Pushers Recruiting Third Graders as Runners



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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Pushers Recruiting Third Graders as Runners

Post by johnkarls »

When I was a sponsor of an “I Have A Dream”® program that served 200 kids in housing projects (please see “Background Context for John Karls’ essays), I was extremely fortunate to have Valerie Purdie as the Project Coordinator of our first group of 67 third graders that we adopted.

By way of background, an IHAD project typically has two paid staff in addition to all of the volunteers (tutors, mentors, planners, etc.) – a Project Coordinator and a Computer Lab Supervisor.

The Project Coordinator is the “mother hen” for the Dreamers – their “best friend” with a “finger on their pulse” and their best interests at heart.

Accordingly, you want someone who will be a “pied piper”!!!

And when most inner-city kids have to “steal just in order to eat” (please see “Background Context for John Karls’ essays), a basketball background is ideal for a PC because any inner-city kid can steal a pair of sneaks and play basketball in the projects – almost the only sport there!!!

Valerie Purdie was a four-year starter for Columbia U’s women’s basketball team.

(Like most IHAD PC’s around the country, she experienced “burn out” after 4-5 years. So she enrolled in Stanford U’s PhD program in psychology and, following graduation in 2004, became an Assistant Professor at Yale.)

But my 3 IHAD groups and many IHAD projects around the country owe Valerie a special debt of gratitude.

Valerie knew that in the projects, the pushers (who are often teenagers) RECRUIT THIRD GRADERS AS RUNNERS because the pushers don’t want to get busted themselves!!!

And the third graders will make more as runners than a typical Wall Street lawyer or investment banker – until they are busted!!!

To protect our Dreamers, Valerie sized up the situation her first day on the job and challenged each of the pushers (whom she identified just by looking around the housing project) to basketball one-on-one!!!

I don’t know what she promised if she lost, but she made each of them promise to lay off recruiting our Dreamers as runners if she won!!!

Luckily, none of the pushers was angry about losing to her!!! After all, all of them did!!! And, after all, she had been a 4-year-starter for Columbia, so there was no disgrace in losing to such a woman!!! And, luckily (though perhaps it was not luck), Valerie was able to make each of them honor his promise not to recruit our Dreamers as runners!!!

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