Reassurance

Mark Johnson: Some nights, after Kurtisha Jackson and her science team had struggled to wrap their brains around transcription factors and chromatin, after she had taken the city bus home, after she had eaten dinner and cleaned the kitchen and done her other homework – she felt the weight of her team's complex project. It was too difficult. She considered quitting.

At one time or another, the same thought occurred to each of her teammates at Milwaukee Academy of Science, a 10-year-old charter school.

For Cameron Bester, there were moments when Kurtisha and their teacher, Kevin Paprocki, chattered away in scientific language, and all he could think was: Can you put that in human words?

For Tim Jones, there was all of the other homework and the football team, for which he played middle linebacker. On top of that, the first time Tim learned about the project from their science mentors at the Medical College of Wisconsin, he felt simply lost.

"Pax3-Fox01 forbidden transcription by a fusion protein." Excuse me?

Javeoni Buford, the center and power forward on his basketball team, would mutter sometimes that he wasn't smart enough for the project.

"Don't quit," Kurtisha kept telling him – and herself.