The Good Stuff: ‘Thank you’ from the students and teachers

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) - A big thank you to the ArkLaTex, and beyond.

Students and teachers on both the Caddo Parish and Bossier Parish sides of the Red River, are eternally grateful for recent help after facing their own unique adversities.

“The shock of the video was mindblowing,” says Erika Livers, referring to a Facebook live stream video produced by KSLA News 12′s Doug Warner shortly after 100 mile an hour winds ripped the roof off part of Benton Middle School in the early morning hours of January 11, 2020.

The storm ruined a half dozen classrooms, with teachers losing most of their teaching supplies and personal items.

In the days and weeks that followed, donations poured in from all over.

“I wanted to tell the community, from the bottom of my heart,” continued a tearful Livers," for not only helping my team out, but helping the kids. Because that’s who it’s for. It’s for them."

Livers and other teachers share that they received donations from as far away as Pennsylvania and Florida, and even a chrome book from South Dakota.

In Shreveport, it is the criminal storms brewing in the streets that school resource officer Rodney Bradley combats daily in the halls of Claiborne Elementary School.

“We do homework, but focus on more than academics. We focus on manhood, scholarships, and perseverance,” Bradley says, describing the activities of his group, ‘Young Distinguished Gentlemen’.

He works with a group of students after school, multiple times a week, with hopes of teaching them to listen to the positive influences in their lives, and not the streets.

"Most people you come in contact with who know where you're from, they try to use that to define who you are," explains Bradley.

The Shreveport police corporal recently took some of those students on a trip to Tennessee to see the Civil Rights Museum.

"The trip allowed the young men to see that in life, you will be faced with obstacles and adversity. But don't ever give up and hold on to your dreams."

Bradley has a fundraiser slated for this Saturday called, 'Hoops for Hope'.

It’s a best two-out-of-three basketball series between Shreveport police officers and firefighters.

It begins at 2:00 pm, March 7, at Princess Park Community Center.

It is free to attend, but donations will be accepted at the door, benefiting ‘Young Distinguished Gentlemen’ at Claiborne Elementary.

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