Teacher answers jailed former student’s call for help
The 20-year-old’s head fell into his hands with tears rolling down his cheeks.
He and his eighth-grade math teacher were perched on the curb outside a Motel 6 where he would sleep that night.
“I’m just so exhausted,” Amonte Green told his former teacher, Kate Demory.
“I would be too,” she said. “Anyone in your circumstances would be totally exhausted.”
Green has been on his own since his mother died when he was 15, bouncing from friends’ couches to homeless shelters and group homes. He dropped out of Winter Park High School his junior year to have more time to make money working at different fast food restaurants.
A fight earlier this year in the group home where he was living got him kicked out and thrown in jail. He is not in touch with his family. His friends couldn’t help. He didn’t know where to turn. But then he thought to call Demory, now a math
coach at Winter Park High School.
Since he made that first call, Demory and her husband, Craig Russell, also a teacher at WPHS, have helped Green find a place to live, get a job and go back to school. They have also raised more than $4,600 on a GoFundMe to help the young man get his life back on track.
“It makes me feel loved and supported,” Green said. “I’m so thankful.” ‘Everything was breaking’ Demory received the first call from Green in May and he continued to call every evening from jail until he was released on June 24. That night, Demory and Russell picked him up and drove around town all night looking for a place for him to stay.
All the shelters was either full or closed, and letting him stay in their 1,200-square-foot home wasn’t an option, since it was already full with their own five children, Demory said. So they ended up at the Motel 6.
That’s when the desperation of his situation overcame him.
“I’m not really a crier,” Green said. “It takes a lot to break me, but at that point it just felt like everything was breaking.”
The next morning, they continued looking for a place for him to stay. He spent one night at the The Salvation Army, then two emergency-stay nights at the Covenant House. Green has since been staying at Home Suite Home, an extended stay hotel. Demory and Russell also bought him a 30-day bus pass and helped him enroll in a 16 week program to earn his high school diploma.
Demory knew financially they weren’t capable of helping Green on their own. Within two days of posting the GoFundMe they raised $1,200 and an donor gave Green a job as a landscaper. As of Monday, the community had raised $4,680, more than doubling their original goal.
About two weeks after the night at Motel 6 parking lot, Green sat in Demory and Russell’s kitchen, freshly showered from a day’s work in the hot Florida sun.
“We went from thinking about depending on another shelter to thinking, ‘where’s his first apartment going to be?’” Russell said. “It’s exponentially gone from zero to 100.”
‘Everything counts for kids’
Not everyone would think to call their eighth-grade math teacher in a time of crisis, but Green said he knew Demory would be willing to help; he always thought of her as a second mother.
“That’s true,” Demory said. “He texted me ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’”
Demory and Russell said they’ve always helped their students. In the past they’ve furnished apartments, given rides to interviews, picked students up from jail and hosted dinners. Demory shared a few letters from students thanking her and some, like Green, considered her their “school mom.”
She used to host taco Tuesdays every week for one of her former students and, one evening, he asked if he could invite his Coach Russell — that’s how the husband and wife first met.
The tradition lives on as a team effort. On Tuesday evening, Demory pulled out a five pound bag of cheese, a tub of sour cream and two jars of salsa from the refrigerator while Russell lined a pan with hard taco shells popping them into the oven.
Demory called to the living room and five children, ranging from five to 12, hopped up and made their way to the kitchen, piling the ingredients into taco shells and bowls.
“Everything counts for kids,” Demory said “Every word, every look, every everything. It all makes some kind of impact on them, good or bad. And it’s not just little, for some kids it’s everything.”
In his eighth-grade math class, Green celebrated his 16th birthday with a cake Demory baked for him. He told her it was the first birthday cake he’d ever had.
Born in Daytona Beach, Green moved to Winter Park with his mother in 2013. He said he was close with his mom, but she and her girlfriend were in and out of jail and wrapped up in drugs. When his mom died, he was left alone.
‘The Green House’
The incident at the group home that led to Green’s arrest began with an argument, which escalated when the man he was arguing with started calling Green names and talking about his mother. Green then threw a can opener, hitting the man in the leg, and moved toward him with a knife in his hand, according to the arrest report.
He spent 33 nights in jail on aggravated assault charges before he was released and the charges were dropped. He said being in jail opened his eyes and he knew he needed to turn his life around. When he got out he decided to call Demory.
“I felt like I wanted to give up,” Green said. “But I like to push. I don’t ever want to give up because I know my mom wouldn’t want me to give up.”
Now, a portable white board sits in the corner of Demory and Russell’s kitchen with “The Green House” scribbled across the top. Underneath is a plan outlining Green’s next steps: get food assistance, find an affordable place to live, maintain his job and finish school.
Russell said he was shocked at how hard it is to navigate organizations designed to help poor and homeless people.
“Community outreach has been the most effective and helpful, and government agencies most difficult to navigate,” Russell said. “With five degrees, we have between the two of us, and it’s still been phone call message after message and this and that.”
Green said one day he wants to start his own organization dedicated to helping kids in situations similar to his own. He’s been brainstorming ideas with Demory to build a program based on his experiences, one that will focus on mentorship and providing a support system for kids who don’t have one.
They’ve already thought of a name: The Green House.