Destiny Crockett is quick to point out that her goals in life are not about making money, they are about helping the community around her. Crockett, a Clyde C. Miller Career Academy 2013 graduate, will attend Princeton University this fall and major in English.
“I just want to use my education for social activism,” Crockett said. “I want to use my education to help people, to make things better for people, whether that means I make a lot of money or not.”
Crockett will be the first graduate of Clyde C. Miller, in the St. Louis Public School District, to attend an Ivy League University. She hopes that her story will help inspire other students with similar goals.
“I hope that someone else reads it and is like, ‘Maybe I can do that,’” Crockett said.
Latoya Mickens, Crockett’s mother, appreciates her daughter’s independent nature and determination.
“The thing that most makes me proud is not just her reaching her goals and succeeding with her goals, but the way she uses her own mind and how she makes her own rules and she does things according to her own plan,” Mickens said.
Crockett excelled in many areas during high school. She was her school’s valedictorian and was involved in extracurricular activities, most notably speech and debate. Crockett led her school’s debate team to its first top finish at the Urban Debate League competition and qualified for the national tournament in policy debate.
Along with debate, Crockett attended creative writing camps in high school, which she says were enjoyable and helpful. She did community service as well, volunteering for the Urban League, the Women’s Safe House, Head Start and the Missouri History Museum.
Crockett’s success story may help diminish stereotypes in the St. Louis community.
“Sometimes stereotypes are false. It’s not true what people think, that children who live north of Delmar are just intrinsically dumb and aren’t meant to be able to read or add and subtract on grade level,” she said.
“That’s something that is unfair because I think it hurts the community, not just the people stereotyped but our entire city.”
Crockett feels that these stereotypes hurt everyone by spreading pre-conceived notions about people from different backgrounds.
“Our discourse shapes our reality,” she said.
“The way we talk about things and the way we think about things and the way we think about policies and the children that the policies are made to hurt or help, that effects the way you make these policies. That effects the way teachers teach in classrooms.”
Though she says she is not very nervous about going off to college, Crockett will face some changes in her academic surroundings.
In 2011, St. Louis Public Schools were made up of about 80 percent African-American students. At Princeton, however, the class of 2016 (one year ahead of Crockett) is made up of only seven percent African Americans.
Even though changes are coming, Crockett is excited about her life’s next journey. Mickens is thrilled for her daughter and feels that others can learn from Crockett about achieving their goals.
“To get to where she got to, you have to sacrifice and you have to decide what really is important,” Mickens said. “Destiny decided what was really important to her, and that’s how she got there.”
