At his mother’s home, Justin Glenn often spent hours playing video games. “She doesn’t seem to care how I do in school,” Justin says.
Family members — including his mother — hardly looked up from their card game as 18-year-old Justin, clothes in hand, left his mother’s Clearwater house in February. “I thought my mom would break down and ask me not to leave, but she didn’t,” Justin says. “She just kept playing cards.” Justin calls his mom regularly and visits often. “We still love one another,” he says.
The night he moved out of his mother’s house, Justin hugs his longtime girlfriend, Jessica Riley, in his room at her family’s home. “She gives me strength,” Justin says. “I love her and her family.”
On the street corners of his Clearwater neighborhood, young men sell drugs, curse women and shout insults at each other.
His father is in prison. Until recently, he lived with his mother.
Justin Glenn, 18, has lived in four different houses since he was 10.
None of them, he says, felt like homes.
Among such obstacles, Justin grows.
He says he has never sold or used drugs, never been arrested or aimlessly haunted street corners. He chooses instead to spend his time working and playing basketball and football at Dunedin High School, where he is a top athlete.
"Sports have kept me out of trouble," Justin says.
But his reliance on sports may have helped him fall into what educators call the achievement gap, the academic chasm that separates many black students from their white counterparts.
Research indicates the achievement gap feeds on poverty, absent fathers and an undue emphasis on entertainment and sports.
"My mother never asks to see my report card. She doesn't seem to care how I do in school," says Justin, whose low grade point average and 520 score on the SAT may cost him college athletic scholarships.
Three months ago, while family members played cards at a kitchen table, Justin decided to move out of his mother's house and into the home of his girlfriend's family.
"It hurt to see him leave. But he's 18 and it was his decision," says Justin's mom, Lorraine Moody, 41. "I didn't want him to go. He can always come back if he wants to. I miss my baby."
Justin moved into the home of Debbie and Kevin Riley, the parents of Jessica Riley, his 18-year-old girlfriend. He has raised his grade point average to 2.8, is studying to retake the SAT and will graduate from Dunedin High on Wednesday. "Good things are going to start happening for me now," he says. "I have a home and people around me who care. I won't fail. Watch me grow, my man. Watch me grow."
