Two Southwest DeKalb High School seniors are recipients of a $250 scholarship after winning an essay contest.<\/p>\n
Alida Brown and Tyler Sylvester wrote the best essays on what the first amendment means to them and how it applies to their lives. Both students were excited about winning the award.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel special,\u201d Sylvester said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am actually very surprised,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI\u2019m happy that I won and I feel proud that I won because I was honestly talking about the importance of everything in my life and how the first amendment makes me feel like I\u2019m important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students of Dr. Kenyatta Arnette\u2019s business and computer science classes were given the assignment by Southwest DeKalb alums India Ali and Omari Crawford.<\/p>\n
Ali and Crawford, who are both now attorneys, returned to their alma mater in September to form the Project L.I.F.E (Learning Is For Everyone) program with the purpose of exposing students to various professions.<\/p>\n
The two, who have known each other since they were 8 years old, graduated from Southwest DeKalb in 2004. After both received their juris doctorade and M.B.A degrees from North Carolina Central School of Law in 2013, they returned to Atlanta to begin their law careers and to find a way to give back to their high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things we talked about is the fact that many students from certain neighborhoods don\u2019t have the same exposure to professionals as other neighborhoods,\u201d said Crawford, who works at The Cochran Firm. \u201cI came from a home with two working parents, who were college-educated, but I didn\u2019t have access to an attorney\u2014someone I could call on the phone or sit down with and call a mentor until I got to college\u2014undergrad at Florida A&M. That\u2019s the first time I really had the opportunity to sit and talk with an attorney.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crawford said he and Ali, who works for The Law Offices of Stephen H. Robinson, thought it would be beneficial if they came back to the school that they were involved in and teach the students about the legal world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about coming back, giving back and teaching and making sure the students have the opportunity to learn something that might be a field they would like to get into,\u201d Crawford said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what we\u2019ve been told, from whenever we just come up to the school to watch a basketball game, we\u2019re always being told that [the student body] is different now,\u201d Ali said. \u201cThe students are different and they need more people who have graduated and have gone on to do successful things, to come back and talk to the kids because it\u2019s a different generation. They are more exposed to things that we weren\u2019t exposed to as far as social media and all of these other things that we didn\u2019t have to grow up dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although there are mentors in the community, Ali said students would benefit more from those who have walked the same halls as they are walking at Southwest DeKalb.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think [the students] can get \u2018lost in the sauce\u2019 because they\u2019re paying more attention to what\u2019s on the television or social media\u2014the things that are popular,\u201d Ali added. \u201cAnd maybe they don\u2019t have direct access to somebody who went to this school, who understands what they\u2019re going through and someone they can relate to. We\u2019re not that far removed from the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnette, who taught Crawford during his senior year, said having the former students come back to mentor current students is the highlight of a teacher\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve become success stories and to see them come back is a great honor,\u201d Arnette said.<\/p>\n
Brown said having Ali and Crawford around has further expanded her horizon about potential future opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve also helped me further understand the things that I can do,\u201d Brown said. \u201cSeeing a person in a position that you want to be in is inspirational and gives you a higher belief that you can do something,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved it,\u201d Sylvester said. \u201cThe L.I.F.E Program is amazing. Every time they came it was very live. They were hands on and made it fun, made the class better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali and Crawford hope to expand the program to other schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Southwest DeKalb High School seniors are recipients of a $250 scholarship after winning an essay contest. Alida Brown and Tyler Sylvester wrote the best essays on what the first amendment means to them and how it applies to their lives. Both students were excited about winning the award. \u201cI feel special,\u201d Sylvester said. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-2182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-uncategorized","tag-local"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2365,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions\/2365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cochranfirm.com\/atlanta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}