In fact, a lot of people have seen it. More than 100,000 on YouTube. It prompted Mark Davis of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to seek Bridges out for a story, which began:

The trophies are impossible to ignore. At least 37 fill the living room of the south Atlanta apartment Deonte Bridges shares with his mother. Thirty-six extol the teenager’s academic achievements at Booker T. Washington High School.

The 37th trophy? Bridges, 18, smiled. “Basketball,” he said. Turns out he played the sport in ninth grade but gave it up. The game got in the way of more important things.

Now the youngster is preparing to begin his collegiate career at the University of Georgia. After sifting through more than $1 million in offered scholarships, he accepted the opportunity to be a Gates Millennium Scholar, which will completely pay for his studies, both undergraduate and graduate.

Here’s his speech:

But the entire experience of overseeing 115 at-risk high school juniors (and 13 Fellows ready to advise, mentor and instruct them) was more demanding than we’d thought.

By Day Three, I had blisters on both feet from running around campus. It was all hands on deck, all the time without a manual to prepare us for the issues we’d confront and resolve. I thought that less than a week into the experience, the Fellows had grown to dislike us as the job proved more intense than they’d expected.

But just today, the NCAA published a story about X-Mester. And given time to reflect, it is pretty clear that the Fellowship was impactful. Said Princeton University’s Trey Peacock, “At times you felt like giving up. You were tired, and things weren’t going perfectly. But it forced you to adapt. It was really rewarding. I’d say it’s probably the best thing I’ve done, program or job-wise, in my life so far.”

Wow! And the good news is, as the overseers of X-Mester, we learned so much that will help the next cohort of Fellows. Yeah, we will be doing it again.

In the mean time, SBCWorks is back. So stay tuned.

Herbert wanted to see the paradoxical notion for himself. How could students, struggling through high school, suddenly be energized when exposed to the demands of college-level coursework?

Herbert wrote:

A visit to the school is a glimpse into the realm of the possible. I stopped by on a gloomy, rainy morning, and the building’s exterior seemed fully in synch with the weather. But inside you’re quickly caught up in what seems almost the ideal academic atmosphere. In class after class, I was struck by how engaged the students were, and how much they reflected the face of the city.

These were kids who had come to the school (mostly by subway) from every borough and from just about every background imaginable.

The first class I visited was a college-level biology course. The students were deep into the process of dissecting fetal pigs. One of the students, who hopes someday to be a doctor, explained to me how essential it was for the students “to understand the organ systems in mammals.”

In another class, a fiendishly difficult math problem was being worked out. When the class ended without the problem being brought to a satisfactory conclusion, the students groaned as if a movie had been interrupted at the climactic moment. The instructor assured them that “we’ll pick it up right here” the next time the class met.

For Herbert, it seemed to be an ‘ah-ha’ moment. Poor kids. Immigrant kids. What can happen when you prepare and challenge them for something they can’t necessarily see for themselves?

The Early College High School model is alive and well in the City of Indianapolis, at places like Ben Davis University High School, the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School and Stonegate Early College High School.

This week we will be announcing an incredible cohort of 13 Fellows, who will be seeing the ECHS model first hand at X-Mester, a first-of-its-kind residential experience for fellows and high school students, on the Vincennes University campus in early June.

Indeed, a very bright idea.

So when I saw that the Class of 1970 from Boston University just had a proper graduation for the first time this past weekend, I figured it was fair to share the tumultuous times. There is a tremendous amount of table-setting in the track story and the end result was that students across the country went on strike, thus closing campuses and bringing a premature end to the school year.

That never set well for those at BU and this year the University made a strong push to welcome that class back to be part of the graduation festivities at Nickerson Field. Wrote Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times:

“This is not an apology,” Robert A. Brown, the president of the university, said in an interview beforehand. “We did exactly the right thing by calling off exams. It’s an opportunity to reach out to this cadre of alums and say, ‘Come, be with us.’”

About 300 of the 3,000-member class showed up, many with their grown children in tow, not to mention unfinished business.

“That was a big deal,” Dr. Marcia Wells Avery, one of three black nursing students in the class of 1970, said of her canceled graduation. “It was worse for the parents and the grandparents, many of whom are dead now and were robbed of that opportunity to see their child march across that stage.”

“My father vowed that B.U. would never get a penny from him,” added Dr. Avery, who is now a nursing professor at Northwestern State University in Louisiana.

If he could see her now.

What Jackson did next was odd. In the post-game press conference, he took it upon himself to announce that Anderson was leaving college. As everyone could have predicted, that set off a mad scramble among the media. Anderson was no ordinary player, he was arguably the greatest high school guard to ever emerge from New York City.

But he wasn’t to be a superstar in the NBA. He had some solid numbers early in his career, but after more than a decade in the league, he became a journeyman, playing for eight different teams, including a short stint here with the Indiana Pacers.

When his NBA career came to an end in 2005, he headed off to Lithuania in 2005 to continue his basketball odyssey. The primary reason? He was broke.

He had made more than $60 million playing basketball, but paying for the houses, the cars and the seven children he’d had with five women had left him in an enormous hole.

What he did next was probably the best decision he’d ever made. He returned to school. Anderson even admitted to New York Times columnist George Vecsey, “I didn’t know if I could handle it. I didn’t use my brain for 20 years.”

But the 39-year-old did handle it, earning his degree in organizational leadership from St. Thomas University in Miami, Fla. Tomorrow he will don his cap and gown and receive his diploma at graduation.

“The degree is a statement that his life did not end after 14 years in the NBA,” wrote Vecsey.

In fact, a new one is just beginning.

Founded by Maryanne O’Mally and Michael Bricker in July 2008, PUP provided an alternative solution for the disposal of the roof fabric of the demolished RCA Dome and secured the preservation of about 90 percent of the fabric, more than 13 acres in total.

Focused on community improvement and investment, PUP began creating ways to repurpose the salvaged roof fabric throughout the city. Through partnerships with Indy Parks and Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, The Dome Project initiative was born.

The Dome Project will transform the fabric from the RCA Dome roof into shade structures, umbrellas and shelters for Indianapolis neighborhood parks. PUP will also coordinate community park clean-up days corresponding with the installation of the shade structures.

Kennedy-King Park, just seven blocks from the National Design Factory, is one of five slated to benefit from the initiative. The Dome Project will not only invite a greater sense of community and city pride, but will also provide a national example for urban responsibility and material repurposing.

I cannot explain how thrilled I was to learn of this project. I immediately started visualizing all that fabric. It brought back my childhood memories of the then-named Hoosier Dome. I can vividly remember staring up at the roof fabric from inside the dome. I was in awe.

I wondered what the fabric was made of, how it kept its shape, how it stayed white and why people underneath it did not get wet when it rained. It is exciting to think that children in this city could go to the park and have in their mind the very same questions about the very same material.

Budget cuts in the Indy Parks system has limited funding for The Dome Project improvements. However, Indianapolis may not have to wait long to see this transformation come to life thanks to the $250,000 Pepsi Refresh competition. But your help is needed. Balloting, which began in March, runs through the end of May. PUP has made steady gains in the competition, but needs daily support to pull through.

You can support The Dome Project in the Pepsi Refresh competition by going to the competition website and voting. Create an account, log in and vote everyday through the end of the month, a small price to improve our urban parks. Let’s see this fabric transform Indianapolis!

President Obama issued a statement and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan posted a video, which included Kalamazoo Central High School’s winning submission.

“I congratulate our winner, Kalamazoo Central High School, and all of our six finalists for their innovative and effective approaches to teaching, learning and preparing students to graduate ready for college and a career,” said President Obama. “I look forward to visiting and speaking at Kalamazoo Central High School later this spring.”

Among the news in Duncan’s video, shown below, is that an official from the Obama administration will address the classes of the five runners-up. And a final note for sports fans, Kalamazoo Central produced New York Yankee superstar Derek Jeter.

If you can’t see this video, please click here to view it.

As part of the Development Implementation Plan, DCI determined that private investors would not jump aboard until neighborhood perceptions improved. The DCI Team — which included Storrow Kinsella Associates, Domain Architecture, and Shrewsberry & Associates — recommended enhancement to the MLK Corridor, which serves as the front door to the United Northwest neighborhood.

The mile-long stretch of roadway will receive $2 million in improvements, including on-street parking, bus shelters and a boulevard. The corridor will highlight the achievements of influential African-American men and women with ties to the Circle City. The Indianapolis Star noted that “engraved steel plates at each bus stop will feature quotes from King’s speeches and writings. Students who attend school in the area will select the quotes.”

“[Local businesses and the neighborhood] want to make this the best MLK Street in the country,” said John Bartholomew, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development. “They want to make it a destination.”

Hats — including those white hardhats — off to everyone involved.

Tania E. Lopez of the Indianapolis Star, in covering the event, discovered that brothers Ian and Wille Wallentine made $170 by combining good business sense with a little luck.

Not only did they set up shop on a corner near a Catholic church on Sunday morning, they were also the beneficiaries of a broken down IndyGo bus across the street. “It’s a wonderful thing,” affected rider Debby McEwen told Lopez. “We got off the bus and said, ‘There’s a lemonade stand.’”

Indianapolis was one of 16 target cities for Lemonade Day, the brainchild of Michael Holthouse, who first implemented the idea in Texas in 2007. Holthouse asked Indianapolis serial entrepreneur and the inventor of voice mail, Scott A. Jones (pictured), to oversee the Indy operations. Unsurprisingly, Jones secured the backing of a number of local businesses and foundations — including his own ChaCha, Ice Miller, WFYI, KeyBank and the Central Indiana Community Foundation.

Take a look at this video to get a taste of Lemonade Day:

From its own submission, the ECHS — a school whose student body is both largely minority and largely poor — described itself:

ECHS is alive.  We’re blocks from the world’s most congested freeway, yet we step onto campus with fruit trees and a running stream of reclaimed water, which was once asphalt, and we know we’re in an environment designed to envision a better life … Ninety-two percent of us were accepted into universities in 2009 and most are first in our families to attend.  We’re prepared to redefine the American Dream, rewrite our futures and heal our planet.

The White House is asking America to vote on these six finalists and the field will be narrowed to three. President Obama will then select the winner and visit the school as its 2010 commencement speaker.

Here is the Environmental Charter video: