Straight talk for kids on the brink

Nyema Thrones is ready for change, waiting to be reinstated to a school from which she was kicked out for fighting.

Jamire Warner was 16 when he was expelled from Kensington Culinary and transferred to a disciplinary school after hospitalizing a fellow student whom he had assaulted with a stick.

These students are among hundreds in the city with similar tales, many of them at Shallcross, a transition school in the far Northeast that serves students who've been expelled from regular public schools.

Yesterday, about 175 Shallcross students heard a jarring message by several straight-talking speakers about where their lives could end up if they don't get their act together.

"I was a drug addict, a thief and a liar," said Joe Davis, a social worker who runs Think First, a safety-prevention group for youth at 16th and Race streets. When he was 25, he said, "I was shot by a 14-year-old as a result of drugs and bad behavior."

Davis is permanently confined to a wheelchair after being shot in the spine, he said. He pointed to the spot where he was injured on a replica of a spinal cord and talked with students, from fifth-graders to high-school seniors, about redemption.

"I'm a living example that you could change your life."

Talking with the youngsters yesterday was presented as a matter of life and death by Donna Giddings, a member of Mothers in Charge, whose son and mother were shot to death in 2005.

"It would be a big injustice not to share their story," she said. "My son was in placement. I wanted to give them insight on his life, which ended in death."

But it was District Attorney-elect Seth Williams, the keynote speaker, who especially struck a chord in Warner, a 10th-grader.

Williams, who shared his stories of being in foster care and of getting thrown out of school, also emphasized the importance of getting a high-school diploma and of staying in school and out of trouble.

"What is the one thing people who get arrested have in common?" he asked the assembly.

"They didn't finish high school," he answered.

"He said he never gave up and he tried real hard," Warner said, after Williams' presentation. "He made it on his own. If he can do it, I can do it."

Following Williams, students were treated to a performance by a poet troupe. After that, Noel Roberts, founder of the Woman Abuse Resource Center, highlighted love of oneself, confidence and positive thinking.

As for Thrones, a 14-year-old eighth-grader who had attended Warren G. Harding Middle School, she vowed: "I'm going to be better."

That's what Henry Demby wants to hear. He coordinates anti-violence programs for youth as a forum to address issues "of violence, drugs and poor life skills," he said.

"I wanted to bring in more organizations to speak to these kids about things never heard of," he said. The ultimate goal, he said, is to make it citywide.

The forum gave students a dose of reality, said Robert Lysek, executive director of the school.

Besides operating Shallcross, on Woodhaven Road near Knights, Camelot Schools of Pennsylvania has contracts to run two other alternative schools.