * *

Public and Private Gratitude

Best dressed -- Jachin.

So said the senior class in a vote as the end of 12th grade neared.

Best hair -- Jachin.

Class clown -- Jachin.

Best build -- Wayne.

Most attractive -- Jachin.

There has always been a rivalry -- friendly, but a rivalry nonetheless -- since they met in middle school. That time, Wayne was valedictorian and Jachin, salutatorian.

This time, when Jachin was in the school office and overheard a secretary talking about who was whom, he immediately sent Wayne a text message that said, "Wayne, you salutatorian."

"How do you know?" Wayne wrote back.

"Somebody just told me," Jachin answered.

There was no need to ask who was valedictorian.

Twelve days later, at Ballou's graduation ceremony, Wayne spoke first, using his time at the lectern to tell the 130 students that the many trials they had experienced taught them "how to overcome obstacles" and how to "turn setbacks into setups for life."

Then Jachin went to the podium. He chided people who criticize public schools while refusing to "help by becoming tutors." He encouraged his classmates to vote "so outsiders are not determining the fate of our community." He expressed gratitude to Ballou and to his mother.

"But most of all, I want to thank my father because without my father . . ."

"Don't cry, Jack!" a girl shouted from the audience into the silence as Jachin gathered his emotions.

". . . I would not be standing here today."

That was his public moment of thanks. His private one came just before the graduation ceremony began, when all 130 students were lining up.

At the head of the line were the top 10 students in terms of academic achievement -- five of whom were male, the first time in recent memory there were that many.

Now, two of those young men looked at each other, bumped hands and broke into broad smiles.

One more senior-class vote:

Best friends -- Jachin and Wayne, both of whom will be leaving in August for the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, where they will room together, play football and resume their contest for valedictorian.