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Eighth grader Paige Lowery has come along way since the 6th grade, when she missed almost 40 days of school, was written up for “having a mouth,” was suspended for hitting a teacher with a ball of paper and stole a pair of jeans that almost sent her to jail. CIS Success Coach Brian Walker has helped Paige through CIS of Brunswick County’s Peer Court Program, an alternative juvenile justice program where young people who commit crimes at school are tried by a group of their peers and sentenced to community service instead of going to real court, perhaps landing themselves in jail and certainly having a record until they are 18. Watch our October "Overcoming Obstacles" video below and check out the wonderful story of how, with the help of CIS, the course of Paige Lowery's life has been redirected. “We all make mistakes," says Brian Walker, "but what you do when you make a mistake is what’s important.”

 

Obviously, Paige Lowery has an attitude, but not the kind that you think.

She wants people to stay out of her way if they bring her drama, she wants them to shut up if they are distracting her in class. Paige wants to be a lawyer or a teacher one day but not at the same time. She wants to get her master’s degree, have kids and provide them with all the things she doesn’t have.

She has an attitude for success, but first she will need to survive middle school.

Pressure

Paige is focused, determined, articulate, insightful and funny, but that isn’t always enough. Attitudes that gear a child for success don’t necessarily make them cool in school. The drama of middle school acts like a pressure cooker and sometimes she is ready to explode. She hates being picked on and when her peers sometimes “act stupid.”

“They are just immature... They don’t know what they want in life or anything,” she tells me. In science class Paige and her classmates learned about estuaries and why fish travel in schools. No one seemed to know the answer, so I answered that they did so because there is safety in numbers. Moments later, she passed me a note. I opened it, and it read “Don’t talk so much!” I guess I was distracting her...

But Paige wasn’t always so focused. Not in the 6th grade when she missed almost 40 days of school, not when she was written up for “having a mouth,” or when she was suspended for hitting a teacher with a ball of paper. She has come a long way since she stole a pair of jeans and almost went to jail.

Peer Court

Brian Walker was a cop for 20 years in Maryland near Washington, D.C. He retired in 2007 and he has seen it all. He worked patrol, narcotics and as a recruiter for a while, but the job that impacted him the most was his time working as a probation office in a juvenile dentition center because he got to interact with young people. He would wear plain clothes on Fridays at the schools when he took part in the D.A.R.E program in hopes that the children would realize he was just a person. “I think they thought I slept in my uniform,” he chuckled.

Brian hung up his badge and gun a few years back, but when he saw the job posting for his current job as a success coach for CIS of Brunswick County at Cedar Grove Middle School, he said he claimed it. “This is my job. I want this job because it is an opportunity to give back to the kids and the community,” he says.

He met Paige in the 6th grade after she was charged with misdemeanor theft and destruction of property after she took a pair of jeans from another student. Brian coached Paige through CIS of Brunswick County’s Peer Court program, an alternative juvenile justice program where young people who commit crimes at school are tried by a group of their peers and sentenced to community service instead of going to real court, landing themselves in jail and having a record until they are 18.

Choose To Be Positive

According to Brian, Paige was angry, defiant and argumentative. She would be quick to smart-mouth her teachers and other adults, he said. But with his help, and with the help of the staff at Cedar Grove, Brian says he has noticed a huge difference in Paige’s attitude. She hasn’t missed a day of school so far and made the cheerleading team where her popularity has risen.

Paige tells me that when she is around positive people she has a positive attitude, a fact that illustrates how much children are a litmus test of their environment. A toxic environment can make a child already struggling with puberty, identity and daily life have a toxic mind, a toxic tongue and a toxic outlook. She looks up to Brian as a second father, as someone who understands her, as a positive example. “He’s perfect,” she tells me. “Well, I’m not going to say perfect, he’s just not good at math,” she says with a smirk.

Brian is an example of what it takes to be a CIS mentor. While his background as a police officer no doubt informs how he helps young people, at his core he is a compassionate but firm person who once was in middle school himself. He knows how hard it can be. Brian tells me that he had a rough upbringing at times but he firmly believes that no child should be a victim circumstance.

“Just because where you came from isn’t the best, that doesn't give you an excuse to not do well. You can do any thing you want... if you put your foot forward and strive and do the best you can. Good things will happen,” he says.

But Brian and the staff at Cedar Grove Middle School in Supply, NC, prove that a little help from your friends and the CIS family never hurts.

Justin Cook is an independent documentary photographer who lives in Durham, NC. He is the multimedia producer behind Communities In Schools of North Carolina’s “Overcoming Obstacles: CIS Success Stories.” His work has been honored by College Photographer of the Year, Pictures of the Year International, Virginia Press Association, Society of Professional Journalists and other organizations. Although Cook’s photojournalism is award-winning, he gauges his success not in trophies but in the relationships he establishes with his subjects. View his work online at www.justincookphoto.com.