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

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

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

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

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

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.

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)

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)

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

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