Outside Help

By Denise Kersten Wills

When Susie Kay left her job as a Capitol Hill aide in the late 1980s, got an emergency certification, and wound up teaching history and government at Howard D. Woodson Senior High, a poor, nearly all-African American school in Washington, D.C., she thought she could make a difference. And she did, to a point. Up against racial obstacles and the city’s surging crack epidemic—she attended 10 students’ funerals in her first year—Kay made significant headway with the initially wary kids in her classroom. But no matter how bright they were, college was financially out of the question, something she felt she had to change.

That’s why she started Hoop Dreams, a foundation named for, but otherwise unconnected to, the 1994 documentary about two boys’ dashed dreams to escape the ghetto with basketball scholarships.

Starting in 1996, Kay used her Capitol Hill connections to organize an annual basketball tournament: her students versus U.S. senators, Hill staffers, and others to raise money for scholarships. Just as important, she set up SAT-prep tutoring, internships, and paired community-leader mentors with her students to teach them all-important “soft skills.”