Christopher Prince and Porschae Chitmon-Turner have a message for minority students: Expect more of yourself than the world does, and you can be successful.

The two Harrison High School seniors spoke to about 400 people Saturday at the Educating Children of Color Summit at Colorado College.

“I figured it was harder to follow the stereotypes than to just be me,” said Chitmon-Turner, who will attend Colorado College in the fall.

She and Prince know what the statistics show. As black teens, they’re more likely to drop out of school and end up behind bars than their white counterparts.

And drop-outs are more likely to be unemployed or make far less money than college graduates. Other speakers at Saturday’s event provided the grim statistics.

But with graduation a few weeks away, they also know that blacks, Latinos and American Indians can beat those statistics, and that was the message they shared.

“I have been on the verge of going down the wrong path,” said Prince, who has survived a drive-by shooting and an auto accident. “My grades were not so good, some of my family wasn’t too supportive, things like that.

“But I made the choice to take another road. What made me change was that I didn’t want to be like some of those around me.”

Prince is a commander of the Air Force Junior ROTC program at Harrison, is involved in student government and is an athletic trainer. He’s also involved in several community organizations.

Although he isn’t sure what he’ll do immediately after graduating this spring, he said he expects to go to college and serve in the military.

Chitmon-Turner said stereotypes discourage minorities, and some come to believe they can’t do any better.

 “Some people think, If I don’t act black, then I’m ‘white,’ but that’s not true,” she said. “You can be different from what people expect” and honor your culture.

Prince and Chitmon-Turner were among about 150 students, mostly from southern Colorado, who attended the summit, along with parents, educators and other community members.

Most of the students learned about a different measure of color during a “Real Colors” workshop put on by Lisa Miller, an Adams County probation officer. She helped them identify their temperament so they could understand what motivates them and why they sometimes react to situation at school or work the way they do.

“I found out about some of my strong points and my weak points and how I can better balance that,” said Jerald Charley, a sophomore at Sierra High School who was assisting at the summit.

Parents, meanwhile, were learning how to talk to their teens, and educators were learning about teaching diverse groups of students.

Jennifer Holladay, who previously worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center and as director of its Teaching Tolerance and Binta Cross, a therapist at Highline Academy charter school in Denver, talked about how positive behavior recognition helps reduce discipline problems in schools.

Schools are finding that zero-tolerance policies aren’t solving problems but are leading to skyrocketing numbers of suspensions and expulsions, Holladay said.

“Research indicates that suspension doesn’t change behavior,” she said. “It doesn’t improve the school climate.”Students who are suspended, though, are more likely to drop out of school and end up in the criminal justice system, she said.

She also called on schools to closely examine why students are being disciplined. Nationally, white students are most likely to be disciplined for smoking, vandalism, obscene language or leaving school without permission, she said.

Black and Latino students are more likely to be disciplined for showing disrespect, making excessive noise and loitering, which are much more subjective infractions, she said.

“The truth is we’re different,” Holladay said. “Sometimes the answer is to be color-conscious, not color- blind.”

—Call the writer at 636-0251.

Coming Up5th annual Culturally  Resposnve Teaching, Leadership and Counseling Symposium will be Saturday at UCCS. Click here for more information.

Harrison High School senior Christopher Prince spoke during the Educating Children of Color Summit at Colorado College Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. Photo by The Gazette, Christian Murdock

Harrison High School senior Porschae Chitmon-Turner listens during a workshop Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010, the Educating Children of Color Summit at Colorado College. Chitmon-Turner was one of the guest speakers earlier in the day. Photo by The Gazette, Christian Murdock

Students participate in a team building exercise during a workshop Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010, at the Educating Children of Color Summit at Colorado College. Photo by The Gazette, Christian Murdock