This is an opinion column.

Donna Dukes has rules for students. Yes sir. No ma’am. No stretching during class. Because manners matter. Always.

Donna Dukes has rules for herself and her teachers, too:

Find the goodness in students known for badness. Hold them to a high standard, expect them to succeed, and smile.

“For a lot of our kids our smiles are going to be the only smiles they get that day,” said Dukes, who runs the non-profit Maranathan Academy for critically at-risk youth in Birmingham. “I’ve literally had to beg parents to hug their children. And they have refused.”

You take a lot for granted.

Maranathan is a last chance school for students who, because of circumstance or their own bad choices have been expelled from other schools.

Nicholas Simmons picked up a gun after a fatal shooting. He was kicked out of school, but got a second chance.

Nicholas Simmons, a 12th grader, was kicked out of Huffman High School this year after picking up the gun that was used in the fatal shooting – committed by another student – of Courtlin Arrington. Dukes gave him a chance, and he prospered. Now he wants to be a mechanic.

Damarius Hill was kicked out of multiple schools for fighting. He saw a cousin murdered in front of him and never really thought about a future – certainly not college – before he came to Marananthan. Now he wants to go to Lawson State Community College and learn to be a welder.

He says he has learned to respect others. And himself.

The stories are striking, of tough kids in hard environments with unimaginable obstacles. But what’s really striking is how regular these students are. They are just kids, trying to make up for mistakes or the hands they were dealt.

Damarius Hill, a student at Marananthan Academy, now sees a future for himself.

Dukes sees the beauty in them, and the danger of doing nothing. If left alone and cast aside, critically at-risk children “will become not only dangerous to themselves but to others. They will become drains on society,” she said.

So she accepts students who have been charged with serious crimes, who have seen the charges dropped but not the stigma that went with them. One of those lost a cousin in a shooting on Thanksgiving night, but still comes to school, hoping to one day show the world “I am not the person everybody thinks I am.”

Dukes believes in him, and in her philosophy that you change the world when you reach an at-risk child. You break the cycle of crime and government dependency and incarceration. You save lives and millions of dollars. And people.

Like Da’Quan Julius, a 9th grader. He took a gun to his old school because he said he didn’t feel safe. Dukes calls him “one of my smartest babies.” Now he dares dream of going to Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Da'Quan Julius was expelled after taking a gun to school. Now he plans for college.

Just three weeks ago, though, Da’Quan learned that an old friend had been ordered to kill him as part of a gang initiation. Dukes was told of the threat and had to tell the 9th grader there was a contract on his life.

“Why?” he asked her. “I’m not bothering anybody.”

There’s no good answer. Not in a rational world. Only that he is doing well. He has hope, where others in an at-risk world see none.

Not all the students in this school are here because of trouble. Some have health problems that kept them from more traditional schools. Others came in the shadow of tragedy.

Qiana Riley is a 12th grader, a success story, a sweet and smart and shy young woman who dreams of being a pediatrician. She’s come a long way since she was 12, when she stood in the pool of blood at the convenience store where her brother Edwin Wayne was shot in the back.

Qiana Riley's brother was shot in the back when she was 12. She did not want to leave the house for years. Now she wants to become a doctor.

She stopped going to school that day. So did her sister. They stayed home for two years before anybody noticed. Dukes says she just couldn’t go out of the house.

Now Qiana – this girl who did not want to come out -- lights up when she talks of what she has learned, and what she has yet to learn, and who she will be able to help when she is done.

Change comes. With high standards, high expectations, and a refusal to give up on people.

It is enough to make anybody smile.

John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.