Jones is coming into her twenty-sixth year as a high school teacher, working with one of the most challenging grades: 12th. 

It’s a year that can be dizzying in its contradictions: The students are still kids, but are making grown-up decisions about college and careers—some will even cast votes in a historic election this fall. They make mistakes, but the younger teens at school consider them role models. They’re excited to be done with high school, but terrified of what comes next.

 But Jones—known around the Atlanta-area Charles R. Drew High School as “Coach Jones”— just wants to make sure her students are ready. 

She often thinks back to her own time in high school, when it felt like the only options for graduates were college, work or the military. “But times have changed and there’s so many more opportunities for these young people to be successful and thrive,” Jones said. “And I want them to make sure that they exhaust all of these options so that they won’t have no excuse as to why they can’t be superstars.”

Jones takes the “superstars” label seriously. Her classroom has a red carpet and walk of fame. She interviews the teens and photographs them like a paparazzo. 

Those details make a difference, her students say. “The way she bonds with her students and gives all of her students a chance—I think other teachers, they kind of like to pick some of their favorite students and not really look at the other students,” said Hannah Watson, a recent Charles R. Drew graduate and first-year student at the University of Alabama. “Coach Jones gives everybody an equal chance and treats everybody fairly.”

Jones’ path into teaching was untraditional. The native Floridian studied criminal justice at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically Black school in Daytona Beach, before finding work as a correctional officer, then correctional counselor. 

But the work just wasn’t for her, and Jones’ then-mother-in-law, a school principal, suggested she try teaching. So Jones started teaching criminal justice classes at a high school in Miami. 

“I truly found my passion,” Jones remembered. But she also loved language and literature, so returned to school to train to be an English teacher.

A divorce from her former husband inspired Jones to uproot her life in Miami. She had friends who had made the almost ten-hour drive from Miami to Atlanta, so she followed.

“It was scary,” Jones said. She had two girls, ages 12 and 10 years old at the time, and was pregnant with her third. But the risk paid off—she found a job with her current school district, helped open Charles R. Drew in 2009 and remarried. “It exceeded my expectations.”

Danielle Burley, a senior who works with Jones through student government and is in her yearbook class, admits she was scared of Jones when she met the teacher as a tenth grader. 

“In the hallways she was the teacher that was loud, trying to get everybody to class,” she said.

Jones knows she can be tough. “I am a disciplinarian. My coach’s voice stays on 24 hours a day,” she said. 

But it’s the way Jones shows she cares, said De’Ajah Connor, Jones’ former student, now a freshman at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, LA. “I believe that she pushes her students to the level that she sees in us. We just don’t see it in ourselves.”

That philosophy is at the bedrock of Jones’ semester-long English class. Her students spend the term building what she calls the “senior exit portfolio,” designed to set students up for success after graduation, Jones said.

The portfolio has several components—students take career assessments, research potential jobs, write cover letters and resumes, develop personal goals and apply for scholarships, among other assignments, Jones said. They also have to write and produce a documentary about a social issue, such as abortion, colorism or transgender athletes. 

“Inside those components, I’m teaching argumentative essay writing. I’m teaching informative essay writing, I’m teaching expository,” she said. They also study classic literature—“Frankenstein” and “Beowulf” are on the reading list. “But most of it is I’m trying to get them ready for life after high school.”

Students then present their portfolios to a panel of judges at the end of the semester. It’s a challenging assignment, Jones said, but students look forward to it. 

Connor said compiling her portfolio was really useful. 

“I always wanted to be a nurse, but the senior portfolio helped me put my nursing dreams into reality,” said Connor. She’s a nursing major now. “I had to think about what I had to do, what I had to study, what type of education I would need to get to be a neonatal nurse.” 

But before Jones can get students to open up about their hopes and dreams, she has to make them feel comfortable—a process that can start before students even make it into her class. “I get to know them throughout their high school career, so they know what to expect,” she said. 

Then at the beginning of each semester, Jones asks her students to write something she should know about them on an index card. Kids can be vulnerable, Jones said, writing that they’re shy or have anxiety. They’re not sociable or don’t want to be called upon to read in front of the class.  

“I try to be as relatable as possible, because I know their struggles,” Jones said. She affectionately called her students “Covid babies” because they came of age during a time of social isolation. 

And there are other struggles—most of the teens at Charles R. Drew get free lunch at school and “a lot of our students come from single-parent homes,” Jones said. They’re dealing with complex problems outside of the classroom, from conflicts with parents to homelessness. 

Sometimes students just have a bad day.

“One day [Jones] was under the weather and I was kind of having a bad day, as well. My mood was off,” Connor remembered. So Jones bought Chik-fil-A for lunch, one of Connor’s favorite’s. The two shared the meal in Jones’ classroom. 

“I have to make myself accessible, relatable and I have to be so understanding,” Jones said. “Once you get those kids to trust you, then they’ll break down walls for you.”

In an effort to relate more to the school’s growing Hispanic population, Jones made a pitch to her bosses: Why don’t we celebrate homecoming during soccer season too?

Homecoming, typically reserved for football season, is a cherished tradition at high schools across the country and a traditional marker of fall. At Charles R. Drew, students celebrate with parades and pep rallies.

Now, they’ll do the same thing during soccer season in the spring. “Just so they can feel included,” Jones said about her Hispanic students. “They’re extremely excited about that.”

Spearheading homecoming is just one of the many hats Jones wears at school. In addition to teaching English and coaching basketball—and sending girls off to Division I schools like Rutgers University and Ole Miss—Jones coaches the boys’ tennis team, helps organize prom, runs the school’s website and social media pages, teaches yearbook class, and advises the student government association. 

“She does everything. She does morning announcements. Most of the time, a lot of people go to her for things,” Burley said about Jones, who has become more than a teacher.  “She’s like a safe blanket, like a school mom that I can go to when I have personal problems.” 

Jones said she’s constantly volunteering around the school, in part because she wants her high schoolers to have as much fun as she did at their age.

“It was fun because I got involved,” Jones said about her high school years. She played basketball, and was a part of her school’s student government, newspaper and Black Student Union. “That just stuck with me, and I want to make all of my students’ high school experience memorable, both on the academic side and on the extracurricular side.”

But it’s not a solo endeavor, Jones said. “I have a huge support system here, they go with my craziness,” she said about her coworkers, including one of her daughters, who teaches biology. Jones said her husband—also a basketball coach and elementary school teacher—is another source of encouragement. 

“They know I’m about these kids,” Jones said. “I’ve been to weddings, I’ve been to delivery rooms, I’ve been to court cases, I’ve been to divorce [hearings]. I’ve been to them all. You name it, I’ve been there for my students.”