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Jeanine Mowbray wasn’t about to let the label “at risk” stick.
The Howard High School of Technology valedictorian rose to the top despite the environmental challenges of being a young, black woman growing up in the city.
Mowbray also felt daily pressure from her less-motivated peers, she said, because she was a 'bright student,' a label Mowbray called perhaps the most onerous of all.
"At school, I always felt like I was being isolated,” the 18-year-old said. “I felt like eyes were always watching me and waiting for me to mess up.”
The pressure to dumb herself down to fit in with students who couldn’t care less about their educational futures was almost overwhelming, so Mowbray sought shelter in Delaware Futures, a rigorous supplemental education program that prepares at-risk kids for college, through academics and service work. She was one of 12 who recently graduated from the program.
“The best way to make sure I kept my eye on attending college was to be around students who were like me,” she said.
And Delaware Futures kept her busy. Through the weekly homework club, which met on Tuesdays, group meetings and cultural awareness activities on Thursdays and mock trial on Saturdays, Mowbray felt surrounded by the kind of academic challenges she sought.
Mock trial was her favorite project and she became so enthralled with the inner-workings of the mock courtroom that she decided to pursue a political science degree and become a lawyer.
Paying for that degree might have been a problem, she said, but Delaware Futures helped her focus on her studies and win a $20,000 Coca-Cola scholarship, one of 50 awarded nationwide from a pool of 70,000 applicants.
She’ll use the scholarship at the University of Richmond, a school she visited during a Delaware Futures college tour, one of many experiences she wouldn’t have had without the organization.
But the most poignant lessons Mowbray learned through her four years in Delaware Futures weren’t academic ones, she said, but character lessons.
“You have to keep at it,” she said. “Never dim your light for anybody.”
Jeanine Mowbray wasn’t about to let the label “at risk” stick.
The Howard High School of Technology valedictorian rose to the top despite the environmental challenges of being a young, black woman growing up in the city.
Mowbray also felt daily pressure from her less-motivated peers, she said, because she was a 'bright student,' a label Mowbray called perhaps the most onerous of all.
"At school, I always felt like I was being isolated,” the 18-year-old said. “I felt like eyes were always watching me and waiting for me to mess up.”
The pressure to dumb herself down to fit in with students who couldn’t care less about their educational futures was almost overwhelming, so Mowbray sought shelter in Delaware Futures, a rigorous supplemental education program that prepares at-risk kids for college, through academics and service work. She was one of 12 who recently graduated from the program.
“The best way to make sure I kept my eye on attending college was to be around students who were like me,” she said.
And Delaware Futures kept her busy. Through the weekly homework club, which met on Tuesdays, group meetings and cultural awareness activities on Thursdays and mock trial on Saturdays, Mowbray felt surrounded by the kind of academic challenges she sought.
Mock trial was her favorite project and she became so enthralled with the inner-workings of the mock courtroom that she decided to pursue a political science degree and become a lawyer.
Paying for that degree might have been a problem, she said, but Delaware Futures helped her focus on her studies and win a $20,000 Coca-Cola scholarship, one of 50 awarded nationwide from a pool of 70,000 applicants.
She’ll use the scholarship at the University of Richmond, a school she visited during a Delaware Futures college tour, one of many experiences she wouldn’t have had without the organization.
But the most poignant lessons Mowbray learned through her four years in Delaware Futures weren’t academic ones, she said, but character lessons.
“You have to keep at it,” she said. “Never dim your light for anybody.”
