Treyvon Jackson was in math class when he got the news: He and his mother had been evicted from their Washington apartment. They were suddenly homeless.
Jackson’s mom was in and out of shelters, while Jackson ended up staying with his grandmother. Life became even tougher when there was a homicide at his grandmother’s home. He was out — on a bus heading to tap dance practice — but a police detective showed up at school and questioned one of his teachers.
Suddenly, Jackson’s principal and teachers realized the burden one of their own students had been shouldering.
The odds were stacked against Jackson: One recent report found students who experience homelessness are 87% more likely to stop going to school. But Jackson persevered. He ended up graduating from high school in 2006, attending a prestigious college and forging a successful career in finance.
Jackson credits his mother for his success. She stayed up late to iron his school clothes and woke up early to prepare him breakfast. And she made sure, even when she faced challenges, that he stayed focused, studied hard, earned college credits as a pioneer in his school’s early college program and pursued his passions for tap dance and singing. He also credits his teachers, who weren’t willing to let him fall victim to statistics.
Jackson’s school is part of the Friendship Public Charter School network in Washington, D.C., which is known for its commitment to making sure that students have the support they need both in and out of the classroom. Once Jackson’s teachers and principal learned about the challenges he was facing at home, they stepped in to help.
One teacher helped Jackson celebrate a rite of passage before he graduated in 2006: “I didn’t know if I could go to my mom and ask for a tuxedo for prom, but Mr. Young came to me and said, ‘I’ve got you covered,’” Jackson said. “Mr. Young was like a big brother to me.”
Another teacher recommended Jackson for the intensely competitive and rigorous POSSE scholarship, through which Jackson was able to attend Lafayette College and was accepted to successive summer internships at Goldman Sachs. Those internships led to a job offer and subsequent career opportunities with financial services giants Barclays, State Street and Prudential, before he took on his current role as a director at Morgan Stanley managing a foreign exchange settlements team.
“We will see that you get what you need to be successful in school,” said Donald Hense, founder and chairman of the Friendship Public Charter School Network, referring to Jackson. “It’s nothing for our principals to visit our students at home. We feel that if we know what’s going on, we can better offer real help.”
Jackson said he remembers that as a student, he wanted to work hard to earn confidence, respect and trust from his teachers.
He said Friendship motivated him to ask himself: “Do you come to class on time? Do you do your homework? Do you stay out of trouble? Do you do the necessary things as a student for a teacher like Mr. Young to say, ‘Listen, I’m going to rent you a tuxedo. Don’t worry about it.’?”
Jackson said his time at Friendship gave him much more than a diploma, even though the years were some of the toughest of his life: “Value every experience you have in that building, both the good and the bad, because what they’re doing is training you for life.”
