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A Parent’s

This mother of three has big dreams for Avalon’s kids.

CommitmentPhoto by Caroline Voagen Nelson

A Parent’s

This mother of three has big dreams for Avalon’s kids.

There was a time in Stephanie Houston’s life when she stopped watching the news. It’s not because she was too busy—though she’s hardly the type to have time on her hands. And it’s not because she didn’t care. It’s because she was pregnant.“Every evening there was something about a kid on the news who got caught up in a gang, or about someone abusing a child—I couldn’t watch,” she says. At that point, her responsibility sunk in: “I needed to be an involved parent; I needed to be there, to protect them, to make sure they got a good education.”

For 11 years, Stephanie and her husband, Theodis Jr., have been doing exactly that for Korbin, 11, Theodis III, 9, and Sheridan, 8. The children have attended Chicago International Avalon since its opening in 2005; many days, so has Stephanie.

In addition to serving as Avalon’s parent representative to the Chicago International parent advisory board (where Korbin is the student representative), she’s worked with the Illinois Network of Charter Schools to lobby for more support in Springfield, as a Girl Scout leader, and in the classroom helping with various projects and field trips.

It’s a quality her youngest child can’t quite fully appreciate. At a recent all-school roller skating party, Stephanie took on organizing the crowds of kids filing into the building, eager to trade sneakers for wheels and break for the rink. After Stephanie performed some verbal crowd control, Sheridan approached her mother: “Why do you always have to talk to my friends?” she demanded. Stephanie laughs as she tells the story. “‘This is not really about

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talking to your friends, but helping the entire school. Don’t worry about it,’ I said. And then Sheridan looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, but you always help.’”

Much more appreciative is Anthony Chalmers, Avalon’s school director, who praises Stephanie as one of his most involved parents. “She’s very open with her resources and very willing to share ideas that may better the school and the quality of school culture,” he says. He recounts a time he came down to the wire finding one more after-school program; Stephanie checked her resources and found a contact at the U.S. Tennis Association. Now, Avalon offers an after-school tennis program—a rare opportunity for a city school.

Stephanie’s dedication to education began long before she had children of her own. As a young girl growing up on Chicago’s North Side, she read daily. “My mom worked nights—she had to be at work every single night at 10 o’clock,” Stephanie says. “But I remember every night she pounded phonics and word recognition. ‘You’ve gotta read every day,’ she’d say. ‘If I send you to the store, you’ve gotta be able to read the street signs and the grocery list—you’ve gotta read every day.’ I think it was ingrained in me that way.”

In high school, Stephanie relied on the confidence learned at home to move past the subtle racism she encountered at her alma mater, Lincoln Park High School. “I found that minority students were not always encouraged to the extent that other students were. Those of us who had parents to encourage us didn’t necessarily see it, but I see it when I look back.” She recalls a counselor who called her to his office at the end of her sophomore year, worried about her course load: a lot of math, science and foreign language, but no typing class so she could find a job once she graduated. “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to college. And after that, I won’t need typing—the people who work for me will.’”

True to her word, Stephanie went on to Eastern Illinois University,

in Charleston, and majored in community health sciences. Soon afterward, she took a job with the Chicago Department of Public Health, where she began as a health educator teaching schools and communities about the dangers of lead poisoning. In her 16-year career, she’s received five promotions.

Today, she heads the city’s HIV primary-care program: a $1.5 million budget and a staff of 10 to cover one of the largest jurisdictions in the country. Her department serves Chicago’s most needy patients, offering costly medical, nutritional, and psychological care to those without the funds to afford it.

Throughout her successes, Stephanie has championed higher educa-tion. Now, she intends to encourage it for each student at Avalon by developing partnerships with colleges and universities. “We have to get our kids focused on college in grade school,” she says.

She credits Avalon’s teachers and administrators with supporting her ambitions through their attention to each individual student. “They’re so dedicated, so skilled and knowledgeable,” Stephanie says. “They take time to address the issues of each child and to find out how each child learns.”

And they strengthen the values Stephanie and her husband teach at home: “I teach them that their community, their neighborhood, is only as good as they are, and that they have to be involved,” she says. “Avalon reinforces that by concentrating on building capacity as a community, helping each other learn.”

As they continue to succeed, Stephanie may be able to switch on the news one night and find her world a more pleasant place to live. In the meantime, she’ll continue to work at it.

“I’ve found, after having three toddlers at once, you don’t have to think about what needs to be done in terms of magnitude,” she says. “You just do it ‘cause it needs to be done.”

“ I teach them that their community, their neighborhood, is only as good as they are, and that they have to be involved,” she says. “Avalon reinforces that by concentrating on building capacity as a community, helping each other learn.”

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Stephanie and her three children, Theodis III, 9; Korbin, 11; and Sheridan, 8.

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