Booker HS Internship at Doctors HOSPITAL - spring 2022

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Much has been made of the layered, multi-dimensional initiatives of Gamma Xi’s Journey To Success (J2S) program.  This column highlights the Internship Program, focusing on three college bound high school students,  Junior Brazille, Nakeisha  Georges and Gabriella Stafford, standouts who have distinguished themselves in high school as they ready themselves to enter a new phase of their young  lives.  

Junior Brazile is a senior at Southeast High School in Bradenton. Nakeisha Georges is a junior at South East High School in Sarasota, and Gabriella Stafford is a second semester junior at Sarasota High School in Sarasota.  All three are outstanding high school students making a conscious contribution for the betterment of their community while simultaneously preparing for the next phase of their lives as college students. Particularly noteworthy is that these three high school students have maintained very strong academic records while working part-time to help defray the cost of their secondary education. Each also manages to include time for a range of sports and  extra-curricular activities.  

 These three  students are a testament to the worth and value of the time, energy and resources that Gamma Xi is investing in our young people through its J2S initiatives.

Academics have played a large role in Junior Brazile’s high school experience.  While carrying a part-time job workload of 8 to 20 hours a week at a local Winn Dixie supermarket, Junior maintains an overall grade point average (GPA) of 4.2 on a 5 point scale.  Junior said the following in a recent interview about  several failed attempts by telephone to get a job interview at Winn Dixie supermarket, “I decided to go there in person. After a very brief interview, they hired me and told  me when to start work and how much I’d make.” With access to transportation, his own 2010 Toyota, Junior is now mobile with his own “wheels”.   He went out and made the Bradenton High School baseball team, which was impractical, until now, because of transportation issues.  Though late in his high school career, Junior is upbeat about playing inter-school athletics, despite his team’s overall losing record this season. A college education is high on Junior’s list of priorities, and Florida universities have the most appeal for him.  Junior is submitting applications to SEF, USF and UCF.  With guidance from  his high school advisors and well meaning others, he has applied for financial assistance and scholarship support. To date, Junior has been awarded a “Take Stock in Children” scholarship, a local non-profit organization grant, to attend USF; and as it stands now, he plans to attend USF. As the oldest, with two  school age siblings, Junior is well aware of the financial burden that the  expense of a higher education will place upon his family, with his mother as head of the single family household.  Keeping that in mind, Junior has that extra push to do well enough to earn the financial aid and scholarship support that is critically important.  At this point, with his dreams of career and life goals in a formative stage, Junior is a role model for success at a young age and an inspiration for his two younger sisters, eleven and sixteen, respectively, as well as many others. 

Nakeisha Georges is smiling at you from the photograph in her website.  She is  dressed in her uniform as a nurse’s assistant.  Nakeisha’s mother is a nurse and her father is studying to be a Certified Nursing Assistant.  You would be safe in saying that Nakeisha’s passion for nursing comes naturally.  Her family’s interest and career paths in health care have a lot to do with Nakeisha’s interest in the nursing profession. Born in West Palm Beach, Florida, Nakeisha has never been to Haiti.  With the current global strife and political  turmoil in the small nation state, a visit is not imminent or likely in the near future, but Nakeisha says that a contingent of aunts and cousins are still there.  In no small way, their predicament undergirds Nakeisha’s drive to help others.  Among those in need of help, Nakeisha feels that young girls, not much younger or older than she, face life’s greatest challenges.  The part-time work as a nursing assistant is an easy fit with her academic schedule.  Nakeisha fully appreciates the importance of community service  and how her part-time work is a significant contribution in response to a critical community need.  When asked about it, she had this to say,  “Serving people is very important to me. Serving others and showing myself in the best way is important to me. Hopefully, this form of giving back makes this a better society”.  With a strong academic record of a 3.4 GPA on a 4 point system, Nakeisha has higher education aspirations. She is enrolled in college preparatory programs that include courses in foreign languages and math. Nakeisha readily admits that mastering French is an ongoing challenge, but a host of French speaking  family members and friends in the US and Haiti are an incentive to do so. It was through a career counseling session that Nakeisha was able to narrow her focus on career opportunities in nursing.  Initially, she was interested in the possibility of being a medical doctor, but the long-term learning and educational prerequisites were a disincentive. Nakeisha is convinced that health care  and nursing are her calling.  This is a professional area where there is a need, and Nakeisha feels that she can be impactful.

The third student we want to recognize is Gabriella Stafford.  She is a 17 year old  junior at Sarasota High School.  An introduction to the J2S by a high school counselor turned out to fit well with Gabriella’s interest in the theater.  While in the 6th grade, twelve year old Gabriella was a stage hand in the play Hairspray, which has a history of movie and box office success long before Gabriella was born.  Gabriella admits that her initial involvement in the theater was motivated by wanting  to be a part of the “in-crowd”.  As it turned out, Gabriella enjoyed working behind the scenes with set designs, a variety of props and all of the extras that help make performances possible and often memorable.  She added stage productions of the Lion King and Mary Poppins to her list of credits while still in middle school.  Gabriella says emphatically that she is not interested in performing as an actor on stage or screen.  The thought of memorizing long or even short scripts is beyond her comprehension, ability or desire.  She adds, “I am never afraid of a challenge. I am all-in for theater as a career.  But I know what parts of the theater I do best.” The challenge of doing well in class was emphasized at home when Gabriella was a young girl.  It became her personal mantra in her earliest school days.  Often the only Black student in many of her classes since elementary school here in Florida, Gabriella  faced teachers who assumed that she was going to be slower than the white students. She believes that she continually proved them wrong.  With hard work and drive, Gabriella boasts of a 4.2 GPA on a 5.0 system.  Admittedly, among her studies, math demands an extra effort.  Gabriella has her sights set on FSU in Tallahassee, but her fail-safe alternative choices  are NYU and UCLA.  Her  plan is to concentrate on production as a major, which she believes will well equip her for a career in either the movies or theater. As their brief profiles suggest, these  three  Black Floridian high school students  are exemplary.  They stand out among their peers and are an inspiration to those who follow them.  Eventually, they fall easily into that cluster of Black men and women who W.E.B. Dubois called the “Talented Tenth”.  From what they have  said about themselves and the greater society, we should feel confident that they will make  a contribution to society that will make all of us proud.