Helping Kids Cope

Schools, Nonprofit group partner to fight effects of community violence.

- Tomika Anderson

If you asked 17-year-old Newark, N.J. resident Naseer Wilkerson to describe what his neighborhood looks like at night, he couldn’t do it. That’s because he hasn’t seen it for years. He maps the most direct route, Monday through Friday, between the apartment he shares with his mom to his high school a few blocks away and then over to his friend Daniel’s house to do homework or play video games. Naseer a Boy Scout and an aspiring video game creator says he avoids being outside as much as possible to keep from being killed.

“A shooting can happen day or night around my way, so being out on the streets is a no-go,” the 10th-grader says from the office of his friend and mentor, Sakina Pitts, principal of Chancellor Avenue middle school. Pitts helped Naseer get accepted to American History High, a magnet school where he currently has an A in calculus. “People get shot and stabbed left and right there, even babies,” he says. “Last summer, my friends and I all went to Hershey park in Pennsylvania and stayed for two days. It was better than being home.”

Pitts knows the difficulties Naseer faces all too well. A student at Chancellor herself in the 1990s, she returned as a substitute teacher and eventually became a permanent fourth-grade teacher. She went on to become a literacy teacher, a vice principal and, finally, the principal.