When Charlette was 5 years old, she remembers visiting her father in a group home.  She wondered why he had moved out of her grandmother’s house where he had been living for years.  Several months later, she lost her father to AIDS but remembers thinking about him as an angel at his funeral.  Growing up without her father was difficult, and she often thinks about what advice he might have given her throughout her childhood.

Although her father had passed away, Charlette was very close to her older brother and spent most of her time with him and his friends.  But when Charlette was 12, a close friend of the family raped her.  For a couple days, Charlette did not know what to do.  Finally, she made her mother take her to the hospital where in the presence of a doctor, she revealed to her mother what had happened.  Shocked, her mother counseled Charlette through this painful ordeal based on her own experience with rape during her childhood.

During the next couple of years, Charlette experienced a series of traumatic events that further destabilized her life.  First, her family was evicted from their home.  Then one of her friends was shot at school. On top of that, her school was being decontaminated for mercury, which meant that students had to attend classes downtown at the Convention Center―a 45-minute bus ride away. Finally, her mother decided to move the family in with her grandmother who is suffering from Alzheimer’s.  The situation has taken an emotional toil on Charlette, because she has had to watch the sacrifices her mother makes and the abuse she takes from her grandmother because of the disease.

Yet while carrying the burden of her personal life, Charlette has managed to refocus on her academics at Maya Angelou Public Charter School.  She has improved her spotty academic record and has even become a leader in the classroom and the school.  Charlette also has maintained her commitment to the “I Have a Dream” program where she has had a number of responsibilities since kindergarten.  

When asked how she has been able to stay committed to her education in spite of all that she has been through, Charlette points to her mother as her source of strength.  She says her mother taught her that if you can’t be strong for yourself, you can’t be strong for anyone else.  This past summer, Charlette learned that her mother has lung cancer.  She wants to be strong for her mother.