The Southsider Voice
Visit us at these places!
  • Home
  • News
    • Top Stories
    • Sports
    • Car Nutz
    • Stilley Goes Trackside
    • Southside Deaths
    • Personal Recollections
    • Reminiscing
  • About the Voice
  • Advertising
  • Contact
  • Newspaper Archive
  • Classifieds

Life becomes a bit easier for student

3/15/2019

0 Comments

 

Perry Township School Mentors Guide to a Bright Future 

Picture
Anthony Rains
Picture
SUBMITTED PHOTO Anthony Rains with his late father.
By Tabatha Fitzgerald
Southsider Voice intern

Sometimes, life isn’t easy. Sometimes, it’s hard to find a way out. Sometimes, home doesn’t feel like home. One Southport High School sophomore knows this better than anyone. They lost everything. When he was only 6, his parents got divorced. He then lived with his grandmother and father but had to sleep on the floor.

His father died when he was only 12. After that, he lived with his mother, but she had started doing drugs again. That would have been sophomore Anthony Rains’ continued reality if it weren’t for one of his middle school teachers and one fateful afternoon in the 8th grade.

“I would have done what it would have taken to get him out of that situation,” Rains’ 8th-grade English teacher Natasha Bynum said, thinking back on Rains’ life at that time. Bynum had Rains for English. There came a point, if Rains did not have transportation to Southport Middle School (SMS), he would have to switch schools. Bynum did not want to lose him as a student, so she worked with SMS guidance counselor Forrest Miller to make it possible for her to take him back and forth from school.

The more time Bynum spent with Rains taking him to and from school, the more she felt like he was a part of her family.

“Anthony has a very special place in my heart,” Bynum said. One afternoon during the car ride home, Child Protective Services (CPS) was called due to an incident at Rains’ mother’s house. CPS arrived shortly after the call and placed Rains into a foster home with a couple he had previously met. He has been with the same foster family ever since that day and plans to be adopted this month by the same couple.

“That’s what (my foster family has) been working towards the whole time,” Rains said. “It’s a long process.” Before he started talking to Bynum and before he was placed with his foster parents, Rains needed someone to talk to, someone to help him do better, and he says Miller just happened to be that person. Rains approached Miller first and asked for help. He continued to talk to Miller and started to look up to him as a father figure.

To this day, they continue to talk and meet at least once a week, according to Miller. “To somebody on the outside, it probably would look like a mentoring role,” Miller said. “To Anthony, I would say it looks more like a father-figure role.”

Assistant principal Andrew Ashcraft originally worked at SMS but then transitioned to the high school. Ashcraft first met Rains at the middle school but doesn’t feel that had a great impact on him until high school. Ashcraft feels as if he is just one of Rains’ “guardrails.”

A person’s guardrail, as Ashcraft describes, is someone who helps keep them on the right track. Ashcraft has Rains’ father’s death date marked on his calendar so that he can make sure to talk to him on that day. Rains created a presentation that he shares with freshmen about his struggles and how he has overcome them. Ashcraft had the chance to sit in on one of these and says that Rains’ presentation allowed students to open up about their own personal struggles.

​“I think that so many of our students don’t know that they’re in the same spot,” Ashcraft said. “Different mud, same spot.” Rains is currently trying to improve his grades and his behavior. He plans to go to college and one day become a barber. (Note: Tabatha Fitzgerald is a reporter for The Journal Rewired, Southhport High school.)
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    Arts & Entertainment
    Lead Story
    Sports: 500
    Sports: Basketball
    Sports: Track

    RSS Feed

 DROP OFF: The Toy Drop 6025 Madison Ave., Suite D
Indianapolis, IN  46227  |  317-781-0023
MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Box 17187, Indianapolis, IN 46217

[email protected] | [email protected]
Website by IndyTeleData, Inc.