Jarvis Williams said he often reflects on one piece of advice he frequently offers to others.

"The people you consider great are great because they didn't quit," he said with a smile.

Each morning before the sun comes up, and before other students wake, Jarvis walks to his bus stop. He clambers over fences and hops over gates to cut the distance to just under a mile, just in time to catch the bus to Phillip O. Berry High. "It's not that far," he said.

Jarvis, 18, doesn't have access to a car, so preparing for school and doing extracurricular activities require calculation. But these obstacles don't seem to faze him, said Larry Kinard, Communities In Schools (CIS) site coordinator at Phillip O. Berry.

This is Kinard's first year working with Jarvis, but he said Jarvis has been involved with CIS since his freshman year. Kinard said Jarvis falls under the "red," or most-at-risk, category of students in his caseload.

"I don't know where he gets it. I think it comes from his inner self," Kinard said. "I think he may see his situation and say, 'I don't want to live this way. I want something better.' "

Kinard said it is his job to be a mentor for the children and provide them resources they may have not had otherwise. CIS is in 21 elementary, 18 middle and 16 high schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system. Jarvis is one of about 100 students in the program at Phillip O. Berry.

"Sometimes he doesn't want to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch the bus and go to school, but I think he identifies what he doesn't want to be," Kinard said.

'It can happen'

Jarvis is on the leadership team for CIS, is a first lieutenant in the JROTC program, president of the career technical club, is an Eagle Scout, works for an uptown nonprofit and attends church about four times a week, Jarvis said.

"Sometimes in life we see things and we think they are impossible because of the challenges," Jarvis said. "But never say anything is impossible - because there are countless stories in history to prove that...if you work hard enough and you honor God and get help from people, it can happen."

Aside from extracurriculars, Jarvis loves computers and one day hopes to become an inventor - like Thomas Edison, he said. While sitting in Kinard's office during a lunch period with his friend, Jarvis said he came up with his first invention after seeing the movie "Avatar": He envisioned a compact computer consisting of holographic technology. Details are kept under wraps until he can patent the idea, he said.

"If we put forth our best efforts, it will happen," Jarvis said. "And if it doesn't, like Thomas Edison said, 'I didn't fail a thousand times, I just found a thousand ways it didn't work.' "

Can he do it? "Yeah. If someone doesn't beat me to it," he said. "If they do, I will just buy one of theirs and reinvent it."

In school, Jarvis enjoys calculus class and wants to apply those skills to a possible career as a computer hardware engineer.

"You would think that I'm a beast at math, but I'm not," Jarvis said, laughing. "I enjoy it because of the challenge and because of the application ... You can pretty much point to anything and it has something to do with calculus."

And when he gets home from school, after an afternoon of drill practice, club meetings or work, he goes to church with his mom. At church he plays percussion instruments, typically bongos or percussion blocks. He got involved with music about three years ago, when his pastor asked during Bible study if anyone wanted to volunteer to play percussion. Jarvis volunteered.

"I didn't know how to play," Jarvis said. "The first Sunday I played, one of the balls on one of the (mallets) flew off toward one of the deacons in the front row."

He said he is always open to learning new skills and will tackle whatever challenge comes his way. As of now, that challenge is applying to colleges and anxiously awaiting acceptance letters.

"Anything that's worth achieving comes with its own challenges," Jarvis said. "Those challenges are the things that shape our character and make us into the productive people that our society needs."