She realized that environment plays a key role in the type of person one grows up to be and wanted her son to be in less impoverished surroundings where the majority of kids didn't cut school and get involved in the drug game. Going to private school kept Wes from the streets during the daytime and after school still created a bit of a barrier between him and the other kids in the neighborhood because he was the "private school kid ". This kept him from being introduced deeply into the drug game. However, at private school Wes could feel how different he was and struggled to overcome that discomfort. As a result his grades went downhill and when Joy saw that happening, and realized that her talks weren't working to turn around his progress "she was devastated. She was losing her son and she did not know how to turn the tide " (89). She finally decided that it was time for a drastic change and that she would send her son to military school. Military school, however, was not cheap. She wrote "to family and friends asking them to help her however they could. ˜I wouldn't ask if I didn't really need it,' she wrote " (95). When she still came short thousands of dollars, Wes's grandparents took the money they had in [their] home in the Bronx, decades of savings and mortgage payments, and gave it to my mother so that she could pay for my first year of military school " (96). Wes was incredibly blessed to have a mother that realized the importance of drastically turning the tide when her son was struggling to make good decisions and have family that were willing to make sacrifices for his well being. .
The other Wes Moore's mother, Mary did not have as strong a sense of how to effectively turn around her son's behavior as Joy. Perhaps it was because she had less resources to draw from than Joy, or because she had to give up on her own dream of going to school which made her feel powerless.