News — Black Kids

A dope educator in Memphis, Tennessee, with a great memory and enough love for his students, has memorized over 250 personalized handshakes which he uses to welcome each student to class. David Jamison is on a mission to motivate students at Hickory Ridge Elementary School even as they return to in-person class after the long COVID-19 break.

“I’ve always had a great memory growing up and even had a secret handshake with my best friend of 20+ years. I remember what’s important to me.

“My scholars are important to me. This small gesture goes a long way. It creates an atmosphere of love and vulnerability. Allowing students to be completely open with me; even sharing with me troubling encounters that they have at home,” said Jamison to NEWS.

Jamison went viral in 2019 for doing these handshakes with his students and everyone lauded him for his thoughtfulness and effort to make these students feel special. So, for four years, Jamison knows the names of each student and knows which handshake routine goes with who.

To him, it is a sign of respect for each student. After he suffered the virus himself last year, he now has an even greater calling to make the most of each time with his scholars. He believes that one does not need to touch someone physically to make an impact on them.

The welcome back routine for the fifth-grade language arts teacher and his students is now a socially distanced one.

“Around this time last year, the school year was canceled because of Covid,” Jamison, who refers to himself as “The Dope Educator,” wrote alongside a video of the socially distanced greetings on Instagram.

“I remember being asked in an interview last year, ‘would I still welcome my students with customized greetings once they return?’

“My response remains the same, you don’t have to physically touch a child to actually ‘touch’ a child. We don’t focus on what it looks like; we focus on what it can be!”

For Jamison, he wants the kids to see themselves past a test score. He uses these handshakes to show love and motivate them. “When I became an educator, I wanted to create something that they can look at and see that I’m not just about a test score,” he told. “When kids see that they have a personalize greeting they are so excited to come to class every day.”

What’s more, research shows that a young Black child who has had at least one Black male educator increases their chances of attending secondary education, Jamison, who is completing his fourth year in education, told NEWS.

“It’s kind of cool knowing you do something really well that some adults don’t know how to do.” These are the words of preteen stock trader Kali Rahman who is well on his way to becoming a millionaire by the age of 18 with his sister Spirit. The sibling-duo have launched their own company — Stock Up Kids — to teach other kids and even adults to trade.

There is no better feeling than having financial freedom and creating generational wealth for your family — a notion that runs high in predominantly white homes. However, The Rahman household and some 33.5% of Black homes in the U.S. are part of the small group of financially literate Blacks who trade in stocks.

Stock Up Kids was created out of the necessity to come up with a concept great enough to catch the attention of the producers of The Ellen DeGeneres show. Spirit, at the age of 7, told her dad, Gary, she wanted to be on the show.

So, at ages 7 and 9, Spirit and Kali were introduced to stock trading because Gary challenged them to come up with an ingenious way to get noticed by Ellen’s crew. Swing Trading came up tops. They began paper trading on a system created by one of their mentors that did not require actual money.

“Well, at first, it was because we were 7 and 9, and it was a little complicated, but as we started practicing and doing more of it, we learned more, and it got easier,” Spirit said. 

“We started with companies that we already knew like Nike, Microsoft, McDonald’s, and stuff like that, and we just used Yahoo finance which is a free website,” Kali added.

Now in middle school, Kali, 13, and Spirit, 11, who trade with real money, have launched “Stock Up Kids” to teach other children and adults all that they learned over the years including the ropes of stock trading and financial literacy.

“We’re learning about finance. We’re learning about financial literacy. We’re learning about how to manage our money and how to trade it, of course, so that’s stuff some people don’t even learn as adults… We’re on pace to become millionaires by the time we’re 18,” Spirit told WMAR 2 News. 

The brother-sister duo make a great team and enjoy imparting what they have learned to others. The pair have a YouTube channel where people get to know more about the ins and outs of stock trading and more about their personalities as well.

Kali loves football and hopes to be a professional footballer and zoologist in the future. Spirit on the other hand loves to create art, sing, dance, and most importantly, she wants to be a lawyer. She aspires to be like one of her mentors, Ms. Angel Rich, whom Spirit believes will be the next Steve Jobs.

The budding financial gurus have also shared platforms with the likes of rapper T.I and singer-songwriter Cree Davis. They delivered speeches to a room full of teens on STEAM careers at The Dreaming Out Loud event held on the campus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, per their site.

The preteen entrepreneurs donate portions of their website proceeds to four non-profit organizations — Common Ground Foundation, Hip Hop Detox, Yes Drop-in center, and Project Pneuma.

Their mom Calli and their dad, who are also entrepreneurs, know how difficult it is to run a company. They commend their children for doing it so effortlessly at their ages. “We’re very proud of them in the way that they carry themselves and share the information. They really want to give back,” Calli said.