Feel Good Story of the Day: The Legend of Toby Williams

You know how I love happy news and uplifting stories. As graduation season gets into full-swing, we will surely find a plethora of stories about students overcoming incredible odds and obstacles to reach their goals and provide an exceptional life for them and their families through education. What I love most about these stories is that they prove there's nothing that can't be accomplished through hard work and never-ending determination and focus.

Today's story is about Toby Williams, master's degree candidate at Northeastern Illinois University with cerebral palsy.

The Legend of Toby Williams
by Kara Spak, Chicago Sun-Times, May 6, 2010

Toby Williams knows what people think when they see him in his wheelchair, hear his slow speech, notice how his eyes don't move together.

"It's there, it's always there, it will continue to be there," he said of assumptions that he is less capable because he has cerebral palsy. "I expect it."

But he doesn't accept it.

"I enjoy proving people wrong," he said.

On Saturday, the 30-year-old Englewood man once again will prove himself when he accepts a master's degree in communications, media and theater from Northeastern Illinois University. He has been enrolled as a student there for 13 years.

"I enjoyed meeting the challenge," he said. "It might take me a couple of years, but eventually I'll beat the challenge."

Cerebral palsy is a neurological disorder that manifests in infancy or early childhood. His brain is unable to control his muscles.

For his first 20 years, he went to therapy -- physical, speech, occupational -- for hours after school. He underwent three surgeries.

In 1997, as a senior at Spaulding School, a Chicago Public School for students with disabilities, he was recruited to Northeastern as part of a grant program to help disabled students move to college-level classes. He started there weeks after high school graduation.

"He liked it, and in the fall he came back for the term," said Victoria Amey-Flippin, director of Northeastern's accessibility center.

He returned semester after semester. For 13 years, Williams has been a campus legend, eating in the cafeteria, working as a graduate assistant for Amey-Flippin and studying for a bachelor's degree, which he received in 2004, and now his master's degree.

His typical day starts when a wheelchair-accessible van takes him about 20 miles to campus from his South Side home, dropping him off at 9 a.m. He often stays on campus until 8 p.m.

He can't control his hands enough to take notes, so he records classes on a tape recorder. He types 30-page papers with his index fingers. His other fingers "don't work right," he said.

He receives extra time for tests, which he takes in the accessibility center where he works. He answers the same questions as the other students, but an employee types the answers for him. Though he gets extra time for the tests, he must complete classes in the same time frame as other students, so he often didn't take a full course load during a semester.

"He has a tremendous memory," said Cody Sweet, who taught Williams voice and diction courses in 2003 and 2004. "He has to take all the verbiage into his brain and he has to organize it, put it in little pigeonholes in his brain."

Thanks to an outgoing personality and his long tenure at the school, he's known by students and faculty throughout the Northwest Side campus. While he said he's ready to move on, those who are used to seeing him day after day are not quite as sure.

"I find myself getting a little choked up," Amey-Flippin said. "It really did seem strange to go through the cafeteria and not see him up in the front."

Williams gradually has been spending less time on campus because of an internship at American Street Mortgage Co., where he works with a former classmate who specializes in mortgage loans for veterans. He is hoping to eventually obtain a state mortgage broker's license. "It's time to start working and make some money," he said.

He knows that even with a master's degree, he is entering the job market in a shaky economy. He remains undeterred.

"My mom always told me there will always be people who don't think you can do it," he said. "Don't listen to them. Focus on what you're trying to do, keep praying to God and focus. Eventually you'll get there."

Education Unlocks Doors and Changes Lives

From Urban Prep website

Englewood is one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Chicago. It is also home to Urban Prep Academy, the first all-male, all-African American charter public school in the country. Today, it announced that 100% of its first graduating class has been accepted to 4-year colleges. I don't know of other schools that can boast that statistic, even in the best school districts.

I have every confidence that these boys will go on and graduate from college. When they do, they will change not only their lives but the lives of their future children and grandchildren. In my opinion, nothing breaks the cycle of poverty like education.

Congratulations to the boys of Urban Prep!

Every Urban Prep Senior Is College-Bound
100% of first senior class at all male, all African-American Englewood academy is accepted to universities
By Duaa Eldeib, Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2010

Four years ago, Bryant Alexander watched his mother weep.

She stared down at a muddle of D's and F's on his eighth-grade report card and threatened to kick him out. He had barely passed elementary school, and high school wasn't even on his radar.

"Something just clicked," Alexander, now 18, said. "I knew I had to do something."

On Friday, Alexander proudly swapped his high school's red uniform tie for a striped red and gold one — the ritual at Englewood's Urban Prep Academy for Young Men that signifies a student has been accepted into college.

As the Roseland resident and 12 others tied their knots, Chicago's only public all-male, all-African-American high school fulfilled its mission: 100 percent of its first senior class had been accepted to four-year colleges.

Mayor Richard Daley and city schools chief Ron Huberman surprised students at the all-school assembly Friday morning with congratulations, and school leaders announced that as a reward, prom would be free.

The achievement might not merit a visit from top brass if it happened at one of the city's elite, selective enrollment high schools. But Urban Prep, a charter school that enrolls all comers in one of Chicago's most beleaguered neighborhoods, faced much more difficult odds.

Only 4 percent of this year's senior class read at grade level as freshmen, said Tim King, the school's founder and CEO.

"There were those who told me that you can't defy the data," King said. "Black boys are killed. Black boys drop out of high school. Black boys go to jail. Black boys don't go to college. Black boys don't graduate from college.

"They were wrong," he said.

Every day, before attending advanced placement biology classes and lectures on changing the world, students must first pass through the neighborhood, then metal detectors.

"Poverty, gangs, drugs, crime, low graduation rates, teen pregnancy — you name it, Englewood has it," said Kenneth Hutchinson, the school's director of college counseling, who was born and raised in Englewood.

He met the students the summer before they began their freshman year during a field trip to Northwestern University, the first time many of them had ever stepped foot on a college campus. At the time, Hutchinson was Northwestern's assistant director of undergraduate admissions. Inspired by what he'd seen, he started working for Urban Prep two months later.

"I'm them," he said Friday as he fought back tears. "Being accepted to college is the first step to changing their lives and their communities."

Hutchinson plays a major role in the school, where college is omnipresent. Students are assigned college counselors from day one. To prepare students for the next level, the school offers a longer than typical day — about 170,000 minutes longer, over four years, than other city schools — and more than double the usual number of English credits, King said

Even the school's voice-mail system has a student declaring "I am college-bound" before asking callers to dial an extension.

The rigorous academic environment and strict uniform policy of black blazers, red ties and khakis isn't for everyone. The first senior class began with 150 students. Of those who left, many moved out of the area and some moved into neighborhoods that were too dangerous to cross to get to the school, King said. Fewer than 10 were expelled or dropped out, he said.

At last count, the 107 seniors gained acceptance to a total of 72 different colleges, including Northwestern University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Rutgers University and University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Alexander was accepted to DePaul University.

While college acceptance is an enormous hurdle to jump, school leaders said they know their job isn't done; they want to make sure the students actually attend.

To that aim, King said, staff made sure that every student has completed the dreaded Free Application for Federal Student Aid, lest the red tape deter them.

Later in the year, the school plans to hold a college signing day where every student is to sign a promise to go to college, he said. Staff will stay in touch through the summer and hopefully in the first years of school.

"We don't want to send them off and say, ‘Call us when you're ready to make a donation to your alma mater,' " King said. "If we fulfill our mission, that means they not only are accepted to college, but graduate from it."

For now, students are enjoying the glow of reaching their immediate goal.

Normally, it takes 18-year-old Jerry Hinds two buses and 45 minutes to get home from school. On the day the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was to post his admission decision online at 5 p.m., he asked a friend to drive him to his home in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.

He went into his bedroom, told his well-wishing mother this was something he had to do alone, closed the door and logged in.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" he remembers screaming. His mother burst in and began crying.

That night he made more than 30 phone calls, at times shouting "I got in" on his cell phone and home phone at the same time.

"We're breaking barriers," he said. "And that feels great."

OMG! President Obama is Going to Indoctrinate YOUR Kids!

In case you haven't heard, President Obama is planning to speak to school kids on at noon on Tuesday. According to WhiteHouse.gov, he's going to welcome them back to school and give them a pep talk.

But Shannen Barron believes the President has other, more nefarious, ideas, according to what she told CNN. "Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me. I'm an American. They are Americans, and I don't feel that's OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now." I actually just saw her say this as she cried on CNN. Yes. Really. I swear I looked around for Ashton Kutcher because I just knew I was being punk'd.

Maybe some of the good folks in America have forgotten about other Presidents who have spoken to our nation's youth:

• On November 14, 1988, President Ronald Reagan (a Republican!) chatted it up with a bunch of school kids brought into the Old Executive Office Building. That speech, on tax policy (which I know all children love to discuss) was broadcast live and re-broadcast across the country on 3 different days.
• In 1991, President George H.W. Bush (ANOTHER Republican!) gave a speech to kids that was broadcast across the country.

• During the 2000 campaign, then candidate George W. Bush (YET ANOTHER Republican) visited Thomas Middle School in Arlington Heights, IL (the middle school I graduated from once upon a time). They had a huge assembly with all the kids in attendance. The picture was splashed across the front page of my local paper and many other papers, including the New York Times.
• Of course, my favorite moment of a President with school kids took place on September 11, 2001. President Bush was reading The Pet Goat to some school children in Florida when planes were flying into the World Trade Center. Even after learning the horrible news that we were under attack, President Bush continued to hang out for another 30 minutes.

So this kind of thing has been going on for at least 21 years and was even done by that true Republican Hero Ronald Reagan, but suddenly there's an uproar because a man with a funky sounding name is doing it?

I'm trying my darndest to understand what has so many people in a snit about the President of the United States welcoming kids back to school, encouraging them to do their best, and reminding them that with an education they can do anything they want, but I simply can't.

Supposedly, part of what had so many people's panties in knots was that one of the exercises kids were supposed to do was to write a letter about ways they can help the President meet his education goals. Big damn deal. Did I imagine it or did President Bush ask our kids to help him out in October 2001 by each sending $1 to his relief effort for Afghanistan "America's Fund for Afghan Children." And I know I recall those famous words by President Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." Those words guided a generation and took us into space. They're probably some of the most famous words ever spoken and many people of all ages and political persuasions have taken them as their mantra even today. So what that President Obama wanted school kids to suggest ways they can help him. Or is it only patriotic and the right thing to do when a Republican talks to kids and asks them to support him?

We've got some serious problems in this country folks. I don't need to list them because we all know them. But can't some people get their heads out of the sand long enough to stop creating fake issues to be upset about? Maybe if we all pulled together we could actually solve some of what ails us.

If your school isn't broadcasting the President's speech on Tuesday, just come right back here and you can watch it live: