Barbara Taylor Cook never intended to become a teacher. Numbers were her thing, so much so that she majored in Accounting at Southern University. When she graduated in 1970, she landed a job she enjoyed as an accountant at a towboat company. Keeping track of other people’s children was the furthest thing from her mind.
But just a few weeks after Katrina and the broken levees, there was Ms. Cook, as she is affectionately known, calling and emailing all over the country to find “her children.” She found enough children and teachers to re-open the city’s first school after the storm – Singleton Charter School at the Dryades YMCA in Central City, New Orleans. Part of her heroic efforts to get all the children that she knew -- and many that she didn’t -- into a safe and caring environment, are featured in a recent documentary, Wade in the Water.
About four months after school got underway, two young filmmakers, Elizabeth Wood and Gabriel Nussbaum, landed in the Big Easy by way of the Big Apple. The 25-year-olds say they didn’t go to New Orleans to make a film. Theywent to provide 250 of Katrina’s young survivors a creative outlet for their thoughts and emotions through theater, storytelling, and film-making.
The filmmakers taught their crafts in after-school workshops. Crescent City youths were able to write and film whatever they wanted about their lives after Katrina. But 14 of Cook’s children, who were the most devoted, helped the movie makers understand that they had more than an after-school project on their hands. "The group at Singleton really stood out with their commitment,” recalls Nussbaum.
What the children brought back to Nussbaum and Wood and what the pair shaped into a feature-length documentary often is painful to watch. Portions of the film show the youths experiencing deep levels of sadness, angst, and anger. Yet there are many light-hearted scenes that depict the adolescents having delicious and devilish fun, sometimes at the expense of a certain political figure.
In the end, though, we learn that Cook’s children are succeeding against the odds –poverty, homelessness, abandonment, abuse, and neglect. Many are holding their own in school, and have become kinder, gentler and more thoughtful human beings. And if you pay close attention, you will see that the cameras, the filmmakers, and Cook’s unwavering love and guidance, helped the children plant their own seeds of hope in the wake of unyielding destruction.
Fast forward to October, 2009 - four years after Katrina hit and the levees broke. Most of the children are high school seniors -- thanks, in large part, to Ms. Cook continuing to look out for them, tutor them, and support them through crises, even though she has "retired" from teaching. Ms. Cook and the dedicated teachers who helped her rescue hundreds of New Orleans children within weeks of Katrina's devastation now want to make official what they've been doing for years - tutor, mentor, and provide educational funding for the 14 students who were featured in the film and dozens of others who need their services. They've drafted a proposal for a non-profit program called "Guidance to Success." They need funding to get it started.
A recent study concluded that the average college graduate makes $1 million more over his or her lifetime than a high school graduate. Ms. Cook and friends are determined to make college and the potential to earn that extra million a reality for children who've been through a lifetime's worth of heartache and struggle.
Every purchase of Barack Obama: A Hip Hop Tale of King's Dream Come True will allow us to donate money to Guidance to Success. We need your help. Please support our Hope and Healing Celebration with a purchase of this book and make more than a million dollars' worth of difference in a child's life. Yes, we can!
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