During his sixth year as a school counselor, Derek Francis faced a situation that would change his career. It was 2017, and the Minnesota high school where he workedâwhich also happened to be the high school he attended as a teenagerâwas in turmoil over a video circulating on social media. In it, one of the schoolâs star volleyball players said the n-word on a bus ride to a game. At the time, Francis was the only Black counselor in the district, which serves about 40,000 students. And the volleyball player, who was white, just so happened to be in his caseload.