Before Winter Shields came into this world, she had a steep climb to success. When she was pregnant with Winter, her mom Nastassja was told that the baby may be born with Down’s or have some other delay in development.
It turned out that the doctors were wrong about this; however, when she was only 6-months-old, Winter had to have her left kidney removed.
At the age of two, her dad ended up in prison so her mom raised her on her own for more than a decade.
Plenty of Challenges for Winter, but She’s on a very Good Path
Despite all of the challenges that life had planned for Winter, she’s now a senior at the Crosstown High School in Memphis and is also in the top 20 graduates. She had four years of straight As and is currently on her way to college.
Her achievements seem to be a part of a major trend in Memphis.
In the past four years, black girls are reported to have graduated from high school at a higher rate than any other demographic group.
This is a reversal of traditional academic disparities where black students tend to be behind their white peers in terms of academic achievements.
A great contributing factor to this pivotal change is the support and attention from teachers.
The graduates and soon-to-be graduates agree that this trend is motivated by the girls’ personal determination to advance in spite of issues like sexism and racism, something black girls often deal with.
It’s not easy to say exactly what is the reason for the high graduation rates of black girls in Memphis since their academic achievements seem to be understudied when compared to other demographics.
According to the US Department of Education, they don’t gather high school graduation data disaggregated by sex and race, although a table by the NCES offers graduation data for the US and Tennessee by ethnicity/race.
Generally speaking, girls seem to graduate at higher rates from high school than boys.
I’m Where I Am Thanks to the Powerful Women in my Life, Said Winter
According to Shields, she’s gotten where she is thanks to the powerful female role models in her life. The impressive Winter has been accepted into 30 colleges, including the pharmacy program at the University of Mississippi.
She’s proud because she’s aware of how much this means to her mother. She loves seeing her happy and excited, even more than she is. However, Winter isn’t yet clear on where she’ll go to college or what will be her field of focus.
She’ll maybe choose something in the medical field such as pharmacy. Regardless of what her final decision is, she says that she wants to be a leader and to be a continuation of the other strong black women in her life.
Her grandma is a director of the drug rehabilitation program at the Salvation Army whereas her mom has been a single parent for most of her life until her dad got out of prison when she was in eighth grade.
Interestingly, in the Memphis-Shelby County Schools, around 80 percent of teachers are women and half of them are black.
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