Communities In Schools: Tarrant County nonprofit making a difference in students’ lives and education

Nathaniel “Junior” Session, like so many young people, was looking for some guidance, a road map to help him navigate to a better place in life. Then he found an entire community of support, Communities In Schools of Greater Tarrant County (CISTC), a local affiliate of a national nonprofit network dedicated to helping students stay on track by overcoming barriers to success caused by poverty, hunger, lack of transportation, access to medical and dental services, and mental health needs. Session, then a senior at Lake Worth High School, first met his CISTC social worker Kimeeka Brown in the seventh grade. Brown had heard that he, his mom and siblings had found themselves homeless after Junior’s father walked out. She sprang into action and helped the family get back on their feet.

Brown soon established a close relationship with Junior and his mom, even helping to secure two pairs of basketball shoes, which Junior needed to make the school team. “Junior would always come to me and ask, ‘Why, Ms. Brown? Why are you so nice to me?’” Brown said. “And I would say to him ‘Because sometimes good things need to happen to good people.’ Junior and his family needed a hand up, not a hand out.” During Session’s freshman year, his mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Brown and Morgan Eary, the CISTC social worker who started working with Session when he entered Lake Worth High School, were at the hospital with him when his mother passed. “At the hospital, his mother took us both aside and asked us to take care of him,” Brown recalled. “Her dying wish was to entrust us with her son.” Last May, Session graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA. He is now attending Bethany College on a scholarship to play football. “He is regarded as a leader among his peers and is fiercely independent and self-reliant,” CISTC Executive Director Lindsey Garner said. “Imagine if Brown and Eary were not there to surround Junior with support when no one else had? They were able to go behind the scenes to assess his unique needs and provide him the support he needed to succeed.”