As principal of Wister Elementary, Jovan Weaver knows well the trauma that many of his students experience. He grew up fatherless during Philadelphia’s crack epidemic in the 1980s and 90s, and was abandoned when he was 10 by his mother, a drug dealer. Ultimately, public school was Jovan’s salvation, and — as he still grapples with the scars of his past — he sets out to make Wister a refuge of “love and positivity” for the students of today.