CINCINNATI — Tamarius Berry drops his phone. It falls out while he’s punching the air.
“I won’t actually throw you,” Tamarius said.
He smiles because he has a black belt in taekwondo. Soon, he’ll also have one in judo.
I meet Tamarius in Mt. Echo Park, where he's eager to demonstrate. I’m speaking with him because the 16-year-old is one of almost 100 students in Hamilton County’s foster care system graduating high school this summer.
It’s cause for celebration — because officials tell me it is their biggest graduating class they’ve ever had.
But it also means more kids than ever before are in that system.
"They’re not just numbers. These kids are people," said Anastacia Isaacs, an education specialist for Hamilton County Job and Family Services. “And they’re going through probably one of the worst moments in their lives — being taken from home. And so we try to make it as easy as possible for them to have a normal high school experience.”
And that means celebrating them when they graduate.
WATCH: 16-year-old grad shows off his talents
Tamarius picks up his phone from the ground, impressed that it didn’t crack, and flips through his camera roll.
“I have too many pictures,” Tamarius said. "Lots in museums."
It'd be an exaggeration to say martial arts got Tamarius through foster care, which he first became involved with when he was 13. But he tells me it has helped him cope with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
At one point, he didn’t think he’d graduate. He holds his phone up to show me a picture of himself when he was 6.
“He struggled a lot,” Tamarius said. “Little me definitely struggled a lot.”
I ask if he’s proud of himself.
“Definitely,” Tamarius said.
Because now, he’s a high school graduate at just 16. He says he took 18 classes online to finish. And he’s enrolled at the University of Cincinnati to study psychology, a subject he picked because he wants to help people living with mental health conditions.
Like some he’s seen in his family.
When I ask what he would tell his younger self, he doesn’t take long to answer.
“You’re going to make it,” Tamarius said. “You’re going to make it.”
