Stephanie Banchero

LaShonda Brown has raised three children in Chicago's troubled Garfield Park neighborhood and dreams of working as a teacher in her local school. Ebelia Mucino spent three years as a...

Stephen Flagg boards the No. 70 bus near his Austin home early one morning with classmates and travels east along Division Street through his African-American community. The bus cruises into...

Camille Villegas is tired of the violence. She's embarrassed by the racial strife. And she's sick of the way her school has been portrayed by the news media. Instead of...

Three years ago, Margaret McGlynn and her sister walked into a home for abused and neglected children and became the first teenage mentors to work there, tutoring children, playing board...

As far back as she can remember, Katherine Carmody has loved baseball. She adores the smell of the leather glove, the thwack of the ball cracking off the bat, and...

I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to think it would be fun (or even possible) to try and pick up a guy at the same time I was learning...

At Kennedy High School, where an 18-year-old honor student was publicly beaten by classmates this week, students were so unnerved by the attack that they are asking for more security...

Ten teenagers perch on the edge of their chairs, black buzzers in hand, heads angled toward the faint voice moderating the Scholastic Bowl. "What is the angular velocity in degrees...

Rosemarie Ahern loved books. Mrs. Ahern, a school librarian, spent many a night at her kitchen table reading biographies of famous Americans, European history or any other non-fiction book she...

JOHN COBBINS loaded his four young children into the back of the Dodge minivan and nervously slipped into the passenger seat next to a woman he barely knew. Homeless and...