President Obama announced a new initiative Thursday to help low-income students attend college. In his speech, Obama mentioned Lawrence Harris, a University of Georgia graduate who’s now a college advisor at Clarke Central High School.
In case the out-of-synch sound is making you nauseous, here’s the text:
I was telling Michelle, when I was taking the SAT I just barely remembered to bring a pencil. I mean, that’s how much preparation I did. (Laughter.) But the truth of the matter is, is that we don’t have a level playing field when it comes to so-called standardized tests. So we’ve got a young man here today named Lawrence Harris who knows this better than most. Lawrence went to the University of Georgia, and like a lot of first-generation college students it wasn’t easy for him. He had to take remedial classes. He had to work two part-time jobs to make ends meet. At one point, he had to leave school for a year while he helped support his mom and his baby brother. Those are the kinds of just day-to-day challenges that a lot of these young people with enormous talent are having to overcome. Now, he stuck with it. He graduated.
But now he’s giving back. He’s made it his mission to help other young people like him graduate, as a college advisor at Clarke Central High School in Athens, Georgia. And today the National College Advising Corps, the program that placed Lawrence in Clarke Central, is announcing plans to add 129 more advisors who will serve more than 80,000 students over the next three years.
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