It’s clear to anyone who listens that Herman Buckman’s uncle, Robert Jacobs, is proud of him.
“I see him, what he went through, and look at him now,” Jacobs said. “I love it. We all love it. We all support him, let him know he can do anything.”
Buckman grew up in Southeast D.C., where he, his brothers and his sisters were raised by their grandparents. 18-year-old Buckman now lives with his aunt and uncle — who have plenty to be proud of.
“The sky is the limit, and once you reach the sky…” Jacobs said.
Buckman is a standout student athlete at Kipp College Prep in Northeast D.C.
He’s captain of the school’s track and field team, where he lead the school to its first league championship. His academic achievements include being named a LEDA scholar, a Berea scholar, a Carter G. Woodson scholar and a CBYX scholar.
Buckman also recently got the news that he was named a Gates Scholar, which comes with a full college scholarship. It’s awarded for academic achievement to low-income students — and only about 1% of applicants are chosen.
“I was ecstatic, I won’t lie,” Buckman said. “It just made me proud of myself, you know? And proud of my family for keeping me on that track. Always letting me know even if things weren’t going well.”
Like a lot of kids, Buckman hasn’t always loved going to school.
“I like learning. School hasn’t always been my favorite place to be,” he said. “I didn’t grow up in a household where it was always food on the table, you know.”
But despite those challenges, a few years ago, during COVID, learning changed for Buckman.
“My grandfather was staying with us at the time, and he bought me a book,” Buckman said. “It was called ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu. And I think that was the first book I actually enjoyed reading.”
“And in that time, it just kind of went from there,” Buckman said. “And then coming back into my ninth grade year, I met my coach Wu, and he just kept giving me books, you know, and it was very much philosophy-based. You know, Marcus Aurelius, we’re talking Friedrich Nietzsche, a lot of like philosophy books. And that kind of helped me develop my more holistic worldview of my community.”
That worldview of his community — a community, like many, plagued with crime — further inspired him to learn.
“Most of the time, it’s, the violence is not necessarily from a place of — inherent, you know. It’s not very much like an instinct, but rather it’s something that’s learned through the environment you live in,” Buckman said. “So it’s really just a negative feedback loop, you know. Poverty creates poverty, kind of thing.”
In addition to being a remarkable student athlete, Buckman is also a D.C. Youth Poet Laureate finalist.
He points to his family and his teachers for his success.
“I feel as though without something to push you, or something for you to push, you won’t really get anywhere, right?” Buckman said. “Because at that point you can go everywhere, right? So you need something to kind of burden you, but not so much that you can’t walk, but enough where if you’re walking, you’re gonna walk in that direction for a while, right? So, this was an escape.”
Buckman is also part of a remarkable graduating class. All 200 members of Kipp College Prep’s Class of 2025 have been accepted to colleges, with more than $7 million in scholarships.
