From generation to generation, the knot of problems lingers
Clemens Elementary School third-graders struggle to cope with bullying, family arrests and incarcerations — even killings
Just three school days after her brother was shot in the head and killed on Milwaukee’s north side, Nevaeha Ware was back in class trying to focus on geometry and the differences between squares, trapezoids and parallelograms. She’s only 9. “I’m hurt and I feel sad,” Nevaeha said, pain filling her wide eyes. “I really don’t know what happened, because I was at my auntie’s house when it happened.” She paused. “I just know I miss him.” Nevaeha is a third-grader at Samuel Clemens Elementary School. I was a third-grader at the same school in 1978.
On a recent morning, she and four other third-graders sat around a table in the library. The chairs were smaller than I remembered them. I expected we’d talk about favorite teachers and gym class, even violence or bullying. I didn’t know we’d be talking about death. “Sometimes I wonder if anyone cares,” Nevaeha said.
When I tracked down my third-grade classmates from 1978, I found the knot of problems facing the city — lack of jobs, crime and segregation — played out in their lives. Some were trapped. Others broke free. Most all of us struggled along the way, whether it was to buy a home, get a job or stay out of jail.
After talking with today’s third-graders, I realized we had it easy.
“How many of you have witnessed violence in your neighborhood or household?” Five hands went up. “How many of you have a family member who has been incarcerated, shot or killed?” Still, five hands. “How many of you have been bullied?” Four hands. “Bullied daily?” Three hands.
*** I broke the ice by telling them that when I attended Clemens, their parents were either babies or probably not even born. Some of them giggled. In addition to Nevaeha, the group included Serenity Davis, 9; Keonna White, 8; D’Andre Houston, 9; and Abrayah Scull, 9.
Keonna and Abrayah both want to be gymnastics teachers. Serenity wants to be a hairstylist. D’Andre — the only boy in the group — wants to play football for the Wisconsin Badgers and turn pro one day. If that doesn’t pan out, he wants to run a day care center because he loves kids. Nevaeha wants to be a doctor.
“There are a lot of children who need to go to the doctor, but they can’t afford to go,” she said. “I want to be there for them.”
The more comfortable they got, the more they shared stories — stories about seeing fights, seeing guns, seeing people get shot, seeing their mothers physically abused.
When I attended Clemens, the school had fewer than 140 students. Nearly all of us lived in the neighborhood. We attended the same churches and shopped at the same stores. We even called ourselves “The Clem.” Of the 28 students in my third-grade class, seven were either white or biracial.
Today, of the 300 students who attend Clemens, only 10 live in the neighborhood. More than half are bused in or their parents drop them off. All 47 of the school’s thirdgraders are African-American, said Kelsey Robison, the school’s literacy coach.
Third grade is a watershed moment for kids, because those who read poorly by year end are four times as likely to drop out before graduating from high school, according to 2011 research by sociologist Donald Hernandez for the Brookings Institution Press.
As of last spring, 9.1% of third-graders at Clemens were tested as proficient or advanced in English Language Arts (reading is a subset of this assessment). That’s about half the level for Milwaukee Public Schools as a whole, where 18.7% of third-graders performed at proficient or above.
And the score for MPS comes in at less than half the level for third-graders across the state, where 43.5% tested as proficient or advanced.
Nevertheless, Clemens third-graders improved in reading throughout this school year. By spring, 23% more third-graders were on target in reading than at the start of the school year, according to MPS spokesman Andy Nelson.
Now summer vacation is starting, and that brings its own problems.
D’Andre, who lives near N. 28th and W. Melvina streets, said his mother doesn’t let him play outside because of the constant shootings and violence. They live in an upstairs apartment for safety reasons, he said.
“Me and my brother play inside,” he said. “We play with soft balls and make sure we don’t hit nothing made of glass.”
When D’Andre hears gunshots, he knows to run away from the windows and get down until the shooting stops.
“We need to do something about all these guns,” he said. “If I was a police officer, I would stop anyone I saw with a gun and check them for a permit. And if they don’t have one, I’ll arrest them.”
Keonna, the youngest and smallest of the bunch, said her father had just got out of jail a few days ago. “I don’t get to see him much,” she said.
Abrayah, thin framed with a big smile, said she is often bullied. The girl in question has pushed her, called her names and choked her from behind.
“Our teacher tells us to ignore her, but that doesn’t work all the time,” she said.
Kate Swiderski, 27, one of two third-grade teachers at the school, said she has addressed the bullying many times and has met with the girl’s parents to little avail.
“I don’t know if she can control it,” she said. “So we try to get the other kids to ignore her and that seems to be effective at times. It’s a daily struggle.”
The last of the five was Serenity. Her oldest brother, Anthony Farsee, 21, is serving time for a May 2016 case of resisting arrest and bodily harm, a felony, according to online court records.
He is expected to be released in late June.
Serenity, who was the most talkative of the bunch, recalled in vivid detail seeing Farsee taken down by police and pepper sprayed when he was arrested.
“His lip was busted and he was bleeding all over the place,” she said. “He suffered a seizure and was taken to the hospital.”
When the officers were yelling at her brother to stop resisting, Serenity thought he was going to die.
“I was wondering why they were doing him like that. I was crying,” she said. “And I still feel some kind of way about it.”
*** Nevaeha’s brother, Qwaishaun D. Henning, 19, had also spent time behind bars.
He pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced in June 2015 to three years in prison. He was released last July, after the state Department of Corrections asked that the remainder of his time be converted to extended supervision, court records show.
Qwaish, as he was known to family, was shot in the 3300 block of N. 38th St. on May 17. He died the next day at the hospital, the city’s 37th homicide victim of the year. As of Wednesday, no one was in custody for his death.
The motive and what led to the shooting are still being investigated.
Nevaeha missed school the next two days, a Thursday and Friday, but returned to school on May 23 — just five days later.
“I told my teacher what happened this morning,” Nevaeha said.
When Nevaeha talked about her brother’s death, the smile she had when we first met was gone. Her face was blank, as if she was still in shock.
I told her I was sorry for her loss and asked her if she had a counselor she could talk to about how she was feeling.
She said no, but that she had talked to Ms. Swiderski.
“I told her that I was going to miss school Friday for his funeral,” she said. “But that’s it.”
*** The violence the Clemens students are exposed to is a weekly occurrence, Swiderski said.
“You can tell when something happens to them because the ones with behaviors act up even more, while the other ones get a little despondent,” she said. “Sometimes they pull me aside and want to talk.”
Swiderski tries to give them coping methods. She gave a stuffed lion to a girl who was sick of moving from house to house.
“It helped some, but each child is so different, so you try to find what works,” she said.
Nancy Stone, a mental health clinician at Sojourner Family Peace Center, a Milwaukee nonprofit group that houses and helps victims of domestic violence, said when a person experiences trauma — either large or in a series of smaller events — it is as if their brain is hijacked.
“A brain doesn’t go back to normal after a funeral or a tragic event,” she said.
It takes months, sometimes years, of intensive therapy and a dedicated support system to get people back to a mentally healthy place.
While teachers in MPS are being trained in best practices for addressing trauma, Stone said that is not enough.
“Some of these children need to be in traumacentered therapy to help them work through whatever they are dealing with,” she said.
*** The students I spoke to are not unusual — at Clemens, or in the city as a whole.
The five third-graders all fell into the high-risk category of children exposed to multiple instances of abuse, violence and neglect. They reinforce the view that Milwaukee is struggling with epidemic levels of childhood trauma.
The most common measure of nonmilitary trauma is a short survey of “adverse childhood experiences,” known around the world as the ACE test.
The ACE test consists of simple but intrusive yes-or-no questions: When you were growing up, did a parent or adult in the
“Some of these children need to be in trauma-centered therapy to help them work through whatever they are dealing with.” NANCY STONE, MENTAL HEALTH CLINICIAN AT SOJOURNER FAMILY PEACE CENTER
house beat you? Beat each other? Did any of them verbally or sexually abuse you? Emotionally ignore you? Were any of them alcoholics? Drug users? Incarcerated? Mentally ill?
Compared to someone with zero “yes” answers, a person with four or more is six times more likely to struggle with depression; seven times more likely to grow up alcoholic; 10 times more likely to use street drugs; and 12 times more likely to attempt suicide. They’re far less likely to hold a job and more likely to end up homeless.
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series, called “A Time to Heal,” documented the overwhelming prevalence of exposure to trauma among the city’s children and examined how it is perpetuated, one generation to the next.
“My question is what do we intend to do about it,” said Brenda Wesley, director of education and outreach for the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Greater Milwaukee. “We are very good at identifying the problems, but we struggle with how to address it in a positive way.
“You hear people say, ‘they’re young so they’ll get over it,’ ” she said. “No, it’s not that easy.”
Stone, of the Sojourner Family Peace Center, said we need to start asking children: “‘Did something happen to you?’ Then ask, ‘What impact did that have on you?’ Only then can we start the healing process.”
*** I asked about summer vacation plans.
Serenity plans on spending a lot of time at the David F. Schulz Aquatic Center in Lincoln Park. Keonna plans to work on becoming a stronger swimmer. D’Andre will be in summer camp. Abrayah is going to Disney World, while Nevaeha will be in a summer camp program through the YMCA.
Summer in Milwaukee can be dicey for many children. Of the 142 homicides last year, 13 victims were under age 18. Four were under age 10, including Za’layia Jenkins, who was struck by an errant bullet while watching television at her home in the 1500 block of W. Meinecke Ave.
Za’layia was shot during a shootout between two groups of people. She died from her wound on May 16, a day before her 10th birthday. More than a year later, there have been no arrests in her case.
Beyond the homicides, last year 52 people age 17 or younger suffered nonfatal gunshot wounds, according to police records.
All five of the thirdgraders said they will miss school and their teachers. They all said they didn’t feel Milwaukee was safe, especially for kids.
“Too many people got guns,” Nevaeha said. “Everybody don’t need them.”
As the lunch bell sounded, I wished them well over the summer and told them to be safe.
They all wished the same for me.