- Wherever there is a chair, go ahead and take a seat.

While you're here, you can relax, be yourself, create, draw, paint, all of that stuff.

We're gonna play a game called secret dancer.

(upbeat music) By day, I am a 18-year veteran teacher.

I've been working with the Chicago Public Schools forever now.

By evening, my husband and I, we have a nonprofit organization, the Brown House Experience, and we provide STEM, fitness, mental health, social emotional learning to at-risk youth.

We do a lot of afterschool programs, we do STEM and fitness academies where we actually do six-week programs.

And everything we do pretty much is free.

Good job, good job!

That was good.

All right, so we're gonna talk about what are you in control of?

I have one for you.

Are you in control of your anger?

And be honest, be honest, 'cause that's why we're here.

And we target kids that have behavior issues, that they get mad at the drop of a dime because we know, and my husband also, we were those kids who didn't know how to control the emotions, and it's all about being able to control it.

Today, we're gonna create affirmation magazine covers.

I love this one.

Better an oops than a what if.

That means it's better to make a mistake than to not do it at all.

We wanna just expose them to experiences that they haven't been exposed to, so I would say I'm a lifelong teacher because I teach everywhere I go.

(kids chatting) And we'll eventually move it to the South Side, but right now, this is what we're comfortable with, out West, we know people out here that we could easily rent from, so it's just easier out here.

I grew up on the West Side, my husband grew up in Maywood, I worked on the West Side, he worked on the West Side, and we really wanted to get a house, and neither one of us had ever had lived in a home ourselves, so I had really dreamed of having my own home and raising my children.

There we go, thank you.

We first wanted to try to live on the West Side.

A lot of the houses were in really poor condition, but they were really expensive.

We were approved for 250,000 and a lot of the houses that we were looking at was about 250,000, but we would have to put in about at least 100,000 just to be able to make it livable.

They wanted a lot, but we thought, well, you know, we're teachers, we're doing good in the community, we should be able to purchase a home in the area that we wanna purchase a home, so we were kind of upset because we weren't able to find something that was conducive to what we needed on the West Side.

This rose bush was not here.

We had a tree right there.

- [Man] That's Tia!

(laughter) Look, she's right there!

- This is funny!

How y'all been?

- I been all right.

- This is dope, this is dope.

- I was tryin' to see who you was, I said, is that Tia?

And I'm like, man, I ain't seen Tia in about 30 years, now you done pop up (indistinct).

(laughter) - [Man] You walkin' up (indistinct).

(laughter) - We wanted to live out here.

It didn't work out, so we decided that we would unfortunately have to look on the South Side.

But thank y'all for coming out here and just catching me up on everything.

We went to a few homes, one home in particular that we weren't able to get into.

The owner was under the impression that we were not Black.

And he heard that we were Black, the tone changed because when we called him and we were actually in front of the house, he was stuttering and he was just like, well, the lock code is, and he gave us the code, and it didn't work.

He wouldn't pick up the phone again.

Our realtor did speak to him and eventually told us that it was due to race.

That could have been the house that we dreamed of, but to know that just because we were Black, we couldn't even look in the house, he wouldn't even let us in.

That's the main part of segregation, being forced out of where we really wanted to be, and when we get to another area, not being able to get what we want because we're Black.

We have a lot of thefts.

We have had so much stolen off of our porch immediately before we can make it downstairs to the door, so we have politely asked all of the delivery drivers to drop the packages over the back fence in order for us to get it, otherwise we won't get it.

We haven't had any thefts in the last two weeks.

That really makes me say, you know what, we didn't wanna be out here in the first place.

If we were out West, we wouldn't have to deal with this.

Oh, I found one, I found one.

- Yes!

- [Daughter] And whoever loses has to pay $10.

- Nuh uh!

- You gotta pay?

How 'bout pushups?

- We are in Chicago Lawn now and we have gone through ups and downs on the block.

We've been here for 10 years now and we've seen it all from years where we had absolutely no violence and it was calm, we could take the kids out in the front and ride their bikes, to now, we can't go in the front at all because two blocks down, right on 63rd, they have shootouts all the time.

And so, now it's, we've kind of shifted everything to our backyard.

I would say the neighborhood, it's a rocky one.

It's rocky because depending on who lives on the block, it changes the whole aura of the block.

Good job!

My daughters have seen a man get shot in his back and he was right next to us, he was almost literally right next to us on the bus stop.

I cannot believe- (family yelling and chatting) - [Husband] It's a good game.

- Well, you already touched it and if you already touched the block, then it's yours.

- My youngest, Alani, she probably was about two and a half, two or three, at the time, and she still remembers the man with the hole in his back because we actually saw the hole in his back because he rolled over and someone pulled his shirt up.

But the violence has affected them.

They've had nightmares, but we do talk to them about it so that they know what to expect, and because this is the world we live in and they may be in a situation where they have to protect themselves, and they're only 10 and six.

- Did she get it?

- (indistinct) - [Daughter] You pull it out!

(laughter) - Oh no!

- Ah!

(blocks tumbling) - Oh!

- I mean, we're in a black and brown neighborhood.

We want it to be lovely to go outside and talk to your neighbors and everybody know each other and have block club parties and things like that where they aren't shot up and you know that you can trust that your kids can go outside and you don't have to stand there and stare at them while they're outside, you could maybe be in the house cooking something or, we can't do any of that.

We're just waiting on it to come back around, and hopefully it does before we decide to leave.

(slow music) I just said, now look at this block.

Wouldn't this have been lovely?

- [Man] It's quiet.

- Yes, that's another thing, it is quiet.

(sighs) Yeah, kids can actually come out and play.

I feel like we weren't given the chance that we should have been given because of our race, because a lot of the homes are owned by Caucasian people.

Almost all of the ones that we went to look at are.

That was kind of disheartening because those are the neighborhoods we grew up in, that we walked up and down the blocks, and played as kids, and to know that there's not really a lot of us being allowed in those communities to rebuild.

And realistically, most middle-class Black families, they won't get approved for four or $500,000 for a loan.

We're kind of pushed out of certain neighborhoods and I don't think that's fair.

Every neighborhood should reflect what our city is about, and it's about everybody, not just one race.

(slow music)