‘I Can, I Will.’ This school for nontraditional students is celebrating them for Black History Month

To close out Black History Month, one Philly school is showcasing its students who might one day make history of their own.

Earlier this week, the YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School released its “I Can, I Will” social media campaign. Each day through the end of February, the school’s Instagram page, @youthbuildphl, will post pictures of students who wrote what “I Can, I Will” means to them as a way of celebrating what each student brings to the community.

YouthBuild is a school for former high school dropouts, who may enroll when they are 17 to 20 years old. No matter where the formal education ended, each YouthBuild student comes in as a senior, and graduates after just one year.

While each of the school’s roughly 250 students has an individual reason for dropping out of school, they are united by a refreshed focus on their education and aspirations for change in their lives.

“I lost a lot of people throughout my life,” said Sahjir Bullock, 20, a YouthBuild student from North Philly. He was originally on schedule to graduate in 2022 alongside his friends, but Bullock’s older brother and cousin both died within the span of several months in 2019. Their deaths weighed heavily on him, and he eventually dropped out during the 2020-21 school year, after his schoolwork suffered.

But Bullock’s mother and his little sister urged him to go back to school. He could see how important it was to his mother especially, because he had the opportunity to become the first of her children to earn a diploma.

“’You got to graduate. You got to get your diploma,’” he remembers them telling him. “You got to fulfill your dreams.”

Now that he’s enrolled at YouthBuild, Bullock plans to become an anesthesiologist one day, though a career in real estate or music production to help his friends’ music careers would be nice, too.

In his post for the “I Can, I Will” campaign, Bullock wrote:

“These last couple of years have been rough — a lot of pain. Through it all, I didn’t fold or break — stood tall and remained solid. Trials and tribulations come with both a purpose and a reward and I think I found mine! Mom, lil sis and the fallen — this [one’s] for you!”

» READ MORE: A school that saved my life

Iyana Byard, 21, from Southwest Philly, said she enrolled at YouthBuild to “reclaim my education.”

“I have many goals set for myself, and I realized I wasn’t able to attend to many of those goals without getting [my diploma],” she said.

After Byard graduates from YouthBuild, she plans to become a travel nurse. YouthBuild students also receive vocational training alongside their academic coursework, and Byard is on track to earn certification in the culinary arts. She’d like to open a catering business one day, too.

“I know that I want to get out of Philadelphia. I’ve been here all my life and now it’s to the point where I just want to travel, go around [and] see what’s out there, because I know it’s more out there,” she said.

Twenty students volunteered to take part in the “I Can, I Will” campaign, following up on a successful initial campaign last year. This year’s theme was “Shades of Melanin,” meant to exemplify pride and solidarity between young Black people in the face of the city’s gun violence.

“We wanted to really showcase these young people having the courage to come back to school after being disconnected for whatever reason [and] get their education, but also feel seen and heard,” said Khalil Bullock (no relation to Sahjir Bullock), a communications specialist who organized the YouthBuild campaign and its photoshoot.

“We’re like six months into the school year and I haven’t seen that much energy, that much laughter in a long time,” he said about the photoshoot.

Even though Sahjir Bulllock knew most of the other students taking part in the photo shoot beforehand, he sensed that they connected on a new level because of it. Something about being in front of the camera, celebrating themselves brought out waves of positive emotions for the students.

“If I could do it again, I’d do it probably a million times,” he said.

Byard felt empowered by the photo shoot experience, too, choosing an orange “Shades of Melanin” sweatshirt for her photos. Her entry for “I Can, I Will” on Instagram has yet to post, but she said it is about believing in herself, and rising above the messy circumstances of her life to this point.

“In the world we live in today, everyone is so judgmental. And I feel like [people will] look at us, like, ‘they don’t know a thing, [they’re] dropouts.’ But I feel like if you [are] curious and find out who we are and our story, then you’ll know the real us,” Byard said.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover. Because you might not know that book is very interesting.”