NATCHEZ — Sometimes change comes without effort. Other times, it’s a choice.

The choice is what Charm Powell tries to teach to her students.

When The Dart found Powell near Lower Woodville Road, she was relaxing at her house.

It was certainly a different speed from her day job as a teacher at the Adams County Juvenile Justice Center.

Powell had already spent and completed a career as an award-winning teacher in the Natchez-Adams School District before taking up the job at what amounts to a youth jail, but retirement wasn’t working for her the day Youth Court Judge Walt Brown approached her and asked what she was doing for work those days.

Powell said she instantly knew she had to take the job when Brown said it was available.

“I felt convicted that I had a heart for that work, and I immediately said, ‘That is my job; that is what I want to do.’

“I had tried sitting behind a desk, doing secretary work, and it didn’t work — teaching is definitely who I am.”

But teaching at the youth center is different than a traditional classroom. The students in her class are different ages, different grades, and some have dropped out of school, and they don’t change classes between subjects.

Each day, Powell gets a new list showing who is there and who has left.

“My program has to meet every child at their level every day,” she said. “It is like a network of trying to meet every need.

“The kids I teach now are looking, searching, and I try to bring some calm, some hope into their lives. Some are like a sponge, needing it, and some are resistant, but every day is a new day.”

Classes don’t just focus on the fundamentals of learning and functioning in society — math and reading, and GED preparation and job application skills — but also focus on character and moral building, Powell said.

“Every day, I talk to them about whatever it was that got you here, think about not doing that any more,” she said. “This is your life, you have the choices you make, and you can change the position you are in — and sometimes I think they listen.”

That message of change is possibly the last one the students get in the classroom. Powell has a painted sign over the door that says, “This is your chance for change.”

And knowing that some of her students absorb that message, that makes all the work and struggle that come along with the job worth it, Powell said.

“The feeling of fulfillment you can get, knowing I just left a room full of young people who have a future, and maybe I helped them a little bit — that’s a wonderful feeling,” she said.