‘Come as you are’ – Henrico Schools’ Becoming Kings program creates a brotherhood for high school boys looking to belong

In the Varina High School library, about a dozen high school boys gathered in a circle around four firefighters in plain clothes, talking about everything from future careers to saving up for college to high school friendships.

“As a kid, honestly, I had no clue that there were Black firefighters,” said Ashanti Clarke, now a Henrico Fire lieutenant. “I never looked up at the trucks and thought you could see people like me.”

Then, Travis Stokes, a Richmond Fire captain, decided to brooch a more serious topic.

“I’m going to dig a little bit deeper, how many of y’all are from a single parent household?”

Several students slowly raised their hands.

“I came from a single parent household, and sometimes you feel that you have to be the man of the house,” he said. “And you have friends you’re close with who have two parents at home while things may be a little bit different for you. But even if you do come from a single parent household, I’m here to tell you that you can still achieve anything that you want to achieve.”

The gathering was part of a weekly meeting of Varina's "Becoming Kings" program, a club designed specifically for high school boys with an emphasis on building community, embracing identity, and bolstering self-confidence. The club of about 20 to 30 boys meets weekly at the school, as does another club at Highland Springs High school.

Henrico Schools launched the program in 2022 after seeing both local and national trends that high school-aged boys, particularly Black high school boys, often lacked spaces of belonging and opportunities for leadership. And that both nationally and locally, there were significantly less male teachers in schools that boys could look up to as role models.

The group meets weekly with male school-based staff to have conversations on applying for college, managing stress, dealing with stereotypes, making real friends, and anything else that may be on their minds. About once a month, the club also hosts guest speakers from the community.

'Next-level' learning

Carey Williams, a junior at Varina who joined Becoming Kings this school year, said the club aims to create a brotherhood where members listen to each other and lift each other up, spreading positivity to the whole school environment.

“It’s still pretty early coming in as a club, but I think we’re really making a positive impact on people that join, and not just the people that join, but our school in total,” he said. “Everybody’s learning new things every single day they come into the library, just learning how to speak out for themselves, being in different leadership positions, doing team activities, and bonding and just getting ready for the next level.”

Traditionally, many high school-aged boys find community and confidence through sports and athletics – but what about those who are not on a sports team or have not yet found a group or organization they connect with?

HCPS Chief of Equity, Diversity and Opportunity Tiffany Lewis hopes Becoming Kings reaches those students who may be going to school and walking through adolescence on autopilot, who feel that they lack a full sense of identity and are still looking for a community.

“Our male students, our Black male students, so many of them who are student athletes have found those places of belonging. But we want to ensure that all our students, no matter how they show up or what their interests are, have an opportunity to find that place of belonging,” Lewis said. “A lot of our focal points are for those students who may attend school regularly, but may not already belong to a particular club or organization, to find that sense of community.”

The main goal of the program is to provide an open space for boys to show up as their authentic selves, Lewis said, rather than what they think they have to be or should be. The group is full of students with many different interests – some are student athletes, some are into acting, some want to be lawyers or doctors, some want to go to trade school – and many are still figuring it all out.

“So much of what our students face is almost like a preconceived notion of how they are supposed to be based on a particular demographic,” Lewis said. “And this allows them to be proud of who they are, but also to understand that who they are is still being defined. That there isn’t a prescribed notion of how they have to be.”

Exploring 'what it means to be themselves'

Williams sees the struggle to belong firsthand in other students at Varina but also has seen how creating new spaces, separate from traditional clubs and sports, can allow a school to be “diverse in its own right.”

“I think one of the hard things is some people try to fit in with other groups that are really just not made for them,” he said. “And I feel like this program, it welcomes everybody and it lets everybody have a space to talk. It lets everybody feel secure within each other.”

The program is open to boys of all races and ethnicities, Lewis said, and not deliberately designed to focus on Black male students. But because both Varina and Highland Springs have student bodies that are 75% Black, the clubs at those schools focus a lot on the intersections of Black male identity and that particular experience.

“Most of our students are Black males, and that is part of their experience,” she said. “So we explore different identities and manhood, Black manhood, but also just what it means to be themselves.”

For Davon Cosby, a junior in Varina’s Becoming Kings, that focus on the Black male identity was what inspired him to keep coming to the program. He admitted that he initially joined because he heard the group had gone rock climbing, but when he sat in on his first meeting – a conversation about the stereotypes surrounding Black men and boys – he realized how much their discussions resonated with him.

“I think it was my teacher that said, ‘Hey you should go to the library for Becoming Kings,’ and I was like, ‘All right fine, I mean for field trips I guess,’” Cosby said. “But then I went in there and sat in there through a lesson and I was like, ‘Man, these guys are really trying to do something,’” Cosby said. “And I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to like it here. I’m going to come more and more and see what they’re really trying to do.’”

Lewis also wants Becoming Kings to be a sort of “rite of passage” for the young men who join. Every spring at the end of the school year, both clubs from Varina and Highland Springs come together for a “crowning ceremony” – a graduation-type event celebrating their year-long participation in the program – where they are literally crowned and hear speeches from community leaders.

Cosby, who said he was more shy and withdrawn when he had first joined the group, even gave a speech in front of everyone at last year’s ceremony, speaking on how the club had impacted him and his self-confidence.

“I have witnessed students literally blossom, and I don’t mean that lightly,” said Lewis. “There is an assured confidence that I’ve seen happen. . . and when they are able to greet people at a community event at the door and shake that person’s hand and look them in the eye, it means something.”

Lewis hopes to expand Becoming Kings to more schools in Henrico, possibly Henrico High and Douglas S. Freeman High, during the next few years. Depending on the demographics of each school, the program may look a little different in each building, she said. She also hopes to establish a “Becoming Queens” program with a similar focus on boosting confidence and leadership, this time for high school-aged girls.

But the main mission of the program will stay the same, Lewis said: establishing a confidence and self-assuredness in high-schoolers who may lack a solid footing for their identity.

“[This program] gives them onus. It creates a sense of confidence so that they’re able to go into their classrooms, into other social groups, and have a concept of who they are,” she said. “And it’s not just predicated on this loose confidence that’s just kind of basic cordiality, but it’s really based in a competence that they’ve been able to master something.”

Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.