Recent Maryland high school grad Joey Baker has one of the most promising baritone singing voices in the country. (WP) View

As they graduate, 26 students from five high schools reflect upon their parents' influences, career goals, and future lives. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle) View

Young New Yorkers learn the ropes of scurrying up and around trees in the city's Million Trees Training Program for arborists. (NYT) View

Shantell Thomas, 18-year-old mother of two, gets parenting help to leave her violent upbringing behind at a crucial point in her children's lives. (Chicago Tribune) View

Haitian activist Rea Dol isn't waiting for outside help to feed and care for a poor and neglected Port-au-Prince neighborhood. (NYT) View

The Best Videojournalism Stories of 2009 ... Celebrating excellence in video, journalism and storytelling. View

Seventy years after being sent to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, Bessie Kawachi Chin, 87, receives an honorary college degree. (SJMN) View

A teenage girl from Texas surmounts enormous obstacles after she beats the odds and enrolls in the esteemed Moscow ballet academy. (NYT) View

Daniel Stroup's eighth-grade students, past and present, know what they'll get for their birthday every year -- an uplifting letter from the teacher. View

A sexually abused boy and his mother recount the anguish they suffered at the hands of a trusted teacher when he was in kindergarten. (LAT) View

Jazz musicians and chefs are creatively spontaneous, but so are surgeons and firefighters. A look at the unscripted moments in all our lives. View

An NGO gets homeless Ethiopian children off the streets and helps give them an education. Meet three whose lives have been changed. (Bombay Flying Club) View