For years, high school homecoming has been celebrated across the country as a welcome back to classes with a home football game and a dance where the king and queen are crowned.

This year, instead of the popular cheerleader and talented quarterback becoming homecoming king and queen, classmates broke through stereotypes when electing their new rulers.

At many schools, crowning the court has become about showcasing great character, celebrating inclusivity and diversity, and creating change.

Recent social media posts and photos introduced us to this year’s inspiring lineup of kings and queens and the people who voted them in: The football player who traded her helmet for a tiara. A queen who relinquished her title to a classmate who had just lost her mother to cancer. The king who spreads joy to his classmates every day of the week. 

With homecoming season coming to an end, here’s a roundup of 2021’s high school trailblazers:

In Mississippi, Forrest County Agricultural High School’s homecoming went viral after a grand act of kindness and selflessness.

Moments after being crowned, Nyla Covington turned around and placed it on a nominee who had just lost her mother to cancer.

Meanwhile, in the same state, Long Beach high school elected a athlete: Ashton Rupert can now add homecoming queen to her list of volleyball, softball, soccer and football accolades.

In Texas, Clements High School’s basketball team congratulated varsity football player Allison Wang for “Girl power at its finest!” on her new royal title. 

At Westminster high school in California, yet another football player, Jordan Gavlin, was named homecoming queen.

Classmates at Romeo High School in Detroit broke the mold when they voted to make Carson Krawczyk, a student with autism, homecoming king. The “always happy” teen has made a positive impact on many lives, so it was “their turn to make an impact on his,” students said. 

In Orlando, Florida, history was made when Evan Bialosuknia was elected her high school’s first transgender homecoming queen.

In another first, Zachary Willmore broke barriers at his school in Missouri this October when he was named queen. “It was an honor to be on the homecoming court in the first place, but you guys have honestly made that one of the happiest nights in my life,” Willmore wrote on .

At a Passaic County Technical Institute in New Jersey, Zoe Nelson wanted to “expand the school’s view of gender by running for the title of king as a female,” But it wasn’t without controversy. Shortly after she won, the administration expanded the contest to include two boys as kings, and students subsequently protestested the school’s decision.

On Fridays, Mariela Garcia listens with earbuds as classes from Eastwood Academy in Houston stream in through Microsoft Teams.

But she also keeps an eye on business.

When her mother lost her job at an adoption agency at the start of the pandemic, the senior began thinking of ways to contribute — and cover her college application fees. Each week, she spends three days shopping and prepping ingredients for her Mexican pastry business, Hecho con Amor, or Made with Love. To get ready for her weekly shift at a farmer’s market, she folds empanada dough over apple, pumpkin and cheesecake filling while signed into virtual classes.

“I’m listening to the teacher, but I’m also getting DMs on my Instagram — ‘Hey, what are your flavors?’” said Garcia. “That’s potential business, and I would hate to lose any customers.”

For many teens, a year of the coronavirus has meant not only the loss of in-person learning and time with friends, but added shifts at convenience stores and retail shops to help keep their families afloat during the recession. As kids adapt, many of their teachers and schools are improvising as well, extending deadlines and creating new ways to stay in touch. The huge workload is leaving many students stressed out, and some teachers worry they’re in danger of becoming a statistic: the estimated 1 out of 20 teens who drop out of high school each year, according to .

Jay Novelo, a dean at Tyee High School, near Seattle, was hired to handle student discipline. But with schools closed, his main job is keeping tabs on students and encouraging them to not give up on school.

For most, it’s a tough choice. “Do I want to … survive school or survive life?” Novelo said. “I can’t blame the students — a lot of them choose work.”

One of the 14 students he checks in on weekly is Swin Cobón Sanchez, who bounces between school and two jobs. By day, he cleans houses with his immigrant parents; at night, he mops, vacuums and empties trash at a downtown Seattle medical clinic — a second job he picked up in part to help pay the family’s bills.

That doesn’t leave a lot of room in the day for remote learning, but he makes time for weekly check-ins with Novelo. They chat about soccer, Sanchez’s 2017 Chevy Silverado and the extra class he’s taking to hit the 24 credits he needs to graduate this year.

“I like it, because I know somebody is staying on me,” Sanchez said.

Teens who have joined the workforce hail from families that are predominantly Hispanic and Black, front-line workers and first-generation immigrants who have borne the brunt of the job loss and brought on by the pandemic, teachers and counselors said. , four in 10 children live in families that have struggled to cover basic expenses during the past year. But the relief bill President Joe Biden signed last week aims to fill some of those gaps, providing most families up to $300 per week for each child through the end of 2021.

Some students, like Garcia, are thriving under the flexibility afforded by the pandemic: Despite the job, she’s earning A’s and B’s. But the lifestyle is not for everyone.

“There are definitely some kids who are having issues around time management,” said Joshua Weintraub, the director of college and career success at Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland, California. ‘There aren’t enough hours in the day. They’re prescribing themselves caffeine.”

Yasmine Esquivel, a senior at Lighthouse, works up to 30 hours a week at Gap, helping her mom with groceries because she saw “how tight money was.”

“I get stressed and I know my mom can see it,” she said. “She sometimes tells me to leave my job to focus on school.”

‘The lifeline our students needed’

Balancing work and academics is harder in districts where schools have reopened. When in-person classes resumed at Oak Ridge High School in Orlando, Florida, in August, only about 500 of the school’s 2,600 students returned.

Jenevieve Jackson, who teaches digital photo production, still can’t get in touch with who are supposed to be in her classes. Administrators, she said, have been “relentless in trying to find out what is going on with these kids.”

She suspects a lot of them supervise younger siblings or went back to jobs at places like SeaWorld and Universal Studios when the parks reopened.

Jackson drove to students’ houses in September to loan her remaining classroom cameras to those without cell phones so they could work on projects. And she gave them her own version of a “pandemic stimulus.”

“I said, ‘Your grades suck. Here’s 150 points,’” she said.

Teens don’t always work traditional jobs. Some young Black men in Atlanta have been surviving the pandemic as “” peddling cold drinks to motorists at freeway off-ramps. Javon Solomon, a ninth grader at Booker T. Washington High School, was one of them.

“My mom was working in the mall. She was released from her job,” Solomon said. “We didn’t have enough money or the resources we needed.”

He could pocket $120 a day selling water, but didn’t always feel safe. Many residents consider the young entrepreneurs a nuisance. Fights have broken out between kids competing for street corners and some have gotten arrested.

C.J. Stewart, a former outfielder for the Chicago Cubs, gave Solomon an alternative — earn $25 an hour as a coaching “ambassador” working with young Little Leaguers, often from affluent white families.

“If you’re not giving Black teenage boys an opportunity to make money, you’re not really helping them,” Stewart said. His youth baseball nonprofit — Launch Expose Advise Direct, or LEAD — connects families with resources for food, clothing, housing and jobs. Some of them, he said, would be homeless if their sons weren’t in the program.

Solomon has the potential to earn over $1,000 a month with private clients and group lessons, in exchange for maintaining good grades, attendance and behavior. Angela Coaxum-Young, principal at Washington High, called LEAD “the lifeline some of our students needed to stay in the game of life.” When schools were closed, Stewart was often her only means of communicating with students because the “family was without a phone or had abruptly moved.”

Keeping up with those transitions in students’ lives is why the Highline Public Schools near Seattle assigned staff members like Novelo at Tyee to stay in contact with students. Superintendent Susan Enfield called it “the most important thing that we do.”

Novelo still has students he can’t reach because of outdated phone numbers and addresses. Students are supposed to let schools know if they’re working, but he discovered many of them hadn’t bothered. In addition to weekly Zoom meetings or phone calls to 14 students, he makes socially distant home visits and even delivered an internet hotspot to a student working at Jiffy Lube. The teen offered him a free oil change in return.

If school resumes this semester, Sanchez said he’ll give up his second job cleaning the clinic at night. But he gets upset when his parents talk of exhaustion, aches and pains. He wants to keep helping with the bills. With Sanchez, they can clean more houses.

“My parents are getting older,” he said. “I want to leave them in a safe place.”

This is one installment of a special series published in partnership with The Guardian: ‘ See additional coverage of the past year for students and schools: ‘12 Million Students Still Lack Reliable Internet‘ and ‘Families Face Steep Truancy Fines, Contentious Court Battles As Pandemic Creates School Attendance Barriers.’

Lead Image: Swin CobĂłn Sanchez cleans a medical clinic in downtown Seattle in the evenings, a second job he picked up last summer. (University of Washington Medicine Primary Care at Belltown)

The , pioneered by Geoffrey Canada in NYC’s Harlem neighborhood, has inspired replications all over the country, especially in the form of promise neighborhoods, an initiative triumphed by the Obama Administration, but , “Some promise neighborhoods have made meaningful progress, plenty haven’t and any urgent effort to truly replicate his program has dropped off the map.”

What’s the secret to the successful replications of this innovation? The answer might be found in west-central Orlando, Florida. This is the story of dedicated professionals and public servants drawing inspiration from the Harlem Children’s Zone and adapting the model to make it work in Parramore, a community that resembles Harlem in some ways but also presents challenges and opportunities of its own.

Like Harlem, Parramore has a long and storied past as a site for African American culture and entrepreneurship. Early in the 20th century, prosperous black-owned businesses sprung up on the west side of Division Street (true to its name, the street divided the black community from the white), along with churches and the offices of doctors and lawyers. Duke Ellington and Ray Charles played the South Street Casino, now the . And like Harlem, Parramore has seen more than its share of poverty and violence.

Parramore, however, can’t claim all of Harlem’s assets. Being in Manhattan gives Harlem proximity, if not always access, to the gamut of industries and the job opportunities that go with them, as well as a community of philanthropists with deep pockets. The Parramore economy is dominated by the hospitality and service industries, which lend themselves to a certain level of transience. The philanthropic sector is not nearly as extensive.

Buddy Dyer, Orlando’s mayor since 2003, launched the Parramore Kids Zone, enlisting the leadership of Lisa Early, director of Families, Parks and Recreation, among others. announced, “Parramore’s transformation was nothing short of remarkable,” citing increases in academic achievement along with declines in juvenile arrest, teen pregnancy and child abuse. Credit for success of this replication is given to “real collaboration among all its varied sectors–nonprofit, government, faith, civic, education, philanthropy and corporate.”

The PKZ Baby Institute offers an Afrocentric curriculum for parents of infants and toddlers, usually in cohorts of nine or ten parents. The and other tools inform participants about healthy development. Free books (classics like Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Goodnight Moon) help them bond with their babies.

Serving a healthy dinner provides an opportunity to incorporate health and wellness lessons. Classes go on for 10 weeks, with four weeks of home visits in the middle, but the relationships and support remain in place after the graduation. The cohorts become each other’s support group and stay in touch through community baby showers and Mother’s Day celebrations. Cindy Jurie, Ph.D., Director of Research & Special Projects at Early Learning Coalition of Orange County, has been with the Baby Institute for eight years. She calls the alumni services “a booster shot” for PKZ’s core programs.

Jurie says one of the biggest challenges has been getting parents in the door. “Some of them had had bad experiences with social services in the past,” she says. The solution lies not just in marketing to them but also in building relationships with them. Flexibility is also important. Saturdays aren’t always the most convenient for this population, because not everyone works Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 jobs. “We strive to make it as hassle free as possible,” says Jurie, “while maintaining the impact.”

Anna Kinchens, PKZ Baby Institute manager, describes a couple, both 19, whose daughter was six months old when they started the program. They were both unemployed at the time, and now she’s working at Walmart and he has a job in the hospitality industry. The Baby Institute has provided “a sense of community, a sense of family” throughout the transition. “They were still dealing with teenage-type issues,” Kinchens says. When an online “friend” started threatening the mom, there was nearly an altercation in the parking lot, but Kinchens intervened and communicated with the police on her behalf.

Kinchens sees herself in a lot of the Baby Institute participants. “I was 20 when I had my first child. I was in college and working and facing a lot of the same challenges. It was difficult to always be there for her. But now I have the foundation to be a better parent for my second. I apply everything that I learn here.”

Jurie remembers a two-year-old girl who didn’t want to be left with the child-care staff. “She cried almost the whole time that first day,” she says. “The mom was so conflicted about leaving her there, but eventually she agreed to go to class, and when she returned and saw her daughter playing peacefully, we could clearly read the expression on her face: I can manage this now.”

While 70% of Harlem Children Zone’s funding comes from private supporters (including , Stanley Druckenmiller), state and federal sources constitute the majority of PKZ’s budget. “We’ve had to be creative and active in looking for grant opportunities,” says Jurie.

Hotelier Harris Rosen, who grew up poor in New York City, has been a stalwart supporter of education in Parramore. He founded the , a private, not-for-profit early-learning program, currently educating 162 Parramore children ages two through four. (At four, children are eligible for state-funded pre-K.) He also supports the Orange County Public Schools’ Academic Center for Excellence, and then he pays the college tuition of the graduates.

Jurie notes that as Parramore develops and changes, PKZ will adapt to new circumstances. University of Central Florida, the second largest university in the nation after Arizona State, is building a downtown campus. Jurie says she hopes this development will increase PKZ participants’ access to higher education and career possibilities.