Life of a Fellow: Kara
Kara Stephens graduated from Brooklyn College where she studied English Literature, Women's and Gender Studies, and History. She exudes incredible positivity and warmth at the Kensington Health Sciences Academy Plus Center where she is currently a Fellow, and we, as well as our students, are grateful for her ever-so encouraging presence!
“They don’t see a future for us Philly girls.”
A senior at Kensington Health Sciences Academy tells me this as we sit in the Plus Center on a Monday afternoon in late September. She’s filling out an application for an associate degree program in dental hygiene at Manor College — her top choice for next year — when she turns to me, taking a much-needed break from answering questions about her educational history. “They don’t think we’ll finish high school, even.”
When I ask her who “they” are, she shrugs. “`Everybody. The boys here [at school]. Our families, sometimes.” A nearby student, another senior, nods in agreement. “Yeah,” she chimes in, “They don’t think we’re gonna make it. They all expect us to give up and drop out.”
Two months later, I still find myself thinking often of what my student said to me that day. They don’t see a future for us. What I wish I had told her that day, what I couldn’t quite find the words to explain, was that the “they” in her statement was much bigger than she might have been imagining.
“These students see their futures - college, trade school, dream jobs - and they won’t let anything keep them from pursuing them.”
The students who make up the senior class at Kensington Health Sciences Academy are the kind of students who are perpetually underserved by the systems meant to support them. They are immigrants, DACA recipients, first generation high schoolers, Black, Latinx, low-income, ESL. Because so many of our students fit into so many of these categories, they are constantly being told, both implicitly and explicitly, that their dreams for the future are out of reach. They are discouraged from applying to college, from going after the careers that they want, from believing in their own abilities.
Before I began my Fellows year, I expected that the most critical part of my job at 12+ would be encouraging my students not to give in to the barrage of negative messaging that they’re subjected to in a society that doesn’t often see their worth. And I do, of course, spend time doing this. But what I learned almost immediately upon entering KHSA is that many of these students don’t need my encouragement — they are incredibly self-motivated and sure of themselves. Our seniors have refused to allow low societal expectations and social prejudice to curb their ambition. They know their worth. These students see their futures — college, trade school, dream jobs — and they won’t let anything keep them from pursuing them.
