An Education

Sometimes the toughest lessons are learned outside the classroom

FULGENCIO

High school and our experiences there often leave lifelong memories. Or scars. Imagine navigating those formative and frequently frustrating years while bearing an extraordinary burden — illness, disability, poverty, homelessness, parental abandonment or death, for example. The graduating seniors featured herein have endured a lifetime’s worth of adversity in their 18 years. In spite of, or possibly partly because of these challenges, they have managed to shine.

MEET TOMORROW’S LEADERS.

Both of his parents live in a homeless shelter

JerDadrianHenderson, Jay to his friends, is calm, polite and articulate. He opens doors for people and responds to his elders with, “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir,” and he’s been described as “especially mature” compared to other kids his age. In a word, he’s a gentleman.

The Hillcrest senior’s impressive demeanor reveals nothing about his childhood, which was full of emotional and psychological instability.

When he was little, JerDadrian woke up in the night to his mother opening and slamming doors, and screaming at things that weren’t there. That was her first schizophrenic episode that he remembers.

“I was scared,” he says. “My mom wasn’t always like that.”

Add to that his father’s bipolar disorder,

“That’s where I’ve struggled,” he says. “Ever since then, I’ve had to build myself back up.”

He attended the Dallas ISD alternative school, Barbara M. Manns Education Center, before arriving at Hillcrest his sophomore year. He has kept his struggles mostly to himself.

“I know some people don’t like to hear about other people’s problems. It’s like you’re making excuses. There are not too many people who are going to care. It’s hard.”

He found a mentor in George Robinson, a retired special agent and criminal investigator for the U.S. Department of Treasury, who now works as an educational aide/security monitor at Hillcrest.

“I’m the eyes and the ears for the principal,” Robinson says. He immediately noticed and JerDadrian spent a lot of time in his room, trying to tune out his parents’ arguments, which sometimes turned violent.

This type of conflict followed him to elementary school, from which his parents were banned. Other students laughed and joked.

“It’s just a rough environment,” he says. “It’s hard for me to make friends. Some of my friends didn’t turn out to be my friends.”

Today, JerDadrian’s parents live in a homeless shelter, and he now stays in a onebedroom apartment with his 28-year-old brother, who has had to become a surrogate parent.

“He’s my father figure. He’s the only thing that I have to keep me going.”

JerDadrian spends about two hours commuting to Hillcrest each day by bus. Aside from working part-time at Studio Movie Grill on Royal Lane, he channels all of his energy into school. He has to work harder than his peers to catch up after three years of inadequate homeschooling.

JerDadrian’s positive presence. “He stands out almost like a sore thumb because he’s such a gentleman. That’s not what most young men 16 to 18 are like.”

Robinson leads a mentoring group called Aburoni, geared toward at-risk African American boys, teaching them everything from how to respect women to how to develop a firm handshake.

The biggest lesson he has imparted to JerDadrian is the value of education regardless of circumstances.

“There is a direct correlation between potential success and your ability to keep your nose in the books. The education is your avenue out. You can break the cycle.”

JerDadrian is working to do just that, with hopes to attend Texas Southern University, but not just for his own sake. He wants to make his parents proud.

“I don’t blame them for my situation,” he says. “I learn from it. I wish I could help my parents. I know that going to school is the only way I can help them.”

At 7 years old, Evelyn Romero and her family packed everything they could carry and left their hometown of Berlín, El Salvador, for what she thought was a vacation to neighboring Guatemala. They arrived but kept heading north. Evelyn remembers crossing rivers and deserts and always feeling thirsty, but she wasn’t scared.

“My mom didn’t really tell me what was happening,” Evelyn says — that the course of her entire life was changing forever.

Instead of quitting school and marrying by age 12, she’s graduating from Hillcrest High School with a full college scholarship and ranks No. 1 in her class.

“I’d probably have kids by now,” she says of life back in El Salvador. “Girls were never really encouraged to get an education.”

Her father secured a work visa before bringing the family into the United States illegally in 2001. After the journey across the border, Evelyn — a once chatty and outgoing kid — found herself beginning second grade in Farmers Branch ISD unable to relate to anyone around her. She learned English with the help of ESL classes and afternoon cartoons such as “Dragon Tales” and “Arthur.” Today, it is hard to tell English is not her native language, but she says the transition did change her.

“I never knew how to express myself,” she says. “I never pronounced things right. I became a quiet person.”

The confidence she lacked socially she made up for academically. She moved to Dallas ISD in fourth grade en route to Hillcrest, and her grades soared. She kept qui- et about her story and tried to blend in.

“I thought I was just like everybody else.”

She set her sights on college as early as eighth grade, and that’s when she felt the full impact of her disadvantage. She was excited to learn about opportunities such as the Gates Millennium Scholars program until she read that only U.S. citizens are eligible. She found this to be the case again and again as she planned her future.

The top students at Hillcrest often go on to attend ivy league schools, but Evelyn’s immigration status prevented her from joining that elite group.

“That hit her really hard,” says Trey Bush, Evelyn’s chemistry teacher in 10th and 11th grades, with whom she has re-