GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — From the front steps of his house in southeast Grand Rapids, Marcus Brown and his mentor, Zach Harris, catch up. Today's topic is a common one: basketball.
Brown, who finished his fourth-grade year at Campus Elementary on Thursday, plans on playing more basketball in the summer. His favorite team? The Golden State Warriors. His favorite player? Steph Curry, of course.
"If you want to be a jump shooter, you've got to shoot jump shots every day," Harris said to Brown, both sitting in the late-spring sun.
For the past several months, the two have met multiple times per week — typically after school for 20 minutes — as part of a mentoring program at both Campus Elementary and Alger Middle School. The schools, Harris says, pick students for the program and pair them each with an adult, a "shining star."
"My passion is simply to save one kid at a time," Harris said in a previous interview with FOX 17. "I'm hoping we could curb some of the violence that's happening in our community."
Before Brown began spending time with Harris, he says he got suspended for "hitting people and jumping people," and didn't pay attention in class.
In between shared bags of chips (Cheddar Jalapeño Cheetos are his favorite) and games of Garbage, though, Brown learned from Harris.
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"We talk about expectations in the classroom, not getting distracted and staying on task," Brown said. "If I didn't stop [getting suspended], I wouldn't have been able to play sports or anything."
Bliss Bowman, a now-former sixth grader at Alger Middle School, has a similar story.
"You can take the bad that you did and turn that bad into good," said Bowman, whose "bad" included playing games on his Chromebook in class and "purposely" kicking someone at recess.
"To the person I did that to," Bowman said, "I'm really sorry."
During that time in where he was "not killing it at all" in the fifth grade, Bowman's mom, Asia Kendall, brought her former mentor — a man named Scott — into her son's life.
"Do you want to be stuck? Do you want to be stagnant?" Kendall said, recalling a conversation with Bliss. "Or do you want to be a leader?"
"From that moment forward," she said, "it was greatness."
The markers of change can be seen on the family's living room wall: Certificates dignifying Bowman as an honors student and a new member of the National Honor Society.
"I adore Scott a lot," Bowman said. "He does so much incredible things for me that I really... I don't even think that I deserve."
Both Bowman and Brown grew up— and are growing still— without their dads.
"When the odds are against you, especially being young, Black and in America, it's tough," Kendall said.
Still, there's family in each of their corners.
"Life is about to start lifing," said De'Asia Brown, Marcus's aunt. "I need [him] to be ready for it, nephew; I need [him] to be ready."
The mentors who've again and again committed themselves to being present in their mentees' lives are trying to make greatness a guarantee.
"Deep down, a lot of people know that they are way better than the person they're being right now," Bowman said. "If it takes yourself or other people, then do what you have to do to bring it out."
EDITOR'S NOTE: To contact Zach Harris, community outreach director at Camp Roger, for questions about mentorship, email him at zach@camproger.org.