These Pinkston programs improve high school attendance, grades and even crime rates
On a typical day at L.G. Pinkston High School, as students file into classrooms, some make their way to a tucked-in corner room on the building’s second floor. Here, a different type of learning happens, in a more relaxed environment with comfortable chairs and soft lighting.
This space is home to Pinkston’s Becoming a Man (BAM) and Working on Womanhood (WOW) groups. At any given time during the school day, students can be found participating in these Youth Guidance weekly group sessions. They can also drop in for a one-on-one talk, or use the space to play games, color, and just take a break.

Sophomore Christian Williams joined the program earlier this year. He says BAM connected him with a male mentor as he’s struggled with his relationship with his dad. The program, he says, allowed him to deepen respect for himself and others. He cautions that any students who join should prepare themselves for emotional conversations.
“Prepare yourself to cry once or twice, because Mr. Travis and Ms. Jenae give lessons like no one’s business, because you’ll realize that their story is relatable to you,” Williams says. “I would say for anyone who wants to join BAM or WOW, you should do it, because it’s going to help you out in the long run.”
Mr. Travis and Ms. Jenae are Travis Mason and Jenae Johnson, the school’s BAM and WOW specialists, who can be found in Youth Guidance’s second-floor space on campus every school day.
Both programs serve seventh- through 12th-grade students, offering mentoring and counseling programs based on cognitive behavioral therapy and trauma-informed approaches. These tactics improve students’ attendance and grades, in addition to overall well being, but they also have a critical byproduct — they prevent and reduce violent crime.
What may seem like small, personal accomplishments for teenagers can have a collective impact on public safety. At least, that’s why Mayor Eric Johnson’s Task Force on Safe Communities recommended these programs to Dallas ISD in fall 2021. Implementing Youth Guidance was one of the task force’s four researched suggestions to address 2019’s 15.1% increase in Dallas violent crime.
“Situational awareness is a big deal. Kids’ ability to stop and see the situation can stop an awful lot of things from escalating,” says Alan Cohen, executive director of Child Poverty Action Lab and appointee to the mayor’s task force. “The original researchers realized there was a link between BAM and violence. They looked at kids in juvenile detention or behind bars, they listened to and looked at court records, and they saw that these are good kids but for one decision, but for 20 seconds they wished they could have back.”
As of Dec. 6, according to data from the Dallas Police Department, 421 arrests have been made for violent crime by perpetrators younger than 19 in the past two years. The task force’s report emphasized that providing programs like BAM and WOW can teach social-emotional skills and strategies that “may be life-saving.”
“In the neighborhood I grew up in, if I acted before I thought, we’re talking about a potential shoving match and Saturday detention,” Cohen says. “In a neighborhood where gun violence is a factor, it’s a life or death situation.”
A team of researchers in Chicago studied the BAM program for more than a decade and found that participating students were 50% less likely to be arrested for violent crime, and 19% more likely to graduate on time.