Lori Stern

It just wasn't that much time for academic learning when teachers had to focus on behavior.

Where the pattern continued, he told me about it on a hot day with all the fans in the room on.

Walt was exaggerating a bit.

I checked, and he'd actually been suspended dozens of times, not hundreds.

Well, he's a teenager.

And remember, he'd been in classrooms where that behavior was happening all the time.

But by the time I met him, Walt told me he had a really strong desire to change.

And that's because the summer between sophomore and junior year, so the summer before I met him, Walt was arrested for stealing a car, a robbery he said he didn't commit.

And for Walt, that was a low point that eventually became a turning point.

He spent two weeks in juvie, and it was basically a preview of what he thought his future might be.

Some of them were, and it's not that much of a surprise.

There isn't recent data about outcomes for kids with EBD, but about 15 years ago, a study found that youth with EBD are more than twice as likely to get arrested soon after high school than kids with other disabilities.

Walt told me he hated it in juvie.

But a few months after he got out, he went on this trip with a nonprofit that works with Black youth who'd been through the correction system.

They toured a few historically Black colleges.

And Walt said,

The trip shifted something for him.

Back when I met Walt at the end of junior year, both he and his teacher, Mr. K, remembered how different Walt was when he came back.

And Walt had an answer to those questions.

That's right.