Raising the next generation in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx

storytelling

WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk regularly teams up with the nonprofit, Street Lab, to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City.

We recently set up shop in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx. Here's some of what we heard.

The transcript of the voices we collected have been lightly edited for clarity.

Ramon Davis: "I'm a single dad, so I have my kid, and he's 14 now. I guess I was just stronger than my spouse, and I had to take hold of my son because I know how it is. I grew up without a father. You know, we need more father programs and things to help dads. This neighborhood needs a lot more activities for the kids to play. A lot of these kids are raised up on the sidewalk, just playing on the sidewalk. And, you know, there should be a basketball court here or some seesaws or something. They need activities, and parks, and stuff to play in. They need to enjoy their childhood, opposed to being around the violence. You never know, a basketball, or football, running might change the whole kid's life."

Marlene Odusanya: "I have two grandkids. One is four, and one is nine. Both girls. My hope for them and many other children is a better life, being safe, and growing positively instead of being influenced by negative energy. That's all I want for them. Even the teenagers, you know, because truth be known, a lot of them don't make it past 17, 20 years old, you know what I'm saying? They need something to look forward to. Instead of them out here shooting and killing each other, it don't make sense to me, you know? Because I didn't grow up in that generation, you know? We had fights, said, "okay," and then five minutes later, we still friends. Now they just go out and shoot somebody, and then there's no going back once you do that. That's an end product of that. But I'm hoping, and I'm wishing. This younger generation here coming up is what I'm praying for, seriously, because all kids are good. It's what they're influenced by to make some problems."

Crystallee Caban: "I'm currently 30 years old, and I have a two-year-old, and I'm 38 weeks and two days pregnant. Before, I believed that I couldn't have children. So, I was like six years, maybe trying. When my daughter was born like, literally, I didn't believe it. I started working for the school because I thought I wasn't able to have children, so I was like, hey, this is something I want, but, like, I can't have it. I'm gonna focus on teaching children, having fun with children, you know, like, getting to know, like, what would it be like to be a mom at some point. So, that was what inspired me, really, to become a teacher. I was a teacher for five years at Sheltering Arms Family and Children's Services. But the center closed down, so I ended up leaving there. And then, I got a new job, which is not focused on children. It is home attendance services now. But it's okay. At some point, I want to get back to it. I have an associate's right now. So, the associate's allows you to work in preschools and stuff like that, but I want to probably work with children that are older, maybe like 5th or 6th grade. I think that is because they're like more independent and less drama."

Christopher Nicholson: "I currently run two daycares in the Bronx. We are called Bright Leaders, one on Grand Avenue and the other on University. This is my story of the daycare. I was a bus driver for a school company. It wasn't really my thing, but they gave me a nice promotion to become an operation manager. So, I was young, I was making $85,000, you know, but I wasn't happy. As an operation manager, I would have to be at the yard at 4:30 in the morning, and I wouldn't come home until 7 o'clock at night, so I wouldn't have that much time with my wife and my kids. I have two kids of my own; one is eight, and one is three. My passion has always been to work with kids, and enough was enough. The pandemic hit and we didn't know what we wanted to do, you know, we were all home, and my wife was like, I really want a daycare, so we just used our savings and started, and prayed for the best, and I don't regret it at all. The biggest rewards for me doing this is seeing the kids grow, seeing the kids that we have go off to school, come back and see how much they learn when they go off to school, because we, you know, we receive kids from like, they're six months even before that, so some of them are three, four, five years old now, and it's just a blessing, it's rewarding, you know like you're making an impact in the community."