Movie spotlight helps Manassas High students see potential - Memphis News

Photo by Mike Maple Buy this photo »

Justin Young (left), and Herman Harris practice for a lunchtime show at Manassas High School. The school is receiving a lot of attention thanks to an Academy Award-nominated film about its football team.

There is a palpable charge in the air at Manassas High School separate from the thrill that the film about its football team is up for an Oscar award Sunday night.

Even if "Undefeated" does not win Best Documentary Feature, it has given a whole school of inner-city students reason to believe the power of their own story.

"Here's this movie and all of America is going to be paying attention. Your name is going to be mentioned on national TV," principal James Griffin tells the students.

A story about Manassas was published in The Atlantic last week.

On Feb. 16, Ellen DeGeneres gave $10,000 to the school on her live television program, yelling "Go Tigers!" like it was a mantra.

NBC Spotlight is scheduling a crew here.

"Just passing through the halls, it's like, 'Wow, somebody is talking about us in the most positive way,'" Griffin said.

Since entertainment mogul Sean Combs -- still best known as "Puff Daddy" or "P. Diddy" -- signed on as executive producer of a studio remake of the story in mid-February, the air has crackled with energy for Manassas, the poor, majority black school named for Civil War battles twice fought on the same turf.

"It's so exciting all the things that are going on at Manassas," said Keaisha Polk, 16.

Very little of it has to do with football. The front trophy case has been cleared out and student projects now line the glass shelves. Down the hall, so many college-acceptance letters are already taped up that in another week they'll be running down a second wall.

"If you come here one year, we are going to get you into college," said MarTavious Rice, 18, an energetic, bright-eyed salesman-of-a-student who talks about Manassas like it was a prep school.

Griffin took over Manassas in the summer of 2010. The following year, the graduation rate jumped 14 percentage points to 79 percent, largely, he says, because he bores down into students' lives.

So far this year, 88 students in a senior class of 132 have been accepted to college. Last year at this time, 25 had acceptance letters.

"The year before that, only four in the whole school went to college," MarTavious said. "That was the year before Mr. Griffin came."

What students say Griffin has done in less than two years is nothing short of turn the place around.

"We're debunking what people say goes on here," Keaisha said. "There are not fights here. There hasn't been a fight all year.

"The paycheck doesn't matter to him; it's about when students are going to graduate, not if. He's the father I never had."

Griffin knocks on doors when students miss school. The reasons they are absent is often simple stuff: No clean clothes or girls "having trouble with their hair."

"C'mon," he says, "we've got clothes at school. We can fix this stuff."

Cut-off utilities and empty cupboards are a little harder.

Griffin's own life is strong medicine at Manassas.

"I was born to a single mother. She had me when she was in the eighth grade," he says. His grandparents took him in as a baby and told his mother she could visit on weekends.

"It was a good home, but what should I say? It got rambunctious on Friday and Saturday. It was the neighborhood party house.

"One weekend, my mother came to see me, and I was intoxicated. I was 4," he says without emotion.

Griffin's mother got custody. But by that time she had another baby, and Griffin went from being in a lower middle-class family to a household with not much at all.

One of the rules of Section 8 housing that his mother later received was that applicants could only stay a year at one address. Griffin's family got on the rolls in September, which meant just as school was starting each year for the next 10 years, he had to move to a different school.

"You get labeled," he said. "I was in special education, ADHD."

Football, like the Manassas students in "Undefeated," saved him.

"Colleges were recruiting me. When they pulled my transcripts, they saw my low GPA and ACT scores," he said.

"Then I got to see the real world and how important those two numbers are to a child's future."

One of the first stops on Griffin's tour of Manassas is the data room, a nondescript sort of place until visitors notice that the data lining the walls are test scores for every student, going back to middle school.

"We use this to see what their achievement's been," Griffin says. "We update it four times a year and take stock again."

Every Friday is also test day at Manassas. By Monday, Griffin has posted a new tutoring log, he calls the "Not Yet" list for students who made less than a B on any subject.

"Anyone on the list has to attend after-school tutoring from 2:30 to 3:30. Sports don't start until after tutoring is over," Griffin says.

"Despite its flaws and shortcomings, school is the one place where we can ease the effect of social marginalization, ease the effect of racism and allow dreams to come true for a generation of kids who have had their dreams deferred," he says.

"It's powerful when they come back and say, 'We wouldn't have made it if it hadn't been for this school, if you hadn't suspended us and made us come in on Saturday to fill out college applications,'" Griffin said.

"We want to keep them in the game until they realize there is a game going on."

-- Jane Roberts: (901) 529-2512

Via the commerical appeal