Dr. Damaris White

Students at Pierre Laclede Junior Career Academy can sometimes hear gunshots from their classrooms.
“It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen,” said Dr. DaMaris White, who is currently in her fifth year as principal at Laclede. “Some of our students are desensitized by that just because they live in an area where they hear a lot of gun violence and they’re exposed to that, so for some it’s not alarming. Sometimes it’s more alarming for the adults than it is for the children.¨
Located on the edge of what some call the ‘Hayden Triangle,’ an area designated by the Saint Louis police chief as the highest crime neighborhood in St. Louis, and just two and a half miles from Natural Bridge Avenue, which was named 2015’s Most Dangerous Street in America by The Guardian, Laclede has become a safe haven for its scholars.
“I call them glows and grows. [Reading and math] are our glows and our grows are simply our children, what happens outside of the classroom, outside the school that has nothing to actually do with the child,” White said.
Along with fellow educators and staff members at Laclede, White is working to make Laclede a place where all children feel safe. She uses empowerment as a tool to give her students a space to talk about what it feels like to be them. Several afternoons a week, Laclede partners with Washington University in St.Louis to bring in a therapist. Students are given a chance to talk with the therapist about anything on their mind. White noted that the subject of the conversation doesn’t have to be trauma.
“We don’t look at all our children and always think, ‘Oh, it’s just a traumatic environment,’” White said. “Not all of our children experience trauma.”
To assist students who are coming to school with trauma, White believes in the importance of relationships between educators and students. This involves making sure every student knows they are loved and supported at school. White also implements an open door policy to help build relationships.
While White and her colleagues at Laclede strive to shelter their students from the violence, they are not able to control what the students experience outside of school; however, they still take measures to keep their students safe after school.
“We’re going to trunk or treat. So, hopefully, that will derail the students from going out trick or treating, just to keep them safe,” White said.
White also discussed the Open Court basketball program at Laclede. Near the end of the school day, older students are given the chance to play basketball in the gym. This program isn’t just a way for students to shoot the ball around or run out some energy, though. It is also an effort to keep them out of parks after school.
As an educator who gets to interact with the children who attend Laclede, White said that people need to remember that the children exist.
In fact, she wishes that we all would talk about healing more.
“When we don’t heal as a people, be it black or white, violence continues. Hate continues when we don’t heal as a people”.